For the radicals of the Third Republic the task of creating a republican army was one of some complexity that could not be limited to imposing conscription on a reluctant nation and legislating for equality of sacrifice, important as these were. The failures of the French army in 1870 had been there for all to see, and they were failures of tactics and military preparation, as well, the republicans insisted, as failures of leadership by the officer class of the Second Empire. They sought to explain these failures by pointing to the lack of morale in the military, and the lack of any sense of public service among the officers. In particular, they felt that the social background of many army officers and the military preparation provided for them at academies like Saint-Cyr made them aloof and aristocratic, remote from their men and out of sympathy with the ideals of the republic. For though entry to the leading military academies had increasingly become a matter of public examination and open competition, the sons of nobles still enjoyed privileged access to some areas of the officer corps, most visibly in the cavalry, and there were those, principally among the royalists, who continued to believe that the best officers came from military families and therefore sought to favour the transmission of military vocations from one generation to the next.