Citizen Soldiers and the Key to the Bastille

ISBN-13: 9781137486233 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 204 str.

Julia Osman

Opis

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.

Recenzje

"Osman reexamines the role of the French army of the Old Regime in the outbreak of the French Revolution. ... this work constitutes a great example of the benefits of combining cultural with military history. It definitely fulfils its promise to speak to "the value of using cultural methodology for military history, as well as how military institutions are fruitful sites for cultural analysis". ... it is also a valuable contribution to the renewed study of Atlantic world political culture." (Christine Haynes, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 88 (4), 2016)

Spis treści

Introduction: The Key 1. The King's Army 2. Defeat in New France 3. Soldiers into Citizens 4. A Citizen Army in America 5. Aristocratic Rupture 6. A Dream Deferred Conclusion: Guidons Burning Notes Bibliography

O autorze

Julia Osman is an Assistant Professor of French and military history at Mississippi State University, USA.