ABSTRACT
Military obedience, the ultimate aim of that education through the army reform, at any rate, was to impress the popular consciousness with special force as being identical with obedience to the will of the king, whether in respect to his external politics or to his internal position of power. One can die but once, and it is better to die than to be defeated.' For the action of one and the same person different, even contradictory, rules of conduct exist, dependent on whether he is acting in his capacity as individual or as a person under military obedience. Compared to military obedience, civic virtue does not consist in dying, but rather in living for the weal of his country. Even in the army, the soldier remained a man of the people, a citizen, and as such forgot neither the wishes and duties of a civilian nor the civic pride based on them.
