Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Armour Plates" to "Arundel, Earls of"
84. If Louis was the creator of the royal army, Carnot was so of the
1047 words | Chapter 92
revolutionary army. At the outbreak of the Revolution the royal army
consisted of 224 infantry battalions, 7 regiments of artillery, and 62
regiments of cavalry, numbering about 173,000 in all, but capable of
augmentation on war strength to 210,000. To this might be added about
60,000 militia (see Chuquet, _Premiere invasion prussienne_).
The first step of the Constituent Assembly was the abrogation of an
edict of 1781 whereby men of non-noble birth had been denied
commissioned rank (1790). Thus, when many of the officers emigrated
along with their fellows of the _noblesse_, trained non-commissioned
officers, who would already have been officers save for this edict, were
available to fill their places. The general scheme of reform (see
CONSCRIPTION) was less satisfactory, but the formation of a National
Guard, comprising in theory the whole military population, was a step of
the highest importance. At this time the titles of regiments were
abandoned in favour of numbers, and the costly and dangerous _Maison du
Roi_ abolished. But voluntary enlistment soon failed; the old corps,
which kept up their discipline, were depleted, and the men went to the
volunteers, where work was less exacting and promotion more rapid.
_"Aussi fut-on,"_ says a French writer, _"reduit bientot a forcer
l'engagement volontaire et a imposer le choix du corps."_ The "first
invasion" (July 1792) put an end to half-measures, and the country was
declared "in danger." Even these measures, however, were purely designed
to meet the emergency, and, after Valmy, enthusiasm waned to such a
degree that, of a paper strength of 800,000 men (December 1792), only
112,000 of the line and 290,000 volunteers were actually present. The
disasters of the following spring once more called for extreme energy,
and 300,000 national guards were sent to the line, a step which was
followed by a compulsory _levee en masse_; one million men were thus
assembled to deal with the manifold dangers of civil and foreign war.
France was saved by mere numbers and the driving energy of the
Terrorists, not by discipline and organization. The latter was chaotic,
and almost every element of success was wanting to the tumultuary levies
of the year 1793 save a ferocious energy born of liberty and the
guillotine. But under the Terrorist regime the army became the
rallying-point of the nation, and when Lazare Carnot (q.v.) became
minister of war a better organization and discipline began to appear.
The amalgamation of the old army and the volunteers, which had been
commenced but imperfectly carried out, was effected on a different and
more thorough principle. The infantry was organized in demi-brigades of
three battalions (usually one of the old army to two of volunteers). A
permanent organization in divisions of all arms was introduced, and the
ablest officers selected for the commands. Arsenals and manufactories of
warlike stores were created, schools of instruction were re-established;
the republican forces were transformed from hordes to armies, well
disciplined, organized and equipped. Later measures followed the same
lines, and the artillery and engineers, which in 1790 were admittedly
the best in Europe and which owing to the _roturier_ element in their
officer cadres had not been disorganized by the emigration, steadily
improved. The infantry, and in a less degree the cavalry, became good
and trustworthy soldiers, and the glorious campaigns of 1794, 1795 and
1796, which were the direct result of Carnot's administration, bore
witness to the potentialities of the essentially modern system. But,
great as was the triumph of 1796-97, the exhaustion of years of
continuous warfare had made itself felt: the armies were reduced to mere
skeletons, and no sufficient means existed of replenishing them, till in
1798 the _conscription_ was introduced. From that time the whole male
population of France was practically at her ruler's disposal; and
Napoleon had full scope for his genius in organizing these masses. His
principal improvements were effected in the interval between the peace
of Amiens and the war with the third coalition, while threatening the
invasion of England. His armies were collected in large camps on the
coasts of the Channel, and there received that organization which, with
minor variations, they retained during all his campaigns, and which has
since been copied by all European nations. The divisions had already
given place to the army corps, and Napoleon completed the work of his
predecessors. He withdrew the whole of the cavalry and a portion of the
artillery from the divisions, and thus formed "corps troops" and cavalry
and artillery reserves for the whole army. The grade of marshal of
France was revived at Napoleon's coronation. At the same time, the
operation of Jourdan's law, acquiesced in during times of national
danger and even during peace, soon found opposition when the conscripts
realized that long foreign wars were to be their lot. It was not the
actual losses of the field armies, great as these undoubtedly were,
which led Napoleon in the full tide of his career to adopt the fatal
practice of "anticipating" the conscription, but the steady increase in
the number of _refractaires_, men who refused to come up for service. To
hunt these men down, no less than forty thousand picked soldiers were
engaged within the borders of France, and the actual French element in
the armies of Napoleon grew less and less with every extension of the
empire. Thus, in the Grand Army of 1809, about one-third of the corps of
all arms were purely German, and in 1812 the army which invaded Russia,
467,000 strong, included 280,000 foreigners. In other words, the million
of men produced by the original conscription of 1793 had dwindled to
about half that number (counting the various subsidiary armies in Spain,
&c.), and one hundred thousand of the best and sturdiest Frenchmen were
engaged in a sort of civil war in France itself. The conscription was
"anticipated" even in 1806, the conscripts for 1807 being called up
before their time. As the later wars of the Empire closed one by one the
foreign sources of recruiting, the conscription became more terrible
every year, with the result that more _refractaires_ and more trusted
soldiers to hunt them down were kept in non-effective employment.
Finally the capacity for resistance was exhausted, and the army, from
the marshals downward, showed that it had had enough.
Reading Tips
Use arrow keys to navigate
Press 'N' for next chapter
Press 'P' for previous chapter