Levée en masse
국민총동원령
A French term for a policy of mass national conscription, often in the face of invasion, and for the decree that the National Convention adopted on 23 August 1793 during the French Revolutionary Wars. It denotes a short-term requisition of all able-bodied men to defend the nation, and unlike an uprising against one's own government it entails organized resistance against an invader. The concept originated in France and was later applied to other cases of mass conscription.
In depth
Immediate context
On 24 February 1793 the National Convention decreed a levy of about 300,000 men by departmental quota. In March 1793 France was at war with Austria, Prussia, Spain, Britain, Piedmont and the United Provinces, and by mid-1793 the army numbered about 645,000. The military situation deteriorated, with Mainz falling on 23 July 1793, and recruitment in the conservative Vendée fed discontent that erupted into civil war on 11 March 1793. From spring 1793 the idea of a mass levy ran through the sections, popular societies and the Convention, and on 16 August a deputation told the Convention the people no longer wanted a war of tactics.
The decree of 23 August 1793
The decree was penned by Barère in conjunction with Lazare Carnot and enacted by the National Convention. It opened: "From this moment until such time as its enemies shall have been driven from the soil of the Republic, all Frenchmen are in permanent requisition for the services of the armies." Unmarried able-bodied men aged 18 to 25 (in the French account bachelors and widowers without children) were requisitioned with immediate effect for military service, and no one could obtain a substitute.
Division of labour
The decree assigned a division of labour: "The young men shall fight; the married men shall forge arms and transport provisions; the women shall make tents and clothes and shall serve in the hospitals; the children shall turn old linen into lint; the old men shall betake themselves to the public squares in order to arouse the courage of the warriors and preach hatred of kings and the unity of the Republic."
Whole-economy mobilization and military significance
Beyond military service the whole nation was mobilized: national buildings became barracks, public places armament workshops, the soil of cellars was washed to extract saltpeter, and arms, saddle horses and draught horses were requisitioned. The Committee of Public Safety was charged with establishing arms manufacture, with 50,000,000 livres from the assignat "Fund of the Three Keys" and the central establishment at Paris placed at its disposal; representatives of the people received corresponding authority. The levy expanded the French Revolutionary Army (1792–1804), which by the mid-1790s was arguably the most powerful force, its revolutionary fervour, poor equipment and great numbers joined to Carnot's "amalgamation" of volunteers and former royal-army veterans in the same regiment; on the proclamation of the Empire in 1804 it became the Imperial Army.
Popular resistance
The levy provoked strong peasant discontent and riots, especially in western France, and is described as the trigger of the Vendée war. Insurrections broke out in March 1793 in Vendée, Loire-Atlantique, Maine-et-Loire, Morbihan and Deux-Sèvres, spreading more partially in Mayenne, Ille-et-Vilaine, Côtes-du-Nord, Finistère and Sarthe; republicans subdued the insurgents north of the Loire but failed south of the river. The levy was not popular, and desertion and evasion were high, yet the English account holds the effort was sufficient to turn the tide of the war, with no further conscription needed until 1797.
Interpretation and afterlife
Conceptually, the new political rights given to the mass of the French people created new obligations to the state; the levy was created and understood as a means to defend the nation by the nation, and it heralded the age of total war, displacing the restricted "cabinet wars" (1715–1792) of professional armies. The concept of mass conscription was kept in place during the Napoleonic Wars, and the term is also applied to other historical examples of mass conscription. The French account says the decree inspired the law on national service until its abolition in 1997, and notes Hitler's proclamation of a levée en masse in early January 1945.
A double-sided assessment
Within its own terms the decree served the Republic's defence, and working-class soldiers formed the core of the revolutionary armies; at the same time it was carried out by the Committee of Public Safety as one of the policies of the Terror. The Committee assigned representatives on mission to keep watch on the generals; some generals deserted, others were removed or executed, and aristocratic officers who remained were accused of monarchist sympathies and either executed or forced into exile. The English account offers reconstructions such as about 800,000 available for active service in 1794 and, from amnesty claims, 175,000 deserters reported in 1800.