The first systematic and comparative study of growth of military conscription in Europe An innovative fusion of primary empirical research and postmodern philosophy It will appeal to students of modern European history, political science, military history and intellectual history in general

This book examines the creation of 'national armies' through compulsory military service in France and Prussia during the French Revolution and the Prussian Reform Period. The French Revolution tried to establish military and political structures in which the armed forces and society would merge. In order to ensure that the army would never become a means of oppression against the people, the whole population should thus 'be' the army. Defeated by the enormous military potential that these new political settings had unchained in France, Prussia adapted the French innovations to its own needs, thus laying the basis for its contributions to the victories of the coalition troops in 1813-15. Conscription had implications that went beyond the purely military sphere and involved assumptions about the nature of the state and its relationship to its citizens. It was the material basis of Napoleon's campaigns and of the German 'wars of national liberation' of 1813-15, before becoming a cornerstone of the Prussian Reforms and the creation of a civil society 'from above'. Military service has therefore been one of the most essential and contradictory institutions of the modern nation-state. Citizens, Soldiers and National Armies will be of interest to historians of modern Europe, military historians and students of intellectual history in general.

Jean-Paul Bertaud is the leading French authority on the army of the French Revolution, and La Revolution armee is the authortative treatment of the firest great national, patriotic, revolutionary, and mass army, engaged in what has been called the first total war: that between revolutionary France and the other European powers. The book is a successful attempt to integrate military history with social and political history and thereby to depict the army as a "school for the republic" that by subtle changes after 1795 made way for the Napoleonic regime. The distinguished historian R.R. Palmer presents the first translation of this work into English in a volume that will quickly become indispensable for French historians, historical sociologists, and political scientists interested in armies and revolutions. The theme of the book is suggested by its French title: "the Revolution armed." That is, the book is primarily about the Revolution, and specifically the Revolution in its relation to armed force. This revolution, and this army, activated the idea of the citizen-soldier exemplified by the ancient classical republics, and favored by Jean-jacques Rousseau and other eighteenth-century thinkers, but never before realized on so large and portentous a scale as in France in the 1790s. Jean-Paul Bertaud is Professor of Modern History at the University of Paris I (the Sorbonne). He has published widely in France on aspects of the French Revolution. R.R. Palmer is Professor Emeritus at Yale University and author of numerous books, including the two-volume The Age of the Democratic Revolution (1959 and 1964), Twelve Who Ruled (1941), and The Improvement of Humanity: Education and the French Revolution (1985), all published by Princeton University Press. He has translated many works from the French, most recently The Two Tocquevilles, Father and Son: Herve and Alexis de TOcqueville on the Coming of the French Revolution (Princeton, 1987). Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Why has the United States, unlike every other 20th-century world power, failed to settle on a durable system of military service? In this lucid book, Eliot Cohen studies the enduring problems of America's methods of raising an army.

From Stephen E. Ambrose, bestselling author of Band of Brothers and D-Day, the inspiring story of the ordinary men of the U.S. army in northwest Europe from the day after D-Day until the end of the bitterest days of World War II. In this riveting account, historian Stephen E. Ambrose continues where he left off in his #1 bestseller D-Day. Citizen Soldiers opens at 0001 hours, June 7, 1944, on the Normandy beaches, and ends at 0245 hours, May 7, 1945, with the allied victory. It is biography of the US Army in the European Theater of Operations, and Ambrose again follows the individual characters of this noble, brutal, and tragic war. From the high command down to the ordinary soldier, Ambrose draws on hundreds of interviews to re-create the war experience with startling clarity and immediacy. From the hedgerows of Normandy to the overrunning of Germany, Ambrose tells the real story of World War II from the perspective of the men and women who fought it.

Showcasing French participation in the Seven Years' War and the American Revolution, this book shows the French army at the heart of revolutionary, social, and cultural change. Osman argues that efforts to transform the French army into a citizen army before 1789 prompted and helped shape the French Revolution.