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m, for instance, the Grassin Legion, acquired quite a reputation.
Finally came the French Revolution. The troops of the Republic were more remarkable for courage and enthusiasm than for tactics and drill. They usually attacked as skirmishers,--a system which may be employed successfully by even the most regularly disciplined armies, but which is sometimes more especially useful to raw troops, because it gives the private soldier an opportunity to compensate by personal intelligence for the lack of thorough instruction. Struck by the aptitude of the French recruits for that kind of fighting, the Convention, in reorganizing the army, decreed the formation of some half-brigades of light infantry. The picked men were to be armed with the new weapon, and received the name of Carabiniers. The carabine of 1793 is the first specimen of that kind of arm which was regularly employed in France.
Subsequently, owing to many practical defects, when Napoleon reorganized the equipment of the French armies, the carabine was dropped from the service, although the regiments of light infantry were retained, and their picked companies preserved the title of Carabiniers. In the Imperial Guard, too, there were companies of Skirmishers, Flankers, and Chasseurs, but neither one of these corps was distinguished by any particular style of arms or drill. The Emperor's wish was to have the armament and training of all his infantry uniform, so that all the regiments should be equally adapted to the service of troops of the line or light troops. Finally, to carry out his design with greater ease, he formed all the men who were more active and agile than the rest, or whose low stature prevented them from becoming Grenadiers, into companies of Voltigeurs,--and this was one of his finest military creations.
However, notwithstanding the correctness of Napoleon's views, as a general principle, the thousand and one uses of a corps of picked marksmen as light troops were so universally admitted that the different nati