Introduction

This chapter shows how the memoirs responded to and enabled elements of a modern culture of war to function through the specific deployment and rhetorical construction of the soldier’s suffering. It argues that a modern culture of war was taking shape in which the personal story of the soldier was increasingly coming to prominence and circulating as a mode for reflecting upon war. ‘Modern’ warfare can be seen to have been inaugurated with the French levee en masse of 1794, as France became the first of a series of European nations to attempt to mobilise its entire population for a war of national survival. The understanding of war as both remote from civil society and yet demanding massive popular support and participation coincided, to an unprecedented degree, with the involvement of the British public in war through forms of cultural mediation. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.