ABSTRACT
In an age of constant warfare, revolutionary and imperial France placed the heaviest of burdens on its citizenry to fill the ranks of its armies for both the defense and aggrandizement of the nation. Without the coercive tool of conscription, the young French Republic would have been extinguished by the monarchical powers of Europe. Even more so, Napoleon Bonaparte’s grand empire required a steady flow of manpower that only this administrative mechanism could provide. When the revolutionary government introduced the levée en masse on 23 August 1793, few realized that mass conscription would become an institutionalized aspect of French civic life for the next 21 years. Under the Consulate and Empire, conscription assumed an even larger role in the public affairs of France. No aspect of imperial France created as much resentment among the population or dominated the administrative machinery of government as did the problem of conscription.
