Caste, Class and Profession in Old Regime France
Caste, Class and Profession in Old Regime France

Author: David D. Bien

Publisher: Centre for French History and Culture of University of St. Andrews

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 102

ISBN-13: 9781907548024

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First published in French in 1974, David D. Bien's essay on the nature of nobility in old regime France pivoted around the 1781 "Ségur regulation" that required four generations of nobility for most officers entering the army. Once seen as a classic manifestation of the so-called "aristocratic reaction" against commoners, the loi Ségur, in Bien's deft analysis, instead emerges as a telling sign of tensions within an increasingly divided nobility. While exploding crude myths about class conflict and its causative role in the Revolution, Bien mounts a strong case for viewing eighteenth-century social tensions as the product of professional identity as much as social class. This study is presented here for the first time in English with a short preface by Rafe Blaufarb, and a wide-ranging introduction by Jay M. Smith that places Bien's work in the wider context of historical thinking over the past half-century on the origins of the French Revolution.

The French Army, 1750-1820
The French Army, 1750-1820

Author: Rafe Blaufarb

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 9780719062629

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This book crosses the chronological boundary of 1789 to bring the histories of the Old Regime, Revolution, Empire, and Restoration together.

The Army of the French Revolution
The Army of the French Revolution

Author: Jean Paul Bertaud

Publisher:

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 9780691055374

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Jean-Paul Bertaud is the leading French authority on the army of the French Revolution, and La Revolution armee is the authoritative treatment of the first great national, patriotic, revolutionary, and mass army, engaged in what has been called the first total war: that between revolutionary France and the other European powers. The book is a successful attempt to integrate military history with social and political history and thereby to depict the army as a "school for the republic" that by subtle changes after 1795 made way for the Napoleonic regime. The distinguished historian R. R. Palmer presents the first translation of this work into English in a volume that will quickly become indispensable for French historians, historical sociologists, and political scientists interested in armies and revolutions. The theme of the book is suggested by its French title: "the Revolution armed." That is, the book is primarily about the Revolution, and specifically the Revolution in its relation to armed force. This revolution, and this army, activated the idea of the citizen-soldier exemplified by the ancient classical republics, and favored by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and other eighteenth-century thinkers, but never before realized on so large and portentous a scale as in France in the 1790s.

Conscripts and Deserters
Conscripts and Deserters

Author: Alan I. Forrest

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0195059379

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Between the outbreak of war with Austria in 1792 and Napoleon's final debacle in 1814, France remained almost continously at war, recruiting in the process some two to three million frenchmen--a level of recruitment unknown to previous generations and widely resented as an attack on the liberties of rural communities. Forrest challenges the notion of a nation heroically rushing to arms by examining the massive rates of desertion and avoidance of service as well as their consequences on French society--on military campaigns and the morale of armies, on political opinion at home, on the social fabric of local villages, and on the Napoleonic dream of bringing about a coherent and centralized state.

European Armies of the French Revolution, 1789–1802
European Armies of the French Revolution, 1789–1802

Author: Frederick C. Schneid

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2015-05-26

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0806153121

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Upon France’s defeat of the vaunted Prussian army at the Battle of Valmy in 1792, German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe remarked, “From this place and from this day forth commences a new era in the world’s history.” The pronouncement proved prescient, for this first major victory emboldened France’s revolutionary government to end the monarchy and establish the first French Republic—with dramatic consequences for the wars that soon roiled the continent. In nine essays by leading scholars, European Armies of the French Revolution, 1789–1802 provides an authoritative, continent-wide analysis of the organization and constitution of these armies, the challenges they faced, and the impact they had on the French Revolutionary Wars and on European military practices. The volume opens with editor Frederick C. Schneid’s substantial introduction, which reviews the strategies and policies of each participating state throughout the wars, establishing a clear context for the essays that follow. Drawing on the latest research and thought, each contributor focuses on the army of a particular power: France, Prussia, Austria, Russia, Britain, Spain, the German principalities, the Italian states, and the Ottoman Empire. Their essays examine the system, tactics, operations, and strategies that each army adopted and developed in the Revolutionary Wars. The authors explore the conflicts’ wider influence on these policies and practices, along with significant battles and actions. Unique in its approach and reach, this volume offers a thorough and closely observed view of the composition, scope, and purpose of the European armies at the turn of the nineteenth century. It enhances and extends our insights into how the military powers of the post–French Revolutionary era—and thus, the era itself—took shape.