Of the 90 millions of pay[1] which the army annually costs the treasury, 46 millions are for officers and only 44 millions for soldiers, and we are already aware that a new ordinance reserves ranks of all kinds for verified nobles.  In no direction is this inequality, against which public opinion rebels so vigorously, more apparent.  On the one hand, authority, honors, money, leisure, good-living, social enjoyments, and plays in private, for the minority.  On the other hand, for the majority, subjection, dejection, fatigue, a forced or betrayed enlistment, no hope of promotion, pay at six sous a day,[2] a narrow cot for two, bread fit for dogs, and, for several years, kicks like those bestowed on a dog.[3] On the one hand, a nobility of high estate, and, on the other, the lowest of the populace.  One might say that this was specially designed for contrast and to intensify irritation.  “The insignificant pay of the soldier,” says an economist, “the way in which he is dressed, lodged and fed, his utter dependence, would render it cruelty to take any other than a man of the lower class."[4] Indeed, he is sought for only in the lowest layers of society.  Not only are nobles and the bourgeoisie exempt from conscription, but again the employees of the administration, of the fermes and of public works, “all gamekeepers and forest-rangers, the hired domestics and valets of ecclesiastics, of communities, of religious establishments, of the gentry and of nobles,"[5] and even of the bourgeoisie living in grand style, and still better, the sons of cultivators in easy circumstances, and, in general, all possessing influence or any species of protector.  There remains, accordingly, for the militia none but the poorest class, and they do not willingly enter it.  On the contrary, the service is hateful to them; they conceal themselves in the forests where they have to be pursued by armed men:  in a certain canton which, three years later, furnishes in one day from fifty to one hundred volunteers, the young men cut off their thumbs to escape the draft.[6] To this scum of society is added the sweepings of the depots and of the jails.  Among the vagabonds that fill these, after winnowing out those able to make their families known or to obtain sponsors, “there are none left,” says an intendant, “but those who are entirely unknown or dangerous, out of which those regarded as the least vicious are selected and efforts are made to place these in the army."[7] — The last of its affluents is the half-forced, half-voluntary enlistment by which the ranks are for the most part filled, the human waste of large towns, like adventurers, discharged apprentices, young reprobates turned out of doors, and people without homes or steady occupation.  The recruiting agent who is paid so much a head for his recruits and so much an inch on their stature above five feet, “holds his court in a tavern, treating everyone” promoting his merchandise: 

“Come, boys, soup, fish, meat and salad is what you get to eat in the regiment;” nothing else, “I don’t deceive you — pie and Arbois wine are the extras."[8]