Note 273 — Chapter LXVIII

According to orders accurately calculated, the little bands of recruits, setting off from different points, or depôts on the frontier, met together at places assigned, and, as their numbers increased by each successive junction, were formed first into companies, next into battalions, and last into regiments; learning, of course, to practise successively the duties belonging to these various bodies. When they joined the army, these combinations, which had but been adopted temporarily, were laid aside, the union of the marching battalion dissolved, and the conscripts distributed among old regiments, whose example might complete the discipline which they had thus learned in a general way.—S.