Military matters are but little attended to in China. This sceptical and timorous nation is no believer in military glory and power. Our campaigns in China showed the value of a Chinese army. General Cousin Montauban, since Count de Palikao, cut numbers of them to pieces, after one or two skirmishes, in which the Chinese fled as hard as they could the very moment they perceived a uniform.
A nation of four hundred million inhabitants was conquered by six thousand Frenchmen. The unworthy cowardice of the Chinese explain the fact that they have always been an easy prey to conquerors.
In Chinese military matters we will restrict ourselves to reproducing their uniforms. Fig. 135 represents that of their infantry, and fig. 136 that of their mounted troops.
[Illustration: 137.--THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA.]
The real army of the Chinese nation is the care with which it holds itself aloof from foreigners, and the manner in which it forbids them access to its territory. Retrenched behind its wall, it is happy in its own way and does without soldiers. The system seems a good one, since it has succeeded for so many centuries.
The wall of China, which rigorously excludes all strangers from the empire, is no mere metaphor. It is a solid reality. Fig. 137 gives a view of the Great Wall taken near Peking.
The Marquis de Moges, an attaché of the embassy when M. Gros was French Ambassador in China, has wittily summed up, in his account of his travels, the contrast between Chinese and Western civilization. "In China," he says, "the magnetic needle points to the south;--the cardinal points are five in number;--the left hand is the place of honour;--politeness requires you to keep your head covered in the presence of a superior, or in that of a person whom you wish to honour;--a book is read from right to left;--fruit is eaten at the beginning of dinner and soup at its close;--at school, children learn their lessons aloud and repeat them all together;--their silence is punished as a sign of idleness;--and finally, a title of nobility conferred upon a man for some signal service rendered to the state, does not descend to his posterity, but goes backwards and ennobles his ancestors."
Japan, consisting of a large island, that of Nipon, and seven other smaller islands, of which the principal are Yesso, Sitkokf, and Kiousiou, is inhabited by an industrious and intelligent people. The Japanese, whilst resembling the Chinese in many points, differ from them in many others, and are far superior in a moral point of view to the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire.