Citizen soldiers and the key to the Bastille
By: Julia Osman (assistant professor, Department of History, Mississippi State University, USA)
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2015
Place of publication: Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire
Language: eng
Number of pages: 204
ISBN-13: 9781137486233
Subjects: History; Militia; Soldiers; Civil-military relations; Influence; Causes; Military policy; Enlightenment; Military History; HISTORY / Europe / France; HISTORY / Military / General; HISTORY / North America; HISTORY / Revolutionary; HISTORY / Modern / 18th Century; France. Armee; France
Description: "The French army experienced rapid and dramatic change from the 1750s to 1789--and it took the rest of the country with it. Wracked from defeat in the Seven Years' War, where AmerIndian warriors and rugged Canadian militiamen had shown the French army its weaknesses, French officers and philosophers set to work imagining and forging a new kind of army in France: a citizen army, the likes of which had not been seen since the glory days of ancient Greece and Rome. These writers found encouragement for their ideas in the home-grown patriots of the American Revolution and resistance from those who relied on tradition and well-ingrained privilege. By 1789, French officers would declare their citizen army realized, but in the process they would spark a Revolution they could not control"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 161-200) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: The Key; title: 1. The King's Army; title: 2. Defeat in New France; title: 3. Soldiers into Citizens; title: 4. A Citizen Army in America; title: 5. Aristocratic Rupture; title: 6. A Dream Deferred; title: Conclusion: Guidons Burning.