ABSTRACT
In a radically changed international scenario, the organization of the armed forces is currently hovering between different ages. It is difficult to find a social system in contemporary ('postmodem') society encompassing so many forms that have remained virtually intact since the 'early modem'1 and even the pre-modem age. Of all such forms, the most important is undoubtedly compulsory military service. The origins of the draft date back into the Middle Ages, under the regime of statutory services (of which it was the principal form} , which bound free men to their feudal lords, and the latter to their sovereign. But it was in the phase leading up to the modem age that compulsory military service reached its peak, with the levee en masse of the French Revolution, and assumed all the features which still persist today. As Clausewitz observed:
The people became a participant in war; instead of governments and armies as heretofore, the full weight of the nation was thrown into the balance. The resources and efforts now available for use surpassed all conventional limits ; nothing now impeded the vigor with which war could be waged . . . 2
Having earlier demonstrated its viability in the defensive wars of the Revolution and immediately afterwards in the wars to expand the Napoleonic Empire, the draft became firmly established. It
was to remain in place for two centuries as the standard form of recruitment in continental Europe, and as the recruitment model in wartime in the Englishb speaking world.
