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

by Alan Forrest

A major contribution to the study of collective identity and memory in France, this book examines a French republican 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.

Genres: History

288 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2009

About the author

Alan Forrest is Emeritus Professor of Modern History at the University of York. He works on modern French history, especially the period of the French Revolution and Empire, and on the history of modern warfare.

He serves on the editorial boards of French History and War in History, and is a member of the advisory committee for Annales historiques de la Revolution Francaise. He also co-edits a series for Palgrave-Macmillan on 'War, Culture and Society, 1750-1850'.