The Nation in Arms: Mass Mobilization Compared

The French Revolution transformed warfare. Facing invasion, the Convention decreed the levée en masse in August 1793, calling all citizens to serve the nation, and the army grew to several hundred thousand soldiers, far larger than older royal armies. Soldiers fought as citizens of a nation rather than subjects of a king, and promotion by merit opened careers to talent, including Napoleon's.

This differed from the American experience, where the Continental Army stayed relatively small and relied heavily on short-term militias, partly because Americans distrusted standing armies. In Haiti, formerly enslaved people formed disciplined armies under leaders such as Toussaint Louverture, and in South America, Bolívar and San Martín built armies that crossed mountains. The French model of mass conscription spread across Europe, and the Bolsheviks later built the Red Army on similar principles of mobilizing a whole society.