Reinterpreting the French Revolution: A global-historical perspective (58 page)

69 Woloch,
The New Regime
, p. 254.

70 Barère is cited in ibid., pp. 250–51.

The second attempt to stabilize the Revolution

237

Here was a telling paradox: the more broadly conceived and “modern”

(and therefore more costly) France’s military ambitions became, the more

restrictive and less “modern” became its efforts at home relief. “Out of

this debacle,” as one historian has expressed it, “the foremost casualty was

the belief that the State could actually organize and support such services

as . . .
bienfaisance
. Where the nation’s resources had once seemed abundant (thanks to nationalized church lands and printing presses), the treasury was

now bare, revenues uncertain, and budgets swollen by military priorities.”

Accordingly, the period of the Directory witnessed a melancholy but

probably unavoidable retreat from the modern concept of nationally

administered pensions and poor relief to a more traditional philosophy

stressing the primary charitable responsibility of municipalities and other

local entities. This had the further unhappy effect of contravening the

Revolution’s drive toward greater national unity by setting cities and rural

communities against each other. Urban imposts provided funds for poor

relief in cities and towns but could do nothing for rural indigents. “Urban

bienfaisance
had a chance to recover, but in the bourgs and villages public assistance scarcely existed.”71 The Revolution may have started to integrate

rural areas into a national system of administration; it could not, however,

bring them into a nationally funded system of public assistance, or even

assure them the minimal assistance available in the country’s more densely

populated precincts.

It is important in reevaluating revolutionary
bienfaisance
to stress how

very dependent it had to be upon a government able to devote time and

money to charitable undertakings in an economy enjoying a reasonable

amount of prosperity. Yet it was precisely these conditions that were

ruled out in the 1790s as French geopoliticians cast covetous glances far-

ther and farther abroad. The more discerning officials of the Directory

were cognizant of the fundamental developmental dilemma posed for their

country by its international ambitions. As one of them commented in June

1796: “The more the Directory steps up its efforts to come to the aid

of neglected arts, agriculture, and commerce, as well as families without

support, by letting them keep the soldiers they claim when the public

interest permits it, the more it fears sowing discouragement in the armies

and disorganizing their ranks by permitting soldiers on active duty to

return to their families.”72 How, then, to define the “public interest”? Did

it lie, as the first revolutionary idealists had enthusiastically proclaimed, in

the unconditional betterment of “humanity,” starting (presumably) with

French “humanity”? Or did it lie in securing and, if possible, improving the

71 Ibid., pp. 259–63. Two studies on these issues in provincial France are: Colin Jones,
Charity and Bienfaisance: The Treatment of the Poor in the Montpellier Region, 1740–1815

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); and Kathryn Norberg,
Rich and Poor in
Grenoble, 1600–1814
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).

72 Cited in Woloch,
The New Regime
, p. 388.

238

Reinterpreting the French Revolution

situation of France (i.e., the French state) in the murderously competitive

world of European power politics? The men of the Directory ultimately

embraced the latter definition, as indeed had all their predecessors since

1789. They revoked military furloughs and hardship dispensations and

eventually devised the system of conscription that has in one form or

another lasted down to the present day. They harkened, in other words,

to the clamorous advocates of war rather than to the quieter voices

calling for long-term economic development and for the dispensation of

state assistance to the needy.

So far, we have noted the paradoxical impact of war upon the domestic

policies of the Thermidorian and post-Thermidorian revolutionaries in

France. The country’s military “mission” placed a premium upon a more

tightly integrated, hierarchical system of administration, a modernized

central bureaucracy, and streamlined financial procedures; and yet it also

impeded the completion of desperately needed fiscal reforms and sapped

the productivity of the economy undergirding the government. The

country’s military requirements were crucial in bringing the Jacobins to

power, and thus – indirectly – in raising the issues of state-sponsored

education and state assistance to necessitous and deserving citizens; yet

those same military needs worked in the end to shoulder those meliorist

causes off the Republic’s agenda. We shall also see much that was para-

doxical about the army’s ongoing evolution during 1794–99. The effect

of interminable war was further to professionalize the Republic’s armed

forces yet at the same time to throw up some obstacles to the completion

of that process. What was more, behind the process of professionaliza-

tion lurked the larger phenomenon of
militarization
in both army and

society. Symptomatic of this latter development were such factors as the

increasingly despotic control exerted by army officers over their troops,

the massive conscription of young men into the army from 1798 on, and the

insidious erosion of civilian authority over the Republic’s military chiefs.

Historians agree that, over the period between 9 Thermidor, Year II, and

Bonaparte’s accession to power, the French army’s officer corps continued

to acquire greater professionalism. Howard G. Brown has noted that a list

of prospective generals submitted to the post-Robespierrist Convention

by military specialist Dubois-Crancé bespoke “the importance of zeal, ac-

tivity, and intelligence as well as the specifically military virtues of length of

command, expertise in a particular branch of the army, and above all bravery

in determining who would remain or become a general.” That the deputies

did not accept all of Dubois-Crancé’s choices did not necessarily rele-

gate these criteria to a back burner.73 We know, for example, of legislation

73 Howard G. Brown, “Politics, Professionalism, and the Fate of Army Generals after

Thermidor,”
French Historical Studies
19 (1995): 151–52.

