- #French revolutionary calendar and other stories professional#
- #French revolutionary calendar and other stories free#
The French army at that time contained a mixture of what was left of the old professional army and volunteers. Their decree signalled to foreign powers, namely Britain, that France was out for conquest, not just political reformation of its own lands. The National Convention further decrees that the Executive Power shall order the generals to have this decree printed and distributed in all the various languages and in all the various countries of which they have taken possession". The Convention's decree stated that: " The National Convention declares, in the name of the French nation, that it will grant fraternity and assistance to all peoples who wish to recover their liberty, and instructs the Executive Power to give the necessary orders to generals to grant assistance to these peoples and to defend those citizens who have been-or may be-persecuted for their attachment to the cause of liberty. Decrees such as that of 19 November 1792 reflect the fact that "the deputies were in no mood for caution".
War with Prussia and Austria began in April 1792. The progression of the Revolution came to produce friction between France and its European neighbors, who grew determined to invade France to restore the monarchy. Yet the Committee was not ready to enact conscription, and would not until dire war deficits demanded more men.
#French revolutionary calendar and other stories free#
He said to the National Convention: "And so I say that in a nation which seeks to be free but which is surrounded by powerful neighbours and riddled with secret, festering factions, every citizen should be a soldier and every soldier should be a citizen, if France does not wish to be utterly obliterated". He called for "a people's army, recruited by universal conscription, from which there could be no escape by purchase of a replacement". In December, Dubois de Crancé, who was both "a man of the left" and "a military man, having served as a King's Musketeer", spoke to the National Assembly on behalf of its military committee. When this instead led to the French Revolution, the milice was duly abolished by the National Assembly.Īs early as 1789, leaders had considered how they would sustain their Revolutionary army. This was unpopular with the peasant communities on which it fell, and was one of their grievances which they expected to be addressed by the French Estates-General when it was convened in 1789, to strengthen the French monarchy. Under the Ancien Régime, there had been some conscription (by ballot) to a militia, milice, to supplement the large standing army in times of war. The first modern use of levée en masse occurred during the French Revolutionary Wars. Historically, the levée en masse heralded the age of national participation in warfare and displaced restricted forms of warfare, such as the cabinet wars (1715–1792), when armies of professional soldiers fought without the general participation of the population.
Thus, the levée en masse was created and understood as a means to defend the nation by the nation. As the nation now understood itself as a community of all people, its defense also was assumed to become a responsibility of all. Ĭentral to the understanding that developed (and was promoted by the authorities) of the levée is the idea that the new political rights given to the mass of the French people also created new obligations to the state. The term levée en masse denotes a short-term requisition of all able-bodied men to defend the nation and its rise as a military tactic may be viewed in connection with the political events and developing ideology in revolutionary France-particularly the new concept of the democratic citizen as opposed to a royal subject. 3 Text of the French Revolution's levée en masse.