The Army of the Republic

The Jacobin dictatorship had been an unstable blend of exalted patriotism, resolute political leadership, ideological fanaticism, and populist initiatives. The rhetoric and symbolism of democracy constituted a new civic pedagogy, matched by bold egalitarian policies. The army was a primary focal point of this democratic impetus. In 1790 the National Assembly had opted for a small military of long-term professionals. One-year volunteers bolstered the line army after the outbreak of war, and in March 1793 the Convention called for an additional 300,000 soldiers, with quotas to be provided by each département. Finally, in August 1793 it decreed the lévee en masse—a “requisition” of all able-bodied, unmarried men between the ages of 18 and 25. Despite massive draft evasion and desertion, within a year almost three-quarters of a million men were under arms, the citizen-soldiers merged with line-army troops in new units called demibrigades. This huge popular mobilization reinforced the Revolution’s militant spirit. The citizen-soldiers risking their lives at the front had to be supported by any and all means back home, including forced loans on the rich and punitive vigilance against those suspected of disloyalty.

Within the constraints of military discipline, the army became a model of democratic practice. Both noncommissioned and commissioned officers were chosen by a combination of election and appointment, in which seniority received some consideration, but demonstrated talent on the battlefield brought the most rapid promotion. The republic insisted that officers be respectful toward their men and share their privations. Jacobin military prosecutors enforced the laws against insubordination and desertion but took great pains to explain them to the soldiers and to make allowances for momentary weakness in deciding cases. Soldiers received revolutionary newspapers and sang revolutionary songs, exalting the citizen-soldier as the model sansculotte. Meanwhile, needy parents, wives, or dependents of soldiers at the front received subsidies, while common soldiers seriously wounded in action earned extremely generous veterans’ benefits.

The Revolution’s egalitarian promise never involved an assault on private property, but its concept of “social limitations” on property made it possible for the Convention to abolish all seigneurial dues without compensation, abolish slavery in the colonies (where slave rebellions had already achieved that result in practice), endorse the idea of progressive taxation, and temporarily regulate the economy in favour of consumers. In 1793–94 the Convention enacted an unprecedented national system of public assistance entitlements, with one program allocating small pensions to poor families with dependent children and another providing pensions to aged and indigent farm workers, artisans, and rural widows—the neediest of the needy. “We must put an end to the servitude of the most basic needs, the slavery of misery, that most hideous of inequalities,” declared Barère of the Committee of Public Safety. The Convention also implemented the Revolution’s long-standing commitment to primary education with a system of free public primary schooling for both boys and girls. The Lakanal Law of November 1794 authorized public schools in every commune with more than 1,000 inhabitants, the teachers to be selected by examination and paid fixed salaries by the government.