The second attempt to stabilize the Revolution

239

of April 1795 that placed a new stress upon experience as a criterion for

promotion in the ranks. The new measure discarded the overly vague re-

quirement of seniority in years of service and replaced it with seniority

in existing rank
. By combining this principle with the requirement of four

years to be served in the rank just below the one to which promotion was

to be made, the deputies hoped to discourage the advancement of men

who had entered the army many years before but were lacking in demon-

strated ability. The same decree also tentatively suppressed the election of

officers by fellow soldiers and suggested instead the nomination of officers

by peers, with the final selection to be made by superiors. (Later legisla-

tion confirmed this tendency, vesting the final powers of selection in the

government.)74 The authorities also sought to strike a judicious balance in

the matter of age, setting up bureaucratic procedures to eliminate incom-

petent officers who were overage, and yet at the same time using the new

requirement of four years in a given rank prior to a promotion to curb the

promotion of immature young madcaps (
sabreurs
).

The results of these policies were consequential. Bertaud, for instance,

has found that the sublieutenants he sampled for the late 1790s were experi-

enced soldiers; over half of them had served as privates, corporals, or higher

NCOs prior to 1789. Volunteers of 1791 and 1792, who had been serving

in the ranks for five years or more, shared with them the company-level

officer posts. Neither the volunteers of 1793 nor the subsequent draftees

could have much chance of promotion among such veterans.75 In addi-

tion, officers of all ranks in these post-Jacobin times were expected to be

mindful of their socioprofessional “dignity.” Earlier in the Revolution,

army officers had been instructed to think of themselves as “magistrates”

who must at all times merit the confidence of the citizen-soldiers who

were in civic terms their equals. Now, with a more strikingly hierarchical

division of labor prevailing at all levels in the army, an officer could be

rebuked for “compromising himself with subordinates” or for “being by

nature a corporal and not changing with the change of costume.” What was

more, a stigma fell upon those officers who had made what were deemed

“improper” marriages with women “without fortune.”76

Nonetheless, if many of the attributes soon to characterize Napoleon’s

officer corps already described the army’s commanding personnel under

the Directory, the process of professionalization remained somewhat ten-

tative. It has recently been observed, for example, that the Convention’s

efforts in 1794–95 to institutionalize “impersonal” criteria for the se-

lection of generals were at times directly contravened by unjustified

appointments that fostered factionalism, brought civilian supremacy into

74 Bertaud,
The Army of the French Revolution
, p. 280.

75 Ibid., pp. 283–84.

76 Ibid., pp. 284–85.

240

Reinterpreting the French Revolution

contempt, and undermined professionalism. But the larger point here is

that the Directory’s growing dependence upon military success for its very

legitimacy – a deadly fruit of its own overextended foreign policy – tempted

it into the trap of currying favor among army commanders by authorizing

them to promote through the ranks whomever they pleased. This could

only have the effect of encouraging clientage and militating against recent

decrees that required greater experience and technical proficiency in officer

ranks.77

In similar fashion, the professionalization of the rank-and-file soldiery

continued along a path marked by a host of pitfalls. Through much of

the Revolution, it is true, the infantryman could claim the right to be

judged by his professional peers and was no longer subjected to degrad-

ing punishments meted out by an authoritarian organization. In addition,

reformed recruitment procedures made for less discrimination in the ranks

and gradually produced a fighting force more representative of the nation.

Equally important were the tangible amenities, instruction, compensation,

and provisions for the future that came to be associated with military

service. The government, for instance, tried to resolve issues of pay and

supply so as ensure that the recruit could realistically expect the logisti-

cal support he required – support taking the form of adequate food and

housing, of serviceable weapons and abundant ammunition, of care when

he was wounded, of pensions for his widow and children if he were to

be killed.78 The common soldier, one expert has gone so far as to assert,

“became an image of the technicians of war, the NCOs and officers who

commanded them.”79 As potentially “enlightened” citizens of the Republic

performing a supremely patriotic and honorable task, the soldiers in the

camps were to be accorded a professional status and self-respect denied to

their forerunners of the ancien régime.

Yet, as we would expect, here too professionalization had its limits.

For one thing, the infantryman’s right to be “judged by his peers” and

(in a more general sense) to assume any terms of equality between him-

self and his officers was ultimately overridden by the tendency toward

hierarchy, subordination, and the specialization of roles within the army –

which, to be fair, could itself be seen as indicating “professionalism” in an-

other sense. More to the point is Alan Forrest’s allusion to “financial crises

which left the army denuded of funds.”80 More than any other factor, the

77 Howard G. Brown has recently enlarged upon all these issues in
War, Revolution, and the
Bureaucratic State: Politics and Army Administration in France, 1791–1799
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

78 Forrest,
The Soldiers of the French Revolution
, pp. 192–93. See also, once again, Woloch,
The French Veteran from the Revolution to the Restoration
, passim.

79 Bertaud,
The Army of the French Revolution
, p. 272.

80 Forrest,
The Soldiers of the French Revolution
, p. 193.

The second attempt to stabilize the Revolution

241

government’s chronic fiscal difficulties crippled its ability to equip, instruct,

and care adequately for its soldiers and to ensure decent pensions to their

dependents and/or survivors.

We have had several occasions to describe the increasing subservience of