Open with the folklore of militia conscription, reflect on that vs. evidence for the origins of serving soldiers by the 1780s – Bertaud, Forrest – the urban/rural differentials, social origins, etc. The parade of structural innovations of the 1790s, from the idea of short-service volunteering, through the catastrophe of the levy of 300,000, to the implicitly and effectively unlimited service demanded in the levée en masse. With conscription then formalised in 1798, consider the cultural and political shifts necessary for one of the most divisive issues of the 1790s to become a focus of national unity under Bonaparte.
Summarise the vast imposition of manpower created by the Empire, how much of it was shifted onto non-French territories, how military formations remained remarkably resilient –e.g. in Spain – against desertion, even while patterns of insoumission remained persistent at home. How far the Empire constituted a ‘nation in arms’ phenomenon, at the time and in hindsight, and the impact of that on the perception of the individual soldier, during and after service.
The practical and the symbolic aspects of military service post-1815. David Hopkin on the latter, as against evidence for radical and bonapartist subversion in garrisons – Hazareesingh.
Turning to warmaking, beginning by exploring the traumatic aftermath of 1763, and the beginning of technical debate about military ‘modernisation’; the question of what nature of experience was derived from participation in the American War, and how the French army was organised, and re-organised, for war through the early years of the Revolution [Scott, Bertaud]. Myths and realities of revolutionary élan and drill – weight of numbers vs. tactical innovation, voltigeurs, etc. Drive vs. organisation in early Napoleonic campaigns, Italy, Egypt, and comparison with achievements of some other less lucky generals.
The army as a counterinsurgency force – lessons learned, for good and ill, in the Vendée and the bocage. In conventional campaigning, evolution of the corps d’armée system, changes in operational warfare, Napoleon’s underlying assumptions about decisive battle and forced peace – as at Austerlitz, Tilsit, Wagram, etc – and the collision with ‘total war’ among the people as in Spain – the virtues and flaws of David Bell’s views on this.
Military organisation in general after the Restoration – social and political tensions, contrasts between garrison life and the acquisition of a new ‘active’ role in Algeria from 1830. Exploration of the logics of the militarised treatment of this adventure, with perhaps a sideways look back at Napoleonic attempts to pacify the Caribbean… the foundation of the Foreign Legion as effectively a specifically colonial army.
The Legion as a particularly spectacular contrast to the National Guard, from its revolutionary foundations in 1789 as a specific and direct manifestation of the ‘nation in arms’ at home. The deep ambiguities of the defence of order during a revolutionary conflict that the Guard manifested, both on the Parisian scene and in regional conflicts both rural and urban – its reputation in the West as a force of intrus, and its use in moderately brutal suppression of disorder and enforcement of tax-gathering. Militarisation from 1792, and the parallel formations of assorted political militias and armées révolutionnaires until their suppression at various points in 1794 and after.
The sucking out of the life from the idea of armed civilians across the 20 years from Thermidor to the Restoration, but the revival of the ideal in the face of a bourgeois concern at aristocratic values that produced the politically-troubling Guard of the 1820s, leading to its 1827 suppression in Paris and role in the 1830 revolution. The double face of the Guard again through the periods of social unrest of the 1830s and 1840s; membership as a marker of status, roles as sometimes reluctant, sometimes enthusiastic supporters of order, reformist participation in February 1848. Other militias such as the Garde mobile and their role in suppressing the June Days. [Bianchi/Dupuy; G. Carrot]
Will the gendarmerie fit into this chapter?
On 1848: don’t forget Marc Caussidiere’s red-scarved militia operating from the Prefecture de Police!
As for the National Guard: I suppose its problem lay in the fact that it rested at the juncture of society and the state? And for most National Guards, ‘society’ was their neighbourhood, which meant that – cf the June Days – the militia could be an instrument not only of suppression and/or revolution, but also of civil war, depending upon where the legions were drawn from. Moreover, as Lafayette pointed out in 1832, the first line of defence for the post-1815 parliamentary regimes consisted of those who, for the most part, were disenfranchised…a potentially fatal paradox.