Levee en Masse

4 Key excerpts on "Levee en Masse"

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  The Citizen-Soldier in War and Peace

  An Introduction to the History and Evolution of Citizen Armies and Militias

  • James Biser Whisker, John R. Coe(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Universal Publishers

    (Publisher)

  They fight only in their home areas, along ill-defined battle lines. It is an uprising of all the people, or of a significant portion thereof. Usually, it is called forth by a general call to resist the enemy, rather than a muster call; or it may simply issue forth spontaneously. It never fights abroad. Its weapons are whatever are available from among the people. While it most frequently occurs immediately after the local area is attacked, the term might apply to a popular uprising that occurs after an area is occupied. 38 Levée en masse is, when translated into English, essentially “mass uprising” or “mass mobilization.” Its use as a military tactic has been in use for an untold number of centuries, though typically as an occasional measure of last resort. One example was Baldwin IV (died 1174) “The Leper” whose defense of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, one of the crusader states, was accomplished by using all available manpower. The term levée en masse denotes a short-term requisition of all able-bodied men to defend the nation and its rise as a military tactic may be viewed in connection with the political events of the sovereignty employing this tactic. 39 Wikipedia says that Levée en masse is a French term used for a policy of mass national conscription, often in the face of invasion. The concept originated during the French Revolutionary Wars, particularly for the period following 16 August 1793, when able-bodied men aged 18 to 25 were conscripted. It formed an integral part of the creation of national identity, making it distinct from forms of conscription which had existed before this date

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  Conscription in the Napoleonic Era

  A Revolution in Military Affairs?

  • Donald Stoker, Frederick C. Schneid, Harold D. Blanton, Donald Stoker, Frederick C. Schneid, Harold D. Blanton(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The levée en masse went beyond this by theoretically requisitioning the entire nation into the war effort. Introduced by a petition from the radical Jacobin Clubs, this highly politicized legislation was announced with great fanfare and revolutionary fervor. Danton proclaimed, “From this moment and until all enemies are driven from the territory of the republic all persons are placed in permanent requisition for the service of the armies.” 12 What this “permanent requisition” really proposed was that young men would go off to war while married men would labor for war-related industries, and women would contribute to the war effort by making bandages and clothing and serving in hospitals. Even the elderly and children did their patriotic duty; the former by haranguing the populace to greater patriotic efforts in public squares while the latter helped with menial tasks such as shredding linen for military usage. While the drastic measures taken in 1793 eventually led to the raising of French armies of nearly 800,000, the process was not without great difficulties, nor was it as effective as its enthusiastic supporters had promised. The levies of the Revolution were fraught with problems and inefficiencies, including mass desertions and the sparking of a bloody civil war in the Vendée. The large numbers raised were soon found to be unsustainable for the French Republic. By the end of 1794, the numbers of this mass army declined to fewer than 490,000, and finally eroded to fewer than 400,000 by the signing of the Treaty of Campo-Formio in October 1797, formally ending the wars of the First Coalition. Enshrined as part of the hagiography of the Revolution, the levée en masse was hailed by contemporary revolutionaries and subsequent French patriots alike as having saved the Republic. Yet, it must be remembered that these mass-conscripted armies lost almost as many battles as they won

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  The Bayonets Of The Republic

  Motivation And Tactics In The Army Of Revolutionary France, 1791-94

  • John A Lynn(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  25 Ultimately, it made the army a people's army fighting a people's war.

  Just how much the levée en masse reflected the population of France is shown by Bertaud's research. Eighty-four percent of the levy came from the rural villages and 16 percent from towns and cities—the same breakdown of rural-urban population that typified France as a whole. In age, 87 percent were between eighteen and twenty-five, as stipulated in the legislation, and in height 65 percent of those requisitioned as infantrymen measured 1.67 m. or less. The levy was socially representative of the population from which it was drawn. Although the records are sparse, Bertaud's samples indicate that the middle classes, for example, were now tapped by the levy in roughly the same percentages as their civilian numbers: "In certain departments," he writes, "holy equality was respected. No more rich, no more poor; the blood of the indigent was as pure as that of man at ease."

  The Emergence of a United Army

  The flow of new levies into the armies of revolutionary France posed a serious problem. Levies differed considerably one from the other, yet the French had to find a way of welding these disparate elements into a single united force. For cavalry and artillery regiments, this was a fairly straightforward task of feeding new recruits into established units. Volunteers formed few independent cavalry squadrons, and, although a considerable number of volunteer artillery companies came to the front, they generally served the light cannon attached to infantry battalions and did not merge with the line artillery. The real question was posed by the infantry, which swelled to unprecedented proportions. Here the French employed three methods of integrating new levies; ad hoc brigading, incorporation, and amalgamation. The Nord provides an excellent case study in all three procedures. This process took over three years, but by the summer of 1794 a new French army was emerging from the crucible of crisis.

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  The Road to Dien Bien Phu

  A History of the First War for Vietnam

  • Christopher Goscha(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  In both cases, the French did this through the “mass mobilization” or the “levying” of the population, widely known as the levée en masse. Of course, French leaders and propagandists then (and others after them) cast this call-to-arms as a spontaneous event, the manifestation of deep-seated nationalism exemplified by the heroic citizen-soldier coming to the nation’s defense. The victory of the French people’s army over the invading Prussians at Valmy in 1792 is an obvious favorite. That nationalism was an important factor moving people to action, there can be no doubt. But the French levée en masse was also the result of a calculated political decision to impose conscription in order to provide the army with the people, resources, and talents it needed to carry on. 11 We can be confident that Vietnamese communists meeting in early 1950 grasped what the leaders of the French Revolution and Napoleon’s Grande Arm é e had discovered in the 1790s, namely that “the people” do not always rise up when foreign armies approach. They had to be moved. 12 This is why, even before convening the 1950 plenum, Vietnamese communists had already decided to do what so many others had done before them to create a “people’s army”—they imposed the draft. In a landmark piece of legislation, on 4 November 1949 Ho Chi Minh decreed obligatory military service for all Vietnamese men aged between eighteen and forty-five years of age. Working via the resistance administration, the Lien Viet national front and its local associations, and the army’s hierarchy, the government, guided by the Communist Party, required officials to issue military cards to all eligible males. It was essential “to make an inventory of the national resistance’s resources in men and make young men aware of the honor bestowed on them to take part in the struggle for the nation.” Those called up were expected to report for duty or risk legal prosecution

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