  We consider 2-dimensional QCD on a cylinder, where space is a circle. We find
the ground state of the system in case of massless quarks in a $1/N$ expansion.
We find that coupling to fermions nontrivially modifies the large $N$ saddle
point of the gauge theory due to the phenomenon of `decompactification' of
eigenvalues of the gauge field. We calculate the vacuum energy and the vacuum
expectation value of the Wilson loop operator both of which show a nontrivial
dependence on the number of quarks flavours at the leading order in $1/N$.
