Levée en masse

Levée en masse is a French term for mass conscription.

The modern levée

The French Revolutionary Wars

The modern levée en masse was born in the French Revolutionary Wars. Under the Ancien Regime there had been some conscription (by ballot) to a militia milice to supplement the large standing army in times of war. This had been unpopular with the peasant communities on which it fell, and one of their grievances which they expected to be addressed by the French_States-General when these were convened in 1789 to put the French monarchy on a sounder footing. When things turned out rather differently (see French Revolution), the milice was duly abolished by the National Assembly.

Related Topics:
French Revolutionary Wars - Ancien Regime - French_States-General - French Revolution - National Assembly

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As the Revolution progressed, external enemies appeared prepared to invade France to restore the status quo. They were resisted by a mixture of what remained of the old professional army and volunteers (it was these, not the levee en masse that won the battle of Valmy and saved the Revolution). By March 1793 France was at war with Austria, Prussia, Spain, Britain, Piedmont and the United Provinces: it was recognised that volunteering could no longer be relied upon, and the National Convention called upon each French départements to supply a quota of recruits (totaling about 300,000); with the means of selection unspecified. By some accounts, only about half this number appears to have been actually raised, bringing the army strength up to about 645,00 in mid-1793 and the military situation continued to worsen (not helped by internal difficulties such as the revolt in the Vendée which were in part triggered by this re-introduction of conscription).

Related Topics:
Valmy - Austria - Prussia - Spain - Britain - Piedmont - United Provinces - National Convention - Départements - Vendée

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In response to this, a levée en masse was decreed by the National Convention on 23 August, 1793 in ringing terms, beginning

Related Topics:
National Convention - 23 August - 1793

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"From this moment until such time as its enemies shall have been driven from the soil of the Republic all Frenchmen are in permanent requisition for the services of the armies. The young men shall fight; the married men shall forge arms and transport provisions; the women shall make tents and clothes and shall serve in the hospitals; the children shall turn linen into lint; the old men shall betake themselves to the public squares in order to arouse the courage of the warriors and preach hatred of kings and the unity of the Republic"

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All unmarried able-bodied men between 18 and 25 were requisitioned with immediate effect for military service. This significantly increased the number of men in the army, reaching a peak of about 1,500,000 in September 1794, although the actual fighting strength probably peaked at no more than 800,000. In addition, as the decree suggests, much of the civilian population was turned towards supporting the armies through armaments production and other war industries as well as supplying food and provisions to the front. For all the rhetoric, the levée en masse was not popular; desertion and evasion were high. But the effort was sufficient to turn the tide of the war, and there was no need for any further conscription until 1797, when a more systematic system of annual intake was instituted.

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Though not a novel idea—cf. thinkers as diverse as Plato, above and the lawyer and linguist Sir William Jones (who thought every adult male should be armed with a musket at public expense)—the actual practice of a levée en masse was rare before the French Revolution. The French levée was a key development in modern warfare and would lead to steadily larger armies with each successive war - culminating in the enormous bloodbaths of World Wars One and Two during the first half of the Twentieth Century. But it was the Prussians in the wake of their defeat by Napoleon who made the crucial improvement of systematic short-term peace-time conscription to create large numbers of trained men who could be mobilised on the outbreak of war. Unfortunately, the advantage this gave to the first to mobilise did nothing to make war less likely.

Related Topics:
Plato - Sir William Jones - One - Two - Twentieth Century

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World Wars in the Twentieth Century

By the time of the First and Second World Wars armies of Great Powers were generally well in excess of a million men with some soaring beyond 10 million. Between 1941-45 a total of 29 million Soviets served in the Red Army. Of these 1.5 million were professional soldiers, 4 million were volunteers and the remainder were conscripted through the levée en masse. This was the largest army ever mobilized and revealed the full potential of the levée en masse, dwarfing even the armies of the First World War in size.

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The modern levée Since 1945

Since World War II instances of levée en masse have been scarce with more limited forms of conscription favoured for the smaller, geographically confined conflicts of the Cold War era. The Korean War and the Iran-Iraq War serve as instances of post-WWII instances of levée en masse.

Related Topics:
Cold War - Korean War - Iran-Iraq War

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In addition several nations today maintain sizeable reserve forces. The Russian Federation has 20 million trained reserves at the ready in the instance of an outbreak of hostilities with a major power. Austria can mobilize to around a million troops within 48 hours of the order being given in a time of war. Vietnam maintains 3.8 million reserves and both North and South Korea have over 4.5 million reserves. Taiwan keeps over a million reserves at the ready in case of invasion from the mainland. A number of other nations have large reserve forces in excess of a million (including the United States of America and the People's Republic of China, both of which have around 1.5 million reserves).

Related Topics:
Russian Federation - Austria - Vietnam - North - South Korea - Taiwan - United States of America - People's Republic of China

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