This arrangement served to reward a great number of old soldiers, who, being under five feet in height, could not enter into the companies of grenadiers, who on account of their bravery, deserved to enter into a picked company: it was a powerful incentive to emulation to bring the giants and pigmies into competition.

Had there been men of different colors in the armies of the emperor, he would have composed companies of blacks and companies of whites: in a country where there were cyclops or hunchbacks, a good use might be made of companies of cyclops, and others of hunchbacks." "In 1789, the French army as composed of regiments of the line and battalions of chasseurs; the chasseurs of the Cevennes, the Vivarais, the Alps, of Corsica, and the Pyrenees, who at the Revolution formed half brigades of light infantry; but the object was not to have two different sorts of infantry, for they were raised alike, instructed alike, drilled alike; only the battalions of chasseurs were recruited by the men of the mountainous districts, or by the sons of the garde-chasse; whence they were more fit to be employed on the frontiers of the Alps and Pyrenees; and when they were in the armies of the North, they were always detached, in preference, for climbing heights or scouring a forest; when these men were placed in line, in a battle, they served very well as a battalion of the line, because they had received the same instructions, and were armed and disciplined in the same manner.

Every power occasionally raises, in war-time, irregular corps, under the title of free or legionary battalions, consisting of foreign deserters, or formed of individuals of a particular party or faction; but that does not constitute two sorts of infantry.

There is and can be but one.

If the apes of antiquity must needs imitate the Romans, it is not light-armed troops that they ought to introduce, but heavy-armed soldiers, or battalions armed with swords; for all the infantry of Europe serve at times as light troops." Most European nations, for reasons probably similar to those of Napoleon, keep up this nominal division of _infantry of the line_ and _light infantry_; but both are usually armed and equipped alike, and both receive the same organization and instruction.