![]() He called for "a people's army, recruited by universal conscription, from which there could be no escape by purchase of a replacement". ![]() In December, Dubois de Crancé, who was both "a man of the left" and "a military man, having served as a King's Musketeer", spoke to the National Assembly on behalf of its military committee. When this instead led to the French Revolution, the milice was duly abolished by the National Assembly.Īs early as 1789, leaders had considered how they would sustain their revolutionary army. This was unpopular with the peasant communities on which it fell, and was one of their grievances which they expected to be addressed by the French Estates General when it was convened in 1789, to strengthen the French monarchy. Under the Ancien Régime, there had been some conscription (by ballot) to a militia, milice, to supplement the large standing army in times of war. The first modern use of levée en masse occurred during the French Revolutionary Wars. Historically, the levée en masse heralded the age of national participation in warfare and displaced restricted forms of warfare, such as the cabinet wars (1715–1792), when armies of professional soldiers fought without the general participation of the population. Thus, the levée en masse was created and understood as a means to defend the nation by the nation. As the nation now understood itself as a community of all people, its defense also was assumed to become a responsibility of all. Ĭentral to the understanding that developed (and was promoted by the authorities) of the levée is the idea that the new political rights given to the mass of the French people also created new obligations to the state. The term levée en masse denotes a short-term requisition of all able-bodied men to defend the nation and its rise as a military tactic may be viewed in connection with the political events and developing ideology in revolutionary France-particularly the new concept of the democratic citizen as opposed to a royal subject. The term is also applied to other historical examples of mass conscription. It formed an integral part of the creation of national identity, making it distinct from forms of conscription which had existed before this date. The concept originated during the French Revolutionary Wars, particularly for the period following 16 August 1793, when able-bodied men aged 18 to 25 were conscripted. Levée en masse ( French pronunciation: or, in English, "mass levy" ) is a French term used for a policy of mass national conscription, often in the face of invasion. Strict sense in physics, "quantity of a portion of matter expressed in pounds or grams" is from 1704.Īs an adjective, "of, involving, or composed of masses of people done on a large scale," from 1733, first attested in American English mass meeting "public assembly persons in mass or of all classes to consider or listen to the discussion of some matter of common interest." Mass culture is from 1916 in sociology (earlier in biology) mass hysteria is from 1914 mass movement is from 1897 mass grave is from 1918 mass murder from 1880.Painting depicting the Departure of the Conscripts of 1807 by Louis-Léopold Boilly ![]() As "the bulk or greater part of anything" from 1620s. The sense in English was extended 1580s to "a large quantity, amount, or number." Meaning "bulk" in general is from c. Late 14c., "irregular shaped lump body of unshaped, coherent matter," from Old French masse "lump, heap, pile crowd, large amount ingot, bar" (11c.), and directly from Latin massa "kneaded dough, lump, that which adheres together like dough," probably from Greek maza "barley cake, lump, mass, ball," which is related to massein "to knead," from PIE root *mag- "to knead, fashion, fit."
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