192 Chapter Six
volunteers. Despite certain gestures in the direction of revolutionary
ideals,^14 it seems fair to say that the regular army dominated the
amalgamation less because of numbers than because experience in the
field put new recruits into situations in which the lore of the old
army was useful and meaningful, whereas the liberal, egalitarian ele
ments of the revolutionary aspiration found little chance for practical
expression.^15
Basic continuity between the old army and the armies of the revo
lution was thus assured. The army even survived the famous levée en
masse of 1793. In August of that year the Convention decreed:
... all Frenchmen are permanently requisitioned for service into
the armies. Young men will go forth to battle; married men will
forge weapons and transport munitions; women will make tents
and clothing and serve in hospitals; children will make lint from
old linen; and old men will be brought to the public squares to
arouse the courage of the soldiers, while preaching the unity of
the Republic and hatred against Kings.^16
The revolutionary principle that everyone owed military service to the
nation could scarcely have been more emphatically proclaimed; and
the effort to implement the high rhetoric of the decree, while often
chaotic, was also energetic and remarkably successful.^17
Political ideals surely mattered and so did the legal forms of con
scription. But what made the levée en masse work as well as it did was
the distress and disorganization which had descended on civil society,
thanks to poor harvests, catastrophic inflation, and general economic
disruption. Unemployment was widespread, and when young men
were summoned to enlist in the army, the poorest of them did so
willingly enough. Military service offered an escape from frustrating
idleness and gave them a legitimate claim to a livelihood at others’
expense. The new armies were only occasionally provided through
bureaucratic channels with what they needed to keep themselves
going; instead they had to depend on their own efforts to find food
- The elective principle for appointment to junior officer ranks was not entirely
given up; but the right to vote on a new appointment was limited to holders of the rank
to be filled. In addition, 33 percent of all vacancies was to be filled by promotion based
on seniority in length of service. Scott, Response of the Royal Army, pp. 157, 165, 180. In
1795, election of officers was discontinued.
- Jean-Paul Bertaud, “Voies nouvelles pour l’histoire militaire de la révolution,”
Annales historiques de la révolution française 47 (1975): 83.
- This is the translation of Crane Brinton et al., in Edward Mead Earle, Makers of
Modern Strategy (Princeton, 1941), p. 77.
- Richard Cobb, Les armées révolutionaires: Instrument de la Terreur dans les dé
partements, avril 1793–floreal an II, 2 vols. (Paris, 1961), offers enormous detail.
