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[ This principle was at once adopted by the Jacobins. (Yung, ibid., 19, 22, 145. Speech by Dubois-Crancé at the session held Dec.12, 1789.) "Every citizen will become a soldier of the Constitution." No more casting lots nor substitution. "Each citizen must be a soldier and each soldier a citizen."—The first application of the principle is a call for 300,000 men (Feb. 26, 1793), then through a levy on the masses which brings 500,000 men under the flag, nominally volunteers, but conscripts in reality. (Baron Poisson, "l'Armée et la Garde Nationale,"III, 475.)]
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[ Taine wrote this in 1888, after the end of the second French Empire, after the transformation of Prussia into the Empire of Germany. Taine apparently had a premonition of the terrible wars of the 20th century, of Nazism, Communism and their death and concentration camps. (SR.)]
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[ Baron Poisson, "l'Armée et la Garde nationale," III., 475. (Summing up.) "Popular tradition has converted the volunteer of the Republic into a conventional personage which history cannot accept.. .. 1st. The first contingent of volunteers demanded of the country consisted of 97,000 men (1791). 60,000 enthusiasts responded to the call, enlisted for a year and fulfilled their engagement; but for no consideration would they remain longer. 2nd. Second call for volunteers in April 1792. Only mixed levies, partial, raised by money, most of them even without occupation, outcasts and unable to withstand the enemy. 3rd. 300,000 men recruited, which measure partly fails; the recruit can always get off by furnishing a substitute. 4th. Levy in mass of 500,000 men, called volunteers, but really conscripts.">[
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[ "Mémorial" (Speech by Napoleon before the Council of State). "I am inflexible on exemptions; they would be crimes; how relieve one's conscience of having caused one man to die in the place of another?"—"The conscription was an unprivileged militia: it was an eminently national institution and already far advanced in our customs; only mothers were still afflicted by it, while the time was coming when a girl would not have a man who had not paid his debt to his country.">[
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[ Law of Fructidor 8, year XIII, article 10.—Pelet de La Lozère, 229. (Speech by Napoleon, Council of State, May 29, 1804.)—Pelet adds: "The duration of the service was not fixed.... As a fact in itself, the man was exiled from his home for the rest of his life, regarding it as a desolating, permanent exile.... Entire sacrifice of existence.... An annual crop of young men torn from their families and sent to death."—Archives nationales, F7, 3014. (Reports of prefects, 1806.) After this date, and even from the beginning, there is extreme repugnance which is only overcome by severe means.. .. (Ardeche.) "If the state of the country were to be judged of by the results of the conscription one would have a poor idea of it."—(Ariège.) "At Brussac, district of Foix, four or five individuals arm themselves with stones and knives to help a conscript escape, arrested by the gendarmes.... A garrison was ordered to this commune."—At Massat, district of Saint-Girons, on a few brigades of gendarmes entering this commune to establish a garrison, in order to hasten the departure of refractory conscripts, they were stoned; a shot even was fired at this troop.... A garrison was placed in these hamlets as in the rest of the commune.—During the night of Frimaire 16-17 last, six strange men presented themselves before the prison of Saint-Girons and loudly demanded Gouazé, a deserter and condemned. On the jailor coming down they seized him and struck him down."—(Haute-Loire.) "'The flying column is under constant orders simultaneously against the refractory and disobedient among the classes of the years IX, X, XI, XII, and XIII, and against the laggards of that of year IV, of which 134 men yet remain to be supplied."—(Bouches-du-Rhône.) "50 deserter sailors and 84 deserters or conscripts of different classes have been arrested."—(Dordogne.) "Out of 1353 conscripts, 134 have failed to reach their destination; 124 refractory or deserters from the country and 41 others have been arrested; 81 conscripts have surrendered as a result of placing a garrison amongst them; 186 have not surrendered. Out of 892 conscripts of the year XIV on the march, 101 deserted on the road."—(Gard.) "76 refractory or deserters arrested."—(Landes.) "Out of 406 men who left, 51 deserted on the way," etc.—This repugnance becomes more and more aggravated. (Cf. analogous reports of 1812 and 1813, F7, 3018 and 3019, in "Journal d'un bourgeois d'Evreux," p. 150 to 214, and "Histoire de 1814," by Henry Houssaye, p.8 to 24.)]