From Volunteers to Conscripts: the French Republican Army 1789-1794-Part One

In this short essay I will attempt to chronicle the transformation of the French Republican Army from a volunteer army made up of professional soldiers and willing citizen-soldiers in a large mass of military serfs in the 1789-1794 period.

I know this topic will be highly controversial but I personally believe it provides a useful discussion and reflection topic in the defense debate. Any criticism, as long as it’s constructive, is highly welcome.

The armies of the Ancien Regime were, essentially, volunteer in nature. France had traditionally three sources of recruits.
The first, and most important, were the great cities like Paris, Lyon and Toulouse. Recruiters particularly targeted paupers, easily attracted by a steady, if meager, paycheck and the promise of food and lodge, and the younger sons of artisans and shopkeepers, who could not hope to take over the family business and were usually doomed to a lifetime of perpetual misery.
The second were the country estates of certain noble military families. Members of these families, serving as military officers, were regularly given six-month leaves (semestres) to recruit troops for the army. Military life, as hard as it was, was usually seen as an attractive alternative for the younger sons of peasant families. Moreover these men usually ended up serving under the same noblemen who had recruited them, often in highly regarded cavalry and artillery unit.
The third were the many foreign (Swiss, Bavarian, Irish etc) regiments serving France. These were of very varied quality and each had its own way of finding recruits. [1]

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The Worldly Philosophers

I just finished reading “The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers” by Robert Heilbroner, which is probably one of the more preeminent works on the history of economic thought. Indeed, “The Worldly Philosophers” probably ranks among the more famous economic works ever written, it is certainly among the best selling. It’s surprising that it’s taken me so long to get around to reading this work. When I first announced to one of my social studies teachers all the way back in my sophomore year of high school, he actually handed me a copy of the book and told me to read it, yet at the time I was too busy reading other economic tracts.

Nonetheless, here was a book that had been recommended to me by repeatedly for years, so it’s not surprising that I had significant expectations for the book. I have a pretty extensive exposure to economic history from other sources, including Mark Skousen’s “The Making of Modern Economics”, a more formal textbook, “A History of Economic Theory and Method”, and a variety of other channels. Perhaps this gave me a fairly rigid and preconception of how the history of economic thought developed which in turn put me outside the target demographic of this book (whoever that actually includes). With all of this in mind, I have to say that I’m not impressed with Heilbroner’s acclaimed book.

Desocialization Revisited

Merlin

The Main Idea: Looking back on the Albanian desocialization drive of the early ’90s, the failure to securitize state-owned assets and the insistence on a disastrous policy of physical land restitution stand out as the main failings.

1. Introduction

1.1 Something more than twenty years ago, the Socialist Regimes of Eastern Europe fell one by one after the unwillingness of the Soviets to resist such development by force became known. Despite having severed all meaningful political connections to its European fellows since the ’50 and its lone Chinese ally since the ’70, the Albanian regime still could not avoid joining the fate of the overt Socialism in Europe, and by 1992 a feverish desocialization effort guided by a new government was in the works.

1.2 Looking back on that effort, what can one say about the long-term effects of the route chosen to transform a state-run economy into a mostly private one? To what extent where the Austrian prescriptions on desocialization followed, and to what effect? I will try to answer these questions, without expecting my analysis to apply to every eastern desocialization effort.

Long time no see

The People vs. the Media

Justin Raimondo over at antiwar.com has more on the issue of the regime media versus the people on Edward Snowden. Great stuff, do check it out.