188 Chapter Sixthe French army, especially those stationed in and near Paris, became
affected by the revolutionary agitation that boiled up so suddenly
among the inhabitants of the capital.
In view of remarks in the preceding chapter about the insulation of
Old Regime armies from civil society—in but not of the civilians’
world—this wind of change within the ranks of the French army calls
for special explanation. Two circumstances clearly facilitated the infil
tration of new ideas among the soldiery. One was the fact that under
normal garrison conditions French officers, even junior officers, spent
little time with their men, and left daily drill and other routines largely
in the hands of noncoms. Practical, day-to-day command therefore
rested in the hands of persons who were predisposed to be sympa
thetic to the revolutionary assault on aristocracy, since aristocratic
privilege blocked any hope of their achieving commissioned rank. Ear
lier, sergeants did sometimes become officers, though few ever got
beyond the rank of lieutenant.^8 The regulation of 1781 reserving
commissions to noblemen therefore rankled, and was still, in 1789, a
fresh and remembered grievance.
Moreover, many of the aggrieved noncoms were literate. Schools to
teach corporals and sergeants to read and write had been decreed in
1787, since the growing importance of written orders and records
required that even the most junior levels of command be filled by
literate persons.^9 Hence, the written propaganda revolutionary jour
nalists and pamphleteers put into circulation could, and presumably
did, affect the minds of the men who commanded the rank and file. By
the time regimental officers realized what was happening, it was too
late to reverse the trend of opinion within the ranks, and efforts to
isolate soldiers from the populace, especially in and around Paris,
proved ineffectual.
Revolutionary sympathies within the army were dramatically dem
onstrated on 14 July 1789 when the Paris crowd attacked the Bastille.
tions to pass through designated streets by arrangement. This marks the dawn of mod
ern techniques for allowing an angry crowd to expend its energy harmlessly with hours
of muscular exertion and shouting, without having to disperse it by brute force. But
such sophistication was far in the future in 1789; so, for that matter, were disciplined
civil police forces. On the police of Paris see Godechot, La prise de la Bastille, pp.
95–115.
- A. Corvisier, L’armée française de la fin du XVlie siècle au ministère de Choiseul
(Paris, 1964), pp. 784–90. - Samuel F. Scott, The Response of the Royal Army to the French Revolution, 1787–1793
(New York, 1978), pp. 26, 34. Most of what follows about how the army responded to
the first years of the revolution derives from this excellent book.