Toulouse, the head-quarters of the 17th Army Corps, is the military centre for the departments of Ariege, Haute-Garonne, Gers, Lot, Lot-et-Garonne, and Tarn-et-Garonne. The town is peculiarly liable to great floods, and those of 1855, which swept away the suspension bridge of St. Pierre, and of 1875, which destroyed 7000 houses and drowned 300 people, are still remembered in the city. It is situated 478 miles south of Paris and 160 miles south-east from Bordeaux, and, with a population of about 150,000, ranks as the metropolis of Southern France.

Tours, the head-quarters of the 9th Army Corps, is situated 145 miles south-west from Paris by rail, and is the military centre for the departments of Maine-et-Loire, Indre-et-Loire, Deux-Sèvres, and Vienne. Under the Gauls it was the capital of the Turones, from whom it derived the name which it still bears, and traces of Roman occupation still remain in the form of the ancient amphitheatre. After the fall of Roman power, Tours was fortified against barbarian invasion, and subsequently it was closely connected with the great names of French history, notably those of Clovis, who presented rich gifts to the church at Tours out of the spoils won from Alaric and the Goths, and with Charlemagne, who disciplined its monasteries. Few towns surpass Tours in historic interest, and it is noteworthy in modern times, as the birthplace of Balzac and the two Marshals Boucicaut. In 1870 the government of the national defence was established at Tours, and the Third Republic may thus be said to have had its birth here　The EndAs to active service in the French Army..

No list of the great garrisons of France would be complete without a reference to Verdun and Toul, the ends of the great chain of fortresses which defend the eastern frontier. Toul, 14 miles to the west of Nancy, is the centre of a vast network of entrenchments and defences, and the hills surrounding the town are crowned with forts which command all the country within range to the east. A series of forts, echeloning along the ridge of the Meuse, connect Toul with Verdun, and forms a defensive line which is only equalled in strength by the defences of Paris, as far as the French military defensive system is concerned. Verdun, at the northern end of the line of frontier defences, is surrounded by a ring of detached forts, eleven in number, and occupying a circumference of 25 miles. Since the loss of Metz to Germany, Verdun has been so strengthened as to form the most formidable fortress in France.

One of the principal effects of a conscript system such as that of France is that the great majority of the population of the country is characterised by fixed habits and ideas with regard to the way in which work should be done. The Latin races are all marked by a certain flexibility and dexterity of mind, a quickness of apprehension which is absent, for the most part, from other Caucasian stock, and military training increases this and applies it to physical use as well as to mental qualities. The conscript, back in civilian life at the end of his training, is to be compared to the sailor of the British Navy in many respects; he has learned a certain handiness, a dexterity in connection with his daily work, and it is a lesson that stays with him, as a rule, to the end of his life.

While military service alters, it does not create; the stolid Breton—stolid by comparison with the men of central and Southern France, remains stolid as before he went up for training, for the Army has grafted on him nothing that is new—it has merely added to his knowledge and developed, in the way of characteristics, what was already there. But the Breton is the better for his two years—without them he would be a very stolid and unimaginative person indeed, and he has learned to stir himself, to make the best of himself and the work that is his to perform. Similarly the traditional Frenchman, coming from the wine-growing districts of the south, and a hot-headed and impetuous individual, has his eccentricities modified, for hot-headedness does not pay in military service, and this man has learned to control himself just as the Breton has acquired a little more rapidity of movement. Yet the individual characteristics of the two types remain; personal traits have been modified by discipline, but not destroyed, for while the Army of the Republic creates nothing, it also annihilates nothing.  to a pattern, but they are the same men in essence, with no quality removed altogether. Usually, they are vastly improved.