The Legacy of the French Revolutionary Wars The Nation-in-Arms in French Republican Memory

A major contribution to the study of collective identity and memory in France, this book examines a French republican myth: the belief that the nation can be adequately defended only by its own citizens, in the manner of the French revolutionaries of 1793. Alan Forrest examines the image of the citizen army reflected in political speeches, school textbooks, art and literature across the nineteenth century. He reveals that the image appealed to notions of equality and social justice, and with time it expanded to incorporate Napoleon's victorious legions, the partisans who repelled the German invader in 1814 and the people of Paris who rose in arms to defend the Republic in 1870. More recently it has risked being marginalized by military technology and by the realities of colonial warfare, but its influence can still be seen in the propaganda of the Great War and of the French Resistance under Vichy.

1. Introduction; 2. Creating the legend; 3. Napoleon and the blurring of memory; 4. Voices from the past; 5. The hollow years; 6. The Franco-Prussian War; 7. The army of the Third Republic; 8. Educating the army; 9. Educating the republic; 10. The First World War; 11. Last stirrings; 12. Conclusion.

This major contribution to the study of collective identity and memory in France examines the French republican myth that the nation can be adequately defended only by its own citizens by analysing the image of the citizen army reflected in political speeches, textbooks, art and literature across the nineteenth century.

Alan Forrest is Professor of Modern History at the University of York. His previous books include Paris, the Provinces and the French Revolution (2004), Napoleon's Men: The Soldiers of the Revolution and Empire (2002) and The Revolution in Provincial France: Aquitaine, 1789–1799 (1996).