Days of Glory? Imaging Military Recruitment and the French Revolution Valerie Mainz War, Culture and Society, 1750 –1850 War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850 Series Editors Rafe Blaufarb Department of History Florida State University Tallahassee , Florida , USA Alan Forrest University of York , York , United Kingdom Karen Hagemann Netherlands Institute Advanced Study Wassenaar , Zuid-Holland , The Netherlands The century from 1750 to 1850 was a period of seminal change in world history, when the political landscape was transformed by a series of rev- olutions fought in the name of liberty. These ideas spread far beyond Europe and the United States: they were carried to the furthest outposts of empire, to Egypt, India and the Caribbean, and they would continue to inspire anti-colonial and liberation movements in Central and Latin America throughout the fi rst half of the nineteenth century. The Age of Revolutions was a world movement which cries out to be studied in its global dimension. But it was not only social and political institutions that were transformed by revolution in this period. So, too, was warfare. During the quarter-century of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars in particular, Europe was faced with the prospect of 'total' warfare with mass mobilization on a scale that was unequalled until the Great Wars of the twentieth century. Those who lived through the period shared for- mative experiences that would do much to shape their ambitions and forge their identities. The volumes published in this series seek to address these issues by: - discussing war across Europe and throughout the Atlantic world, thereby contributing to a global history of war in this period; - integrating political, social, cultural and military history and art history, thus developing a multidisciplinary approach to the analysis of war; - ana- lysing the construction of identities and power relations with reference to various categories of difference, notably class, gender, religion, genera- tional difference, race and ethnicity; - examining elements of comparison and transfer, so as to tease out the complexities of national, regional and global history; - crossing traditional borders between early modern and modern history since this is a period which integrates aspects of old and new, traditional and modern. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14390 Valerie Mainz Days of Glory? Imaging Military Recruitment and the French Revolution Valerie Mainz University of Leeds Leeds , United Kingdom War, Culture and Society, 1750-1850 ISBN 978-1-137-54293-9 ISBN 978-1-137-54294-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-54294-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016951443 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifi ed as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub- lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Cover illustration: Pierre-Charles Coqueret after Dutailly, On doit à sa patrie le sacrifi ce de ses plus chères affections. Detail, see Fig 5.8. Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London To EVW/CM En attendant… PREF ACE I am an historian of art who has no personal combat experience. The traumas of warfare are, however, present for me in ways that would have been unimaginable in past centuries. In the visual cultures of our times, continuing armed confl icts to the death are played out on television, fi lm, video, mobile phone and internet as well as in print and in the fi ne arts. Not surprisingly, the study of war and society has come to be an increas- ingly active fi eld of scholarly endeavour in the last few decades. My own contribution to this terrain remains, however, rooted in history. In this study I question how notions of glory or of, perhaps, gloire featured in the visual imagery of military recruitment during the eighteenth century in France. In his book, The Ultimate Experience: Battlefi eld Revelations and the Making of Modern War Culture 1450–2000 , the military historian Yuval Noah Harari traces how warfare has become a privileged site for the gaining of personal insight, truth and knowledge because, in the period 1740–1865, bodily experiences of combat converged with an emergent culture of sensibility. 1 Concluding with the somewhat pessimistic equation of ‘sensibility × experience = knowledge’, the writer hopes for the addition of some missing variables. 2 From this argument to do with the witnessing of warfare—whether as an idealising epiphany or in terms of disillusion- ment—it is to be expected that the visual image would be key. So it is as an art historian that I supply some additional variables to such an equation. Harari’s work leads in the direction of the study of sensibility and emotions. My own engagement with the visual representation of mili- tary recruitment does not ignore the dimensions of the affective or the vii viii PREFACE sentimental. Gloire is, after all, about aspiration and desire for fame. My focus here is, nonetheless, on the specifi c processes of visual representation as they index ‘mentalities’ or sensibilities. Images are structured formu- lations. They require specialist readings of their constructions, materi- alities, technologies, conditions of production, diffusion and reception. An understanding of the chosen medium of representation supplies the means, therefore, whereby the experiences of early modern warfare can be located within appropriately insightful commentary. In negotiating the making of evidence into knowledge, the historian must assess the questions being addressed critically and refl exively from within existing scholarship. Sources, documents, archives, sets of data, memoirs, records and accounts need also to be carefully investigated for how they have come about alongside the information that can be gleaned from content. 3 Sources are embedded within practices and procedures that are institutionally determined, mutable and, indeed, that constantly change. These variables need to be accounted for when making claims about the truths of history. As an art historian, I necessarily work as an historian and as an interpreter of images. Two complementary questions are intrinsic to these processes: what is the role of the image in the study of history? And what is the history of the image? This is not a territorial dispute between history and art history. Rather I want to make a case for respecting what art historical methodologies bring to the study of the visual image as a cultural form in history. Pictures make up the archive I have sourced for this book and they range from the grand-manner history painting to the small-scale black- and- white printed etching. Using changing contexts of making, produc- tion, exhibition and reception, my method challenges the use of visual imagery as a source of evidence, whether reliable or otherwise, by the historian. 4 In raising questions about the intersections between disciplines like those of history, art history, cultural studies, French language and literature, my purpose is not to provide an exhaustive compendium of the imagery of French military recruitment at the time of the Revolution. What I provide here is, instead, a series of much closer, more developed and more detailed readings of certain culturally contingent views of mili- tary enlistment in words and in visual imagery. I take into account the changing variables of the chosen medium of representation at a particu- larly momentous time in history to do this. When considering how the abstract and shifting concept of gloire could feature in views of military recruitment during the French Revolution, I PREFACE ix concur with what Harari has marked out as the rise of the common sol- dier. The attainment of gloire through the achievements of combat had been allied to attributes of heroism and of kingship; with the coming of the rhetoric of liberté, fraternité et égalité (liberty, fraternity and equality), such gloire was opened up to men of non-noble birth. Yet the attributes of the martial spirit, of courage and valour but also of a potential self-sacrifi ce in a feat of arms for the defence of the common good, remained fi rmly gendered as masculine in spite of the increasing awareness that sentiment and the affairs of the heart had roles to play in humanising the man of war. Also, contrary to the expectation that the coming of conscription might be shown in the picturing of revolutionary enlistment, such imag- ery only came to the fore during the nineteenth century. The showing of the mobilisation of the French nation and a willingness to fi ght on behalf of nation during the heady days of glory promised by the revolutionary endeavour still relied, instead, on the tropes, traditions and conventions of times past.