Citizens, Soldiers and National Armies: Military Service in France and Germany, 1789-1830 (War, History and Politics)

271 Pages·2007·1.4 MB·English

by  Thomas Hippler

Citizens, Soldiers and National
Armies
Compulsory military service implies a contradiction: conceived as an
element and a guarantee of the citizens’ active participation in politics, it
is at the same time an institution of social discipline that separates the cit-
izens from the civil society. This tension between citizenship and discip-
line thus poses concretely the problem of political liberty. While being
egalitarian in its principle, conscription concerns only the male parts of
the population. The exclusion of women echoes their exclusion from
political rights. Moreover, the universality of the obligation is in constant
tension with particular class-interests.
Rather than opposing a French model of republican conscription to a
Prussian militarism, this book tries to show how Prussia has replied dialec-
tically to the revolutionary institution of mass violence. The French
Revolution and the Prussian Reforms are thus conceived of as two
moments within a single process which is intrinsically transnational. The
book seeks to confront the philosophical problem of political liberty – as
it was formulated most prominently by Rousseau and Kant – to history and
relies on official sources, philosophical texts, as well as ego-documents,
which are subjective articulations of political modernity.
Thomas Hippleris a research associate in the Leverhulme Programme on
the Changing Character of War at Oxford University, and an Emmy-
Noether fellow of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German
Research Foundation).
War, history and politics series
Series Editor: Jeremy Black
Trade, Empire and British Foreign Policy, 1689–1815
Politics of a commercial state
Jeremy Black
Citizens, Soldiers and National Armies
Military service in France and Germany, 1789–1830
Thomas Hippler
Citizens, Soldiers and National
Armies
Military service in France and Germany,
1789–1830
Thomas Hippler
French edition first published 2006
by Presses Universitaires de France
English edition first published 2008
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library,2 007.
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© 2006 Presses Universitaires de France
© 2008 Thomas Hippler
This book was first published in French with the title Soldats et
Citoyens. Naissance du service militaire en France et en Prisse.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Hippler, Thomas, 1972–
Citizens, soldiers and national armies : military service in France
and Germany, 1789–1830/by Thomas Hippler.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Draft–France. 2. France–Armed Forces–Recruiting, enlistment,
etc. 3. France–History, Military–1789–1815. 4. France–History,
Military–19th century. 5. Draft–Germany–Prussia. 6. Prussia
(Germany)–Armed Forces–Recruiting, enlistment, etc. 7. Prussia
(Germany)–History, Military–18th century. 8. Prussia
(Germany)–History, Military–19th century. I. Title.
UB345.F8H56 2007
355.2(cid:1)2363094309034–dc22
2006101511
ISBN 0-203-08911-1 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-40979-9 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-40979-7 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-08911-1 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-08911-8 (ebk)
für Petra und Klaus

Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: citizenship and discipline 1
PART I
The French moment 11
1 State construction and recruitment policy in the ancien
régime 13
From feudal recruitment to touting 13
The militia (and how to escape from it) 18
The soldier and the state 23
2 The Enlightenment and military service 28
Virtue-politics 28
Rousseau and the military: a philosophy of civic practice 33
Citizen-soldiers 37
3 Popular arming and military service in the French Revolution 46
The formation of the National Guard 46
The 1789–90 debate on the ‘military constitution’ 53
Armed forces and volunteer levies in 1791–3 56
Citizenship or discipline? 62
Unifying the public force 69
4 The revolutionary state and the ‘nation in arms’ 77
Quatre-vingt-treize 78
‘Death is a reminder of equality’: the self-creation of the people 83
viii Contents
Abstraction and identification 89
Military experiences 97
Constructing a popular state 102
Transition: technologies of the state from France to Prussia 110
PART II
The Prussian moment 115
5 The military, society, and the state in old regime Prussia 117
State construction and military duties 117
The establishment of the canton system 121
Social implementation 126
Criticism of the Prussian military system 131
6 German idealism and military service 140
The challenge of revolutionary war to German culture 140
Interpreting the French Revolution 144
Kant’s ‘heroic humiliation’ 149
Fichte’s inner frontier 155
7 Conscription in the reformed Prussian state 163
Empowering the nation 163
The principles of the military reform 168
Creating a body politic 172
Principles of stratification 178
The path to national war 182
8 National war and conscription 190
Organizing an insurrection 190
Constitution and terror 196
Popular arming 204
Conscription 209
Conclusion 213
Notes 218
Bibliography 231
Index 253
Acknowledgements
The present book is the revised version of a PhD dissertation which I sub-
mitted in December 2002 to the Department of History and Civilization of
the European University Institute in Florence, under the title Citizenship
and Discipline: Popular Arming and Military Service in Revolutionary France and
Reform in Prussia. The Leverhulme Programme on ‘The Changing Charac-
ter of War’ at Oxford University gave me the opportunity to revise the
manuscript for publication. I would like to express my gratitude towards
Bo Stråth for his kindness, confidence, advice and encouragement. I am
also indebted to Étienne Balibar who encouraged me to work on
issuesthat are perpendicular to academic disciplines, in order to critically
think our historical present, as well as to Annie Crépin for her advice and
her criticism on earlier drafts of the manuscript. The discussions in Flo-
rence and Berlin with Peter Becker, Laurence Fontaine, Wolfgang
Hardtwig, and Peter Wagner also contributed greatly to the elaboration of
this work.
I would like to thank the following institutions for financial support:
the European University Institute in Florence, the German Academic
Exchange Service (DAAD), the German Historical Institute in Paris, the
Centre for Comparative History of Europe at the Free University in Berlin,
the École Normale Supérieure de Lettres et Sciences Humaines in Lyon,
the University of California at Berkeley, Oxford University and the Emmy-
Noether Programme of the German Research Foundation (DFG). The
library of the European University Institute and its interlibrary loan
service have also been of invaluable help, thanks to Serge Noiret and Mar-
cello Scocci. Thanks furthermore to Elizabeth Stone for her careful
reading of the manuscript.
Friends and colleagues provided help, suggestions, comments, and crit-
icisms, thus contributing to this work. My deepest thanks to Jérémie
Barthas, Axel Berger, Ralph Blessing, Chiara Bottici, Benoît Challand,
Xavier Châtel, Sophie Collombet, Alexandra Couto, Augusta Dimou, Axel
Dopjans, Isik Gurleyen, Alix Héricord, Claudia Jansen, Alois Loeßl, Élise
Marrou, Valérie Mathevon, Frédéric Mérand, Roberto Nigro, Charlotte
Nordmann, Germinal Pinalie, Hélène Quiniou, Julie Ringelheim,