Reinterpreting the French Revolution: A global-historical perspective (59 page)

soldiers to their officers in the late 1790s as indicative of rising profession-

alism in the army. Yet, especially in light of what was so soon to come, this

subservience can just as easily be cited as betokening (along with other de-

velopments) the somewhat broader phenomenon of
militarization
in army

and society. Another way of putting this would be to say that the specif-

ically martial values that lay at the heart of the vocation of fighting men

helped to inspire generals like Bonaparte and Hoche and Jourdan to extend

their domination over their inferiors in the army to French civilians in the

larger society as well.

Close attention to the issue of military justice reveals something of this

process as it concerned the generals’ growing domination of affairs within

the armies. It appears that, from 1795 on, judicial procedure in the army

came ever more under the generals’ control. The Convention enacted a new

law addressing this question on 18 September 1795. Heretofore, the courts

martial had been composed of civilian judges, with juries made up half of

military men and half of civilians; henceforth there were to be “councils”

made up exclusively of military men, who would not need to show any

special judicial competence. At least these councils or “courts” retained a

vestige of democracy in that their military contingents consisted of three

common soldiers along with three NCOs and three commissioned officers.

In November 1796, however, even this changed. The courts or “councils”

established and regulated earlier were replaced by permanent “councils” set

up within each division of the army. These were to consist almost wholly of

officers, though the division commanders were supposed to add one NCO

to their ranks. Nor was this all. Each commander was entitled to change his

council’s membership however he saw fit, “in the interests of the service.”

The upshot of all this, plainly, was that soldiers were to be subordinated

ever more strictly to their generals.81 Through these and other measures,

the generals came to dominate deliberations in the camps and from this

reinforced position of influence could nominate whomever they pleased

to inferior posts and so enlarge their personal following in the separate

armies.

That the generals also came to wield a broader influence in French soci-

ety derived in part from the state’s expanding manpower needs and the new,

permanently institutionalized conscription to which those needs eventually

gave rise. Even specialists writing in a republican tradition have not glossed

over the fact that the army lost its mass “democratic” basis under the late

81 Bertaud,
The Army of the French Revolution
, pp. 328–31.

242

Reinterpreting the French Revolution

Convention and early Directory. This resulted in some measure, of course,

from losses sustained on the battlefield, but even more it reflected the en-

demic problems of military desertion, draft dodging, and soldiers’ refusals

to return to the ranks upon the expiration of furloughs and “hardship”

leaves. As late as August 1794 the government had estimated that 732,474

soldiers were serving under the colors; by 1796 and 1797, however, that

number had shrunk to less than 400,000. The manpower requisition origi-

nating in the famous levies of 1793 continued to operate perfunctorily, but

“it must be admitted that its yield was limited.” Bertaud’s figures suggest

attrition rates in the battalions and demibrigades rising from 4 percent

in the Year II to 8 percent by 1796 and 1797. For this, he has conceded,

“the scourge of desertion was mainly responsible.”82 Intriguingly, the pat-

tern of geographical recruitment to the army during these lean years rather

closely paralleled that of recruitment to the central bureaucracy: the north-

eastern departments and the Parisian basin were disproportionately repre-

sented. French patriotic sentiment – and the heavy hand of the government

at Paris – still counted for something. But the overriding challenge for the

military (and, thus, for those managing France’s foreign policy) remained:

how to counter the insidious plagues of draft dodging and desertion?83

The answer eventually came with the celebrated “Jourdan Law” of

September 1798, the foundation stone of modern state conscription in

war-prone France. Under this law, Woloch has explained:

men between the ages of 20 and 25 would thereafter be subject to conscription,

but would actually be called to service by legislative decree only as needed. Each

annual birth cohort formed a “class” of
conscripts
(a new term designating young men who became subject to conscription in a particular year rather than those

actually inducted). Mobilization would begin with the class of 20-year-olds, and

would move forward as needed. If they were not called by the end of their 25th

year, conscripts would be permanently discharged from the obligation.84

Insofar as the Jourdan Law intended to deny conscripts actually called to

the colors the old option of hiring replacements, it seemed to exemplify

the “social leveling” so frequently imposed by state-security needs in the

Revolution.

The government, which, as we know, was about to plunge into the

vast War of the Second Coalition, wasted no time in invoking this

formidable new instrument to bring its armed forces back up to size.

Before September’s end, the authorities called up the entire first “class”

of twenty-year-olds, ostensibly for a maximum of five years’ service, and

82 Ibid., esp. pp. 272–73, 275.

83 This issue is thoroughly discussed in Forrest,
Conscripts and Deserters: The Army and
French Society during the Revolution and Empire
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

84 Woloch,
The New Regime
, p. 390.

The second attempt to stabilize the Revolution

243

conscription became the key priority for officials – and the most agitated

topic of conversation – all over France. But, as experts on the period have

been quick to remark, the fact that the Directors soon had to ask the leg-

islature to mobilize men as needed from the “classes” of twenty-one- and

twenty-two-year-olds and by June 1799 to call
all
young men in those cat-

egories to the colors shows how bitter and deep-seated was the opposition

to conscription in many departments. Young Frenchmen in many regions

found the notion of military service repugnant, and – significantly – their

families, always needful of their labor on the land, especially at harvesttime,

tended to back them strongly.85 A law of 17 April 1799 attempted to

mitigate the societal impact of institutionalized conscription. It permitted

“conscripts” to choose (and possibly pay?) volunteers to replace them in

advance or to draw lots among themselves; those drawing in bad luck could

also purchase replacements. However this act may have militated against

the “egalitarian” purposes of the
loi Jourdan
, the main thrust of military

legislation in 1798–99 was, it seems, “toward a militarization of society

as desired by career soldiers.”86 We may question, however, whether this

militarization was an asset or a threat to a political regime too weak to

enforce its original legislation on the crucial matter of military requisitions.

But militarization challenged the government most directly when it

took the form of insubordinate generals. In this connection, we should

underscore the critical importance of the civilian commissioners to the

armies. They were only too obviously a bridle to politically ambitious

militaires
; hence the insistence with which generals like Bonaparte and

Hoche demanded their suppression. That suppression eventually came in

December 1796. It was an action bound to have major consequences. From

this time forward, the men in the ranks would be subjected entirely to the

authority of the generals; and the latter would be largely free to pillage

conquered lands as they saw fit.87 Unsurprisingly, the civilian authori-

ties later revived the
commissaires auxarmées
in a desperate attempt to

restore their control over the armies’ commanders. But, in the wake of the

coup of 18 June 1799, the Directory was forced once again to suppress the

commissaires
. The government thus lost perhaps the only means of reining

in the generals, whose increasingly blatant independence in military, ad-

ministrative, and even diplomatic affairs spoke directly to the weaknesses

of a revolutionary government awash in warfare.

Some political regimes “awash in warfare” manage to survive. In fact,

they may even draw renewed strength from the (frequently interrelated)

developments of heightened military professionalism and militarization of

society as a whole. But the Directory, we know, did not survive. It therefore

85 Ibid., pp. 390–91.

86 Bertaud,
The Army of the French Revolution
, p. 344.

87 Ibid., pp. 328–31.

244

Reinterpreting the French Revolution

falls to us now to reconsider the evolution of politics in France during the

final years of the Revolution and to reassess the relative significance of

internal and external factors in preparing the way for General Bonaparte’s

seizure of state power in November 1799.

p o l i t i c s , w a r , a n d d i s c r e d i t e d g o v e r n a n c e

On the morrow of the coup that brought Bonaparte to power in November

1799, co-conspirator Joseph Fouché averred that the late government had

been “too weak to uphold the glory of the Republic against external enemies

and to guarantee citizens’ rights against the domestic factions.”88 Fouché’s

judgment, however colored by self-interest, does speak to a larger fact: that

the Directory, like all the regimes preceding it in eighteenth-century France,

succumbed to a conjunction of foreign and domestic crises. Historians of

recent vintage have tended to stress the Directory’s internal weaknesses.

They have, in the first instance, pointed to flaws in the “Constitution of the

Year III” that made the government founded upon it problematic from the

start, but have wisely followed this up with a deeper analysis of contradic-

tions in the political culture and society of those years. Yet any explanation

of the Directory’s collapse is likely to be incomplete if it fails to place

all of these undeniably relevant factors in a larger context of geopolitics.

War, we shall argue, aggravated all of the constitutional and sociocultural

weaknesses of the regime of 1795–99, sapped its finances, and ensured that

it would ultimately be discredited in the eyes of the politically attuned

“notables.”

It is fair enough to commence with the actual constitutional arrange-

ments of 1795–99 and the problems in day-to-day governance that, to

some degree, stemmed from those arrangements. The Constitution drawn

up for France by the Thermidorians apportioned power between a leg-

islature (now to be bicameral) and a five-man Directory. The Council of

Five Hundred (all of whose members had to be at least thirty years old)

would propose laws. The Council of “Elders” or “Ancients” (consisting

of 250 deputies aged forty or above) would approve or reject laws pro-

posed by the Five Hundred. Executive power would lie in the five-man

Directory. The original Directors were chosen by the Elders from a list of

ten candidates for each post prepared by the Five Hundred. One Director

was to retire each year, and he would be ineligible for reappointment for

five years. Moreover, the Directors were forbidden, without legislative

sanction, to position troops within 60 kilometers of the assemblies. Hence,

the risk of undue pressure being exerted by the executive upon the legis-

lature would supposedly be curbed. Yet the Directors would control the

daily labors of the ministers and the officialdom of government, and were

88 Cited in Lyons,
France under the Directory
, p. 233.

The second attempt to stabilize the Revolution

245

to be represented in the local departments and cantons by
commissaires

overseeing the application of laws by elected administrators at those levels.

(The Directors also appointed
commissaires
to the law courts and – inter-

mittently – to the armies.) Finally, all elected officials, from the national

deputies to local administrators, were to be chosen during a ten-day cycle

of voting in late March and early April. The electoral system of 1795–99 re-

called that instituted earlier in the Revolution by the Constituent Assembly

in that it was “two-tiered” and indirect, allowing a much broader adult male

franchise at the primary stage than at the secondary stage.89

Whether or not these arrangements were seriously flawed has been vig-

orously debated by historians. Back in the 1930s, Albert Goodwin stoutly

argued for their essential viability.90 While some subsequent scholars have

concurred in this judgment, others have not been so sure. Martyn Lyons,