The renewal of the traditions of the First Empire was incessantly pursued. On the 21st of March, the President reviewed the garrison of Paris and distributed the military medal which he had just instituted, addressing the troops in a discourse in which he explained his object in creating this badge of distinction; on the 10th of May, there was a great military display on the Champ-de-Mars and the distribution of the eagles of the colors to the army. A decree of the 12th of August, 1857, instituted the medal of Saint Helena, given to those old soldiers of the first Napoleon who had served in the campaigns from 1792 to 1815. The Imperial Guard for the army, a reserve corps and corps d'élite, and the Cent-Gardes à cheval for the service of the Imperial palace, had been organized two years earlier. In 1867, at the culmination of the prestige of the Empire, when "the whole _Almanach de Gotha_ passed through the salons of the Tuileries," these crowned heads were honored with a grand review of sixty-two thousand men in the Bois de Boulogne;--"the honors were carried off by the artillery of the Guard; the chasseurs, the zouaves, the _guides_, and the cuirassiers divided these acclamations, ... all these soldiers, presenting the most brilliant appearance, defiled before the King of Prussia, the Count Bismarck, the general Baron von Moltke, the major-general Count von Goltz! And three years later!..."
At the present day, the great number of these very red and blue soldiers, officers and privates, always to be seen promenading in the streets of Paris, the sentries on duty before all the principal public buildings, the mounted dragoons, or _estafettes_, riding about the streets with official messages, and the dragoons of the Garde-Républicaine, the municipal force, on duty before the Opéra-house on nights of performance, add greatly to the animated and picturesque aspect of the capital. To those who were in the city in the early fall of this year, the efficacy of a standing army to maintain public order was abundantly demonstrated. There can be no doubt that the threatened general strike of workmen and laborers, affecting all private and municipal works, and even the success of the coming Exposition of 1900, was prevented, almost in its inception, by the abundant protection afforded those workmen who continued to labor. If it were necessary, a single _ouvrier_, or _terrassier_, could have half a dozen soldiers or police to protect him against the violence of those of his fellows _en grève_, and the city was dotted with pickets of infantry and cavalry, sergents de ville, sentinels before all unfinished buildings, railway stations, etc. The arts of the demagogue are by no means unknown in this land of universal suffrage, and frantic appeals were made to them on this occasion, but the government remained entirely unimpressed, to its praise be it said.