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Genesis: Historical research
Reference:

Review of A. Forrest's "Beyond the Edge of the Battlefield. The life of the military during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars"

Galyamina Anna Georgievna

Postgraduate of Department of World Economy, International Relations and law, Novosibirsk State University of Economics and Management,

630099, Russia, Novosibirsk region, Novosibirsk, Kamenskaya str., 56

galiamina.anna@yandex.ru

DOI:

10.25136/2409-868X.2023.5.40802

EDN:

PLLFOI

Received:

20-05-2023


Published:

31-05-2023


Abstract: The article analyzes the work of the English historian A. Forrest, devoted to the study of the individual experience of the military during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Forrest departs from the traditional view of the history of war as the history of battles and focuses his attention on various aspects of the daily life soldiers, such as enlistment, interaction with foreigners during foreign campaigns, captivity, demobilization and the life of veterans after the end of the war. The author pays special attention to the discrepancies between propaganda and the realities of soldier's life and casts doubt on the formation of a new type of revolutionary soldier, postulated by revolutionary propaganda. As shortcomings of the book, one can single out some ignorance by the author of data that contradicts his statement about the complete apoliticality of peasants, who formed the basis of the army of revolutionary France, and their alienation to revolutionary values. Besides the author does not always clearly distinguish the Jacobin army and the army of the Napoleonic time, attributing later features to the former, therefore important details regarding the war nature evolution may be lost. Separately, the author considers the construction of historical memory of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars in France.


Keywords:

Revolutionary wars, Napoleonic wars, history of everyday life, history of mentality, French revolution, historical memory, war history, New russian school, Napoleon Bonaparte, jacobins

This article is automatically translated.

Modern humanitarian knowledge pays close attention to the individual experience of a person who, as a rule, previously remained aloof from the interests of researchers, which is why traditional historical writing, focused on iconic figures and key events, could say little about the everyday life and way of thinking of an ordinary person of his time. This is also true of the history of the war with the first anti-French coalition and the subsequent Napoleonic Wars, which lasted a quarter of a century, affected the life of an entire generation and served as the basis for the creation of national legends in the future. Although battles are one of the main subjects of interest for the traditional historiography of the Napoleonic era, they make up only a small part of the military experience of their direct participants, which makes it completely logical to take an interest in the life of the military "beyond the edge of the battlefield".  An attempt to recreate it was a book by the British researcher, Honorary professor of York University, Alan Forrest, summarizing the results of the author's long-term study of the life experience of war participants and its comprehension by historical memory.

A. Forrest's book was published in the series "The World of the French Revolution", published by ROSSPAN Publishing House, which now publishes works on various aspects of the history and historiography of the Great French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. These are mainly the works of representatives of the so-called New Russian School [1], to which Forrest is ideologically close [2]. From 2018 to 2021, he even directed the Laboratory of Western European and Mediterranean Historical Studies at the State Academic University of Humanities, working in direct contact with representatives of the National Research School - therefore, Forrest's works are familiar to the Russian-speaking reader. This is one of the most actively published foreign authors in the "French Yearbook" (https://annuaire-fr.igh.ru/authors/36 ?locale =ru), but in the format of a separate book, his works are published in Russia for the first time. Especially for this purpose, the author collected, translated and edited articles previously published by him in English and French.

According to the content, the book conditionally splits into two parts. The first part, large in volume and main, is devoted to the daily life of the Republican and Napoleonic army. Here the author seeks to trace the typical fate of a soldier from the moment of entering the service to his demobilization after the final defeat at Waterloo. There is a long quarter of a century between participation in the draw during recruitment and the life of a veteran during Restoration. For a soldier of the revolution, and later a Napoleonic soldier, these years included correspondence with relatives, a clash with the policy of terror in the army, participation in foreign campaigns and a clash with local residents, possibly captivity. A. Forrest pays sufficient attention to each of the above-mentioned plots in a separate chapter.  Collected under a single cover, they recreate the image of an ordinary man of his era and the evolution of his worldview. Conscripted into military service most often from the rural French hinterland, he may not have initially imagined the scale of the historical event in which he was involved. It is the army, according to Forrest, that for the first time introduces the apolitical peasant to the revolutionary agenda and becomes a political school for him. Conscription means a break with the familiar rural world, which seems to both the recruit and his relatives to be final - the recruit is escorted away forever, without waiting for his return. The only possible connection is epistolary, as a result of which it is in the army that many former peasants understand the value of literacy and strive to learn to read and write. The brevity and ritualization of soldiers' letters noted by the author, their low informative value for the researcher, are a consequence of the lack of literacy of the writers, the growing alienation between soldiers and their relatives who stayed at home, as well as the consequence of military trauma, which caused the inability to talk about their real feelings and personal military experience. At the same time, Forrest emphasizes that for veterans who returned home, the Napoleonic Wars, nevertheless, remained the most vivid life period when they were directly involved in a significant historical event - and were aware of this involvement.

It is interesting to analyze the personal attitude of soldiers to what is happening in the case of their participation in military terror. The author draws attention to the dehumanization of the participants of the irregular military units of the enemy as a result of their use of "wrong", unconventional, excessively cruel means of warfare that neuroticized French soldiers, which as a result led to the use of cruel means by the French towards the dehumanized enemy. In the Jacobin period, this was observed in the Vendee, under Napoleon - in Italy and Spain.

The last three chapters, which make up the conditional second part of the book and tell about the formation of the image of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars in historical memory, stand somewhat apart. Forrest analyzes the creation of the Napoleonic legend based on the image of the "glorious defeat" as a result of the campaign in Russia and in the Battle of Waterloo. In addition, the issue of the formation of the French republican identity during the Third Republic is considered in detail on the basis of the cultivation of the official republican myth and equating the Napoleonic soldier with the soldier of the Revolution and the formation of a positive role model from them in a society traumatized by the defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.

It should be noted that the author pays more attention to the Napoleonic wars. On the one hand, this is logical, since they were significantly longer than the revolutionary war with the first anti-French coalition and, accordingly, had a greater impact on the life experience and personality of their participants and on the formation of a national legend. On the other hand, the realities of the Napoleonic era by default can be extrapolated by the reader to the previous period, which is not always true. Nevertheless, the author often fixes the difference between the realities of the war with the first coalition from the subsequent time and establishes the Thermidorian coup as a fundamental boundary.  Thus, Forrest writes about a decrease in revolutionary propaganda in the army, a change in the ideological goals of the war, moreover, about a decrease in social support for veterans and invalids of wars in the post-Termidorian period. Nevertheless, he does not focus on the moment of transition, the transformation of the Republican revolutionary army into the Napoleonic imperial army and the change in the nature of the war. In addition, it should be noted that the author often contrasts the Jacobin and Napoleonic periods with each other. The Directory also falls into the Napoleonic era. As for the Jacobin period, it is not always clear whether the author also includes the time from the declaration of war on April 20, 1792 and before the uprising on May 31 - June 2, 1793, or whether it simply falls out of consideration. Perhaps a separate analysis of these two periods would allow us to highlight new interesting details about the evolution of the nature of the war and the worldview of its participants.

It is worth noting that A. Forrest, as a representative of the historiographical tradition that does not consider itself the heiress of the Great French Revolution [3-4], is extremely skeptical of the French revolutionary myth, which he calls "the empty Republican rhetoric of the turn of the XIX-XX centuries." The revolution in his image, as well as in the image of his Moscow colleagues, is the result of the activities of representatives of the "enlightened elite" far from the bulk of the French [5], activities incomprehensible and alien to the ordinary Frenchman. As a result, he pays considerable attention in his work to the discrepancy between official statements and what was observed in reality. For example, considering the reasons that prompted young people to enlist in military service, the author, in contrast to the officially proclaimed revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses, focuses on the opposition of the peasantry to recruitment, caused both by the economic value of future recruits for the peasant economy and by a lack of understanding of the meaning and goals of the war in regions far from it. In the case of volunteers, he pays primary attention to personal motives that are far from a sincere desire to fight for revolutionary values, such as family troubles, lack of prospects for further life in the countryside, romantic ideas about military service as an opportunity to put on a beautiful uniform and escape from rural routine. Without denying the importance of all the motives indicated by the author, especially in departments far from Paris, it should still be noted that he does not seem to be fundamentally interested in whether there really existed at least in the Jacobin months a conscious volunteer who went to defend revolutionary values. But how true is Forrest's thesis about apolitical peasants in principle? In his classic work translated into French and published twice in France [6], A.V. Ado provides data on the armed actions of the peasantry from 1789 to 1794, and the scale of the work did not allow Ado to include counter-revolutionary peasant uprisings in consideration. Although, in general, the history of political and social conflicts in the countryside is not the most popular problem of the historiography of the Revolution today, nevertheless, there are later studies that supplement the overall picture of the Ado with specific data on individual regions [7]. The peasants both opposed the measures of the revolutionary government and radicalized the decisions and actions of the capital's revolutionaries with their armed demonstrations. Therefore, the image of a politically naive rural recruit drawn by the author seems somewhat simplified.

The author asks the question of whether the type of soldier-citizen whose existence was postulated by official propaganda has been formed in the chapter "Citizenship, honor and masculinity: qualities of the military during the revolution and empire", devoted to the characteristics of the type of soldier created by the Revolution. He does not agree with those researchers who believe that he existed in reality, noting in confirmation of his point of view that despite the desire prescribed to a citizen soldier to serve not for the sake of awards and personal honors, but for the public good of the Republic, even under the Jacobin dictatorship there was a practice of military triumphs for distinguished officers and promotion for distinguished soldiers. Nevertheless, A. Forrest avoids answering the question posed at the beginning of this chapter, considering for the most part the masculinity of the formed image of a soldier and, by contrast, the presence of women in the active army and their participation in the war, which can serve as an indirect confirmation of the desire to defend the Republic. He also notes a decrease in the number of volunteers after the Thermidorian coup compared to the Jacobin months. Forrest speaks of a decrease in the politicization of soldiers' letters during the same period, but he cannot answer to what extent the politicization of the Jacobin period was a repetition of official rhetoric and a manifestation of loyalty to the authorities, and to what extent it was an expression of sincere Republican feelings. Thus, the actual existence of a soldier-citizen in the conditions of the II year of the Republic does not seem so impossible, as the author writes. It also remains an unanswered question to what extent the citizen soldier and the spirit of the army played a role in the formation of the Republican army and its victories, which is questioned by Forrest as a myth formed by the Third Republic.

The accessible language and entertaining presentation, as well as the subject of the study - the personal life experience of the participants of the historical event - makes the book interesting not only for a specialist historian, but also for a wide range of readers.

References
1. Tan'shina, N. P. (2018). К 150-летию изучения Французской революции в России: от Герье до Новой русской школы [To the 150th Anniversary of the Study of the French Revolution in Russia: from Guerrier to the New Russian School]. New and Contemporary History, 6, 118-136. doi 10.31857/S013038640002044-6
2. CHudinov, A. V. (2021). Our good friend Alan Forrest (On the 75th anniversary of his birth). French Yearbook, 54, 429-439.
3. Sobul', A. (1976).Классическая историография Французской революции: о нынешних спорах[Classical historiography of the French Revolution: on the current controversy]. French Yearbook, 155-170.
4. Gordon, A. V. (2021). The Great French Revolution: On the Concept and Understanding. In G.P. Myagkov (Ed) Nikolai Ivanovich Kareev: Life Path and Scientific Heritage in the Transdisciplinary Context of Modern Historical Studies. Articles and reports of the III International Scientific and Educational Conference (pp. 127-133). Kazan': Kazan University Press.
5. CHudinov, A.V. (2001). Просвещённая элита (к истории понятия) [Enlightened elite (on the history of the concept)]. French Yearbook, 266-279.
6. Ado, A.V. (1987). Крестьяне и Великая французская революция. Крестьянское движение в 1789-1794 [Peasants and the Great French Revolution. Peasant movement in 1789-1794]. Moscow: Publishing house of Moscow State University.

7. Sottocasa, V. (1999). Résistances paysannes et révolution : le cas des hautes terres du sud du Massif central[Peasant resistance and revolution: the case of the southern highlands of the Central Massif]. In R. Dupuy (Ed) Local power and revolution. 1780-1850 (pp 377-391). Rennes: University Press of Rennes.

Peer Review

Peer reviewers' evaluations remain confidential and are not disclosed to the public. Only external reviews, authorized for publication by the article's author(s), are made public. Typically, these final reviews are conducted after the manuscript's revision. Adhering to our double-blind review policy, the reviewer's identity is kept confidential.
The list of publisher reviewers can be found here.

Review "Review of the book by Forrest A. Beyond the edge of the battlefield. The life of the military during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. – M.: ROSSPAN, 2022. – 280 p." The subject of the study is a review of Forrest's book "Beyond the edge of the battlefield. The life of the military during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars." The research methodology is based on the principles of objectivity, scientific approach, complexity and consistency. The method of military historical anthropology is also used in the work. The relevance is determined by the fact that in military works little attention is paid to "the daily life and way of thinking of an ordinary person of his time." In the work reviewed by the author of the article, the main attention is paid to the life of the military "beyond the edge of the pain field", which is presented in the book by British researcher, honorary professor of York University, Alan Forrest, summarizing the results of the author's long-term study of the life experience of participants in wars and its understanding by historical memory. The relevance of Forrest's book is obvious, and the relevance of the review of this work is also obvious. This review is devoted to an up-to-date and very interesting book, which explores a topic that researchers do not often address. The scientific novelty of the review of Alan Forrest's book lies in the fact that the author of the review gives a comprehensive, objective scientific assessment of the work written on an interesting, poorly developed and relevant topic. War participants not only fight, but also face various everyday issues, the routine of military life, after returning from the front, they again face the routine of life. Alan Forrest makes an attempt to study the life experiences of war veterans, and the author of the review of Forrest's book explores how he did it. The scientific novelty is obvious and beyond doubt. The style of the article is academic, the language is clear and precise. The structure of the work and the logic of the presentation of the material are predetermined by the purpose and objectives of the study. At the beginning, the author writes about the topic that A. Forrest is studying, reveals its relevance. He further writes about Alan Forrest himself and notes that he is close in his views "to representatives of the so-called New Russian School" and that he is "one of the most actively published foreign authors in the French Yearbook (https://annuaire-fr.igh.ru/authors/36 ?locale = ru)", but his works are published in a separate book for the first time and in such a reputable ROSSPEN publishing house. The bibliography consists of 7 works devoted to various issues related to the French Revolution, including two works by A.V. Chudinov, one article is devoted to the history of the concept of the enlightened elite, and the other to Alan Forrest, an article by N.P. Tanshchina dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the study of the French Revolution, etc. Bibliography in quantitative and qualitative terms makes it possible to reveal the topic under study. The appeal to the opponents is presented in the bibliography and the work carried out. The author writes about the merits of Forrest's book and shows those questions that Alan Forrest did not fully disclose or to which he did not give (did not want to give an answer). And this will undoubtedly arouse interest in Forrest's book and it seems that this will lead to the fact that researchers will more actively study the issues that are not disclosed in Forrest's book. The author summarizes that "the accessible language and entertaining presentation, as well as the subject of the study - the personal life experience of participants in a historical event - makes the book interesting not only for a specialist historian, but also for a wide range