Levée en masse

Levée en masse is a French term for mass conscription.

The levée in China

Until the French Revolution warfare in China was waged on an entirely different scale to that in Europe. During the 15th Century France and England maintained standing armies of less than 50,000 during the height of the Hundred Years War. By contrast Ming dynasty China maintained a peace time standing army of about 1.8 or 1.9 million.

Related Topics:
15th Century - Hundred Years War - Ming dynasty - China

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Of course this is largely due to the much larger population of China, but the kingdom of Qin in the Warring States period and the Taiping Tianguo stand as examples of the levée en masse in China prior to the 20th Century.

Related Topics:
Qin - Warring States - Taiping Tianguo - 20th Century

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The legalist state

The first real manifestation of the levée en masse in human history was actually a long way from France where the term was first coined two thousand years later.

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During the Warring States period of Chinese history a number of different philosophical schools contended. The four main schools were Confucianism, Daoism, Moism and, importantly to this topic, Legalism. The Legalist philosophy proposed strict laws with rigidly enforced punishments and rewards given in accordance with these laws and a system of meritocracy. However the Legalists also believed that the most important aspect of governance was to make the state strong. This naturally meant creating a strong army.

Related Topics:
Confucianism - Daoism - Moism - Legalism - Meritocracy

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The most prominent Legalist was Gongsun Yang, the Lord of Shang, who was prime minister of Qin from 361 to BCE. Gongsun Yang believed that if the entire state's citizenry could be divided between agriculture and the military the state would be invincible. The goal was to turn the nation into little more than a weapon - every citizen would do his or her bit to support the military. The Legalist system of rigid laws and autocratic, authoritarian and totalitarian dictatorship was an important aspect of this.

Related Topics:
Gongsun Yang - 361 - BCE

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Every resource of the Qin state was mobilized in its efforts to subdue its neighbours and unify China. This it accomplished in 221 BCE after 9 years of constant warfare. At its height the Qin army reached about 2,000,000 strong - out of a total population of less than 20 million. Before it began to conquer its neighbours it maintained a standing army of almost a million from a population of just 5 million. This is probably the highest ratio of enlisted personnel to total population in human history and is certainly an accurate example of the levée en masse in action. Of course considering the notorious unreliability of ancient sources these figures are probably exagerated (as were Herodotus' claims that the Persian army of Xerxes numbered 2.6 million in its invasion of Greece). The actual figures could be only a third of those given, but even these reveal warfare on a massive scale.

Related Topics:
221 BCE - Herodotus - Persian - Xerxes - Greece

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Later Chinese military

Although throughout much of Chinese history an army of over a million men has been maintained by the Empire, the Qin state remained unrivalled in its efficiency, and considering the population of the unified Chinese empire throughout history the size of the army, although impressive cannot really be seen as the result of a levée en masse, but merely feudal levying from an enormous population base.

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Taiping Tianguo

However total war resumed in China in the mid-nineteenth century when Hong Xiuquan (1812-1864) created the Taiping Tianguo (Heavenly Kingdom of Perfect Peace) in 1850. This separatist state was founded by Hong's cult of Christian fanatics, all of which received military training. In essence every citizen of the Taiping Tianguo was a soldier and even children received rudimentary martial training in preparation for future service in the Taiping armies. Women were treated no differently to men and the numbers of both genders in the ranks did not vary dramatically.

Related Topics:
Total war - Hong Xiuquan - 1812 - 1864 - Taiping Tianguo - 1850

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At its height in the early 1860s the Taiping army numbered a little under 2 million. The Imperial armies during the war with the Taipings were even larger still - numbering well over 2 million men, although this taken from a much larger population than that of the Taiping Kingdom.

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