In 1789 Louis XVI was forced to convene a three-tiered council, which had not met for centuries, to formulate a new tax system, and they made constitutional demands on him. Throughout the 18th century, the French crown was in constant conquest, leaving the treasury overwhelmed and the fiscal system crumbling, while the cost of French naval and army support for north American colonists in the war against Britain was the last straw that crushed the camel's camel. Except for the steppe peoples who rely on robbery to feed the war, wars are always costly, and some countries have gone bankrupt because of the burden of military expenditure, and some have changed dynasties because of this. However, the threat of bankruptcy caused by war never spawned new administrative theories. But the three-tiered council convened by Louis XVI did so. The council of the three levels quickly took a series of decisions, first of all, the representatives of the nobles, the monks and the commoners, one person and one vote, regardless of their social status; then all the delegates should meet together; and finally, the assembly would remain open until the king entrusted the rights to a democratic constitution. Louis XVI foolishly tried to intimidate by force the tertiary council renamed the National Convention, which resulted in riots in the city of Eight Paris, and even some troops of the army, especially the French Guard, joined the ranks of the rioters. The king and the revolution compromised for some time and tried to flee France, but failed and were suspended from the executive. At the same time, the National Convention warned France's neighbours, especially Austria and Prussia, that if they continued to harbour French fugitives from the republics that were forming counter-revolutionary armies, they would be regarded as a war provocation against France. In April 1792, the National Convention declared war on Austria, and Prussia and Russia soon joined the regiment, side with Austria; in July 1792, they began to invade France. In 1793, Britain also went to war in support of Austria.
Capture of the Bastille
The wars of the French Revolution were protracted, and Napoleon Bonaparte's election as first consul in 1799 was endless until 1815. The French declared in May 1790 that they would never wage a war of conquest, and they did start the war in self-defense, but it soon evolved into the most protracted and extensive offensive war in European history. The French initially intended to bring revolution and freedom to neighboring monarchies, but later built a military machine that fought non-stop to proclaim national prestige. By 1812, Napoleon's army was a million-strong division, spread across the continent from Spain to Russia, and his only goal in controlling the economy and imperial administration was to support the fighting armies. All the great powers on the European continent except Russia had been defeated by France on their own soil, the soldiers of the small countries were directly incorporated into the French army, and healthy men everywhere were either already in service or waiting in fear to be recruited. In just 20 years, European society, which had no choice but to become soldiers, was completely militarized from top to bottom. Until then, the variety and prominence of the military career were known only to a few soldiers; those who became soldiers may be willing, but many more people are helpless; but within a generation, the military career has become a common experience. How is this done?
French army during the French Revolution
The French did not start with the "all the people as soldiers", and the ideals they wanted to realize when they launched the Revolution were anti-force, rational, and law-oriented. To defend the forces of reason and the just laws, however, the revolutionary people must take up arms; here the just laws make laws that abolish the feudal privileges of the aristocratic class, whose privileged positions were won by their ancestors as samurai, even if the family lineage of some nobles was purely fabricated. Fifteen years ago, the North American colonists did the same; but they took advantage of ready-made military organizations, because they already had militias defending their homeland against Indian and French attacks, and the French had to create their own armies from scratch. The royal army was politically unreliable, and many experienced officers went into exile to protest the Revolution's insults to the king. Enthusiastic volunteers formed the National Guard to protect the revolutionary apparatus from the remaining royalist forces; but in 1789-1791 the legislators, like the legislators of the ancient Greek city-states, sought to make it clear that only those in charge, meaning those who had property, had the right to carry weapons. Thus, the original National Guard was neither sufficiently numerous nor had too many family-loving bourgeois members to be an effective military force. When the threat was confined to the country, the problem was not great; the streets could be instantly ad hoc gathering against the army loyal to the king. But after July 1792, the threat turned into a foreign invasion, and France was in dire need of a strong and effective army. By this time, the ideal of anti-force in 1789 had been forgotten; the "right to bear arms" under the U.S. Constitution was widely accepted, possession of weapons was seen as a guarantee of civil liberties, and the requirement to have property in order to join the National Guard was hastily abolished (July 30). On July 12, a notice was issued calling for enlistment in the army, adding another 50,000 to the existing 150,000 regular troops. At the beginning of 1793, another 300,000 conscripts were recruited, and there were not enough volunteers to recruit, and on August 23 the National Mobilization Decree was promulgated, stipulating that all healthy men could be conscripted at any time; another order had been issued earlier requiring the combat brigades to mix the members of the regular army and the National Guard in a 1:2 ratio, and to pass on the help of regular army volunteers until they learned how to fight.
National Guard during the French Revolution
It's a whole new army. Discipline is enforced not by corporal punishment (although cold water is given to alcoholics), but by a court-martial consisting of soldiers and officers. Officers in the army, as in the National Guard, were elected; they were well paid compared to revolutionary volunteers. Due to the tension of the war, the practice of electing officers was soon abolished (1794) and the Disciplinary Committee ceased to be active (1795); but by then the reform of the army had become so deeply textured that it had become irreversible, and these subsequent measures had no impact on the overall situation at all. The initial enthusiasm of decent people to volunteer for the army may have diminished, but the nature of the officer corps is beyond recognition in the past. In 1789, more than 90% of officers were aristocrats (it should be admitted that they were mostly minor nobles, and the only difference from the lower social classes was that they had family crests), but by 1794, the proportion of nobles in officers was only 3%. The vacated seats were filled by civilians, but more often by officers below the rank of lieutenant who had not held a letter of appointment in the royal army in the past, and the Revolution did provide them with "careers where they could make the most of their talents". Of Napoleon's 26 marshals, Augereau, Lefebvre, Neg and Soult were all sergeants before 1789. Even more unexpectedly, Victor was originally a member of the military band, and Jourdan, Oidinot and Brenadotte were just soldiers (Bernadotte eventually became king of Sweden). This group of men was brilliant, but had no chance of exercising in the old army; until 1782, it was stipulated that the rank of second lieutenant or above could only be awarded to those who were nobles of great-grandfather's generation. These civilian-born generals were trained in actual combat, and the social emancipation of 1789 greatly enhanced their self-confidence, which combined made them outstanding generals.
Marshal Ney
Marshal Sirte
However, among Napoleon's marshals were officers above the rank of second lieutenant who had been appointed before 1789. Marmont, like Napoleon, was a graduate of the Metz Artillery School founded by Louis XIV, and Grouchy served in the "Scottish Guard" (which was originally the Guard of the Bourbon court). He wanted to "make the most of his talents" and wisely include former royal officers who were willing to serve the revolution, even those who had left France and emigrated abroad and then changed their minds. By 1796, when Napoleon's sword was pointed at the Territory of The Habsburg Empire in Italy, the army of the French Republic had become a mixture in the broadest sense; not only members of the regular army and the National Guard of the past, but also officers from many other backgrounds; they fought together for the new France, but also eagerly awaited the benefits of their military careers. Promotions were one of them, and the other was looting; and in the next 20 years, the opportunities for promotion and looting were innumerable. At the same time, the army urgently needs to find a solution to the problem of the long-term battle with muskets and bayonets, and to inject the passion and vitality of the people to overthrow the monarchy into the contest between the revolutionary forces and the old system on the battlefield.
Modern military fans play as French infantrymen from the French Revolution
There is a way to get there. The Royal Army was also unhappy with the recent Seven Years' War and the War of the Austrian Succession, and many noble officers, especially the Comte de Guibert, called for tactical reforms. Gibber, like many of his contemporaries, admired the achievements of Philip the Great of Prussia; Frederick's regular army was small but very lean, and many countries much larger than Prussia were beaten to death. Frederick's strict observance of reason for combat, without any compromise, corresponds precisely to the spirit of the times," the "Age of Enlightenment, or The Age of Reason, has proposed that all organs of government should be in accord with the spirit and aspirations of the people." Gebel, the archetypal aristocratic rationalist, would become a handy instrument of state power. Like many of his contemporaries, he advocated abandoning the tactics of the past, relying on the old-fashioned formation of musketeers in a row, expecting them to destroy the enemy's resistance as soon as they opened fire; he called for a switch to the method of large troop movements, concentrating on a decisive blow to the enemy. In what has been called the "column of columns" by 1789, Guibert and his officers had the upper hand; but neither of them could put their views into practice, for in that case they would have to agree to let the soldiers learn to be masters of the country while serving the country better. Gibber still supports authoritarian regimes in his bones. He is intellectually inclined to the idea of a citizen-warrior, but his social prejudice is that he cannot accept such a reality.
Prussian army under Frederick the Great
The Great Revolution resolved this contradiction. Almost overnight, an army of citizens came to the fore, finding solutions to the problems it had encountered with the remnants of the old system in fighting on the battlefield from the debates within the old system on tactics. The Revolutionary Armies fought in dense columns supported by a large number of mobile artillery fire; one theory is that they did so because the citizens-fighters had no real military training, so the commanders had no choice but to organize them. Later, it began to be realized that this view did not go far enough: the tactical change was already on the horizon, and the officers of the revolutionary army were only actively promoting the early implementation of the change. But that still doesn't explain why this change has worked. Since the 16th century, a series of forts equipped with cannons built by various countries on national borders have been hindering the movement of armies and prolonging battles, but in the hands of generals Dumouriez, Joordan and Hoche, these difficulties have disappeared like magic. The French army conquered the border areas of Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy, ignoring the forts that had no hope of fleeing and still had the strength of the First World War, and every encounter with the Austrian or Prussian army was a defeat. The success of the French army was due in part to what came to be known as the "Fifth Column", for example, many Dutch people warmly welcomed the Revolution, and there were many sympathizers of the Revolution in northern Italy. Another reason was the large number of revolutionary soldiers and their unusual logistics; forts could block supply lines for the enemy, but when the enemy took advantage of the surrounding countryside, the fortresses lost their usefulness.
Fortress in the late 18th and early 19th centuries
Above all, the success of the French army came from the high quality of the revolution itself. At least in the beginning, the soldiers of the revolutionary army were genuinely willing to join the army, and they were devoted to the establishment of a "rational" state (even if the nature of the state they built greatly worried many rationalists who had experienced the "age of reason"), and the commanders had outstanding personal qualities. Saying that they are untrained does not seem to be true. In 1793-1794, the new officer corps spent a great deal of effort to retrain veterans and newly recruited volunteers of the former Royal Army. In June 1793, two officials of the revolutionary government reported: "The soldiers, with their tireless enthusiasm, devoted themselves to training veterans and marveled at the fact that our volunteers were so uniform in formation. At the same time, the French artillery corps was already the holder of the European bull ear due to gribeauval's inventions and innovations, and many of the original officers and gunners were retained after the revolution. However, the enemy encountered by the French army on the battlefield was still clinging to the habit of absolute obedience and the rigid tactics that the French army had gotten rid of, so it was not a rival to the French army at all.
Austrian army during the Napoleonic Wars
By 1800, the Revolution had thwarted attempts by foreign enemies to destroy it, and at home it had been consolidated by converging on radicalism and turning conservative. The young Bonaparte led his army in repeated victories abroad, stood out among his peers, and dealt a fatal blow to domestic extremists in the Wuyue coup of November 1799. Political and military power naturally fell into his hands. From 1802 to 1803, he maintained a wary peace with the enemies of Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Britain, but then led his army on a journey again, beginning a 12-year blitzkrieg conquest, with an ever-increasing range of action: Austria in 1805 and 1809; Prussia in 1806; and finally russia in 1812, but that conquest ended in a crushing defeat. Only Spain could not conquer for a long time, and between 1809 and 1814, the French army encountered the elite troops of wellington's British Expeditionary Force, supported by guerrillas throughout Spain, and the British Royal Navy was constantly transporting military supplies (since the victory at Trafalgar in 1805, the British Royal Navy dominated the seas and no one could compete with them). Bonaparte's "Grand Army" was no longer the revolutionary army of its time, and although many officers and some soldiers remained after the grand war of 1793-1796, the army had become an instrument of state power and no longer served ideology. However, revolutionary qualities remained in the army, making It seem as if Napoleon's series of great victories—Austerlitz (1805), Jena (1806), and Wagtam (1809)—still seemed to be a continuation of the whirlwind of the revolutionary army. As a Prussian soldier who personally participated in the initial battle with the French Revolutionary Army and survived to witness the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Clausewitz witnessed the great devastation caused by the war, on the basis of which he proposed his theory that combining the will of the public with strategic objectives could bring "real war" close to "absolute war", and built his conviction that war was ultimately a political act.
Napoleon in Austerlitz
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