The People in Arms: Military Myth and National Mobilization since the French Revolution

Concerned with the mass mobilization of society for war, this study starts with the French levée en masse of 1793. It replaced former theories and regulations concerning the obligation of military service with a universal concept more encompassing in its moral claims than any that had prevailed under the Old Regime. These papers analyze and compare episodes (in which the distinctive ideological configuration that the original levée typified plays a leading role).