Levée en masse and national conscription
Leva en masa y conscripción nacional
- Date
- 1793 · confidence high
- Place
- Paris, Île-de-France, France
- Credited to
- French National Convention (Lazare Carnot)
- Field
- Conflict
What it is
A decree of August 1793 declaring every Frenchman at the army's service, drafting all unmarried men aged 18 to 25. It gave the Republic armies of hundreds of thousands, and was later normalised as conscription (Jourdan law, 1798).
There are precedents of forced recruitment (Rome, Prussia), but the levée en masse is the first modern national mobilisation.
What it led to
- Napoleonic wars with mass armies
- compulsory military service in Europe and the Americas
- the nation-state and the citizen-soldier