This book examines the creation of 'national armies' through compulsory military service in France and Prussia during the French Revolution and the Prussian Reform Period.

The French Revolution tried to establish military and political structures in which the armed forces and society would merge. In order to ensure that the army would never become a means of oppression against the people, the whole population should thus 'be' the army. Defeated by the enormous military potential that these new political settings had unchained in France, Prussia adapted the French innovations to its...