Abstract
The citizen army that France built and experienced during the old regime and early Revolution had its roots in the line army as it had been designed and fashioned during the reign of Louis XIV. Because Louis XIV saw the army as crucial to building and maintaining his power at home and abroad, he crafted it in a manner that would give him full control over the army and keep it isolated from the greater population, while at the same time reinforcing social hierarchies. Over the course of his reign, from 1661 to 1715, Louis XIV transformed the army from a conglomerate of largely mercenary forces, who could be contracted for a campaign or the duration of a war, to a massive, state-run institution that he could use at his discretion against international challenges as well as domestic ones. Louis XIV likewise instituted the morals, methods, and mindset that supported his new state-run army as part of the scaffolding structure of much of French society.
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Notes
Terms are taken from John Lynn, Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
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© 2015 Julia Osman
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Osman, J. (2015). The King’s Army. In: Citizen Soldiers and the Key to the Bastille. War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137486240_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137486240_2
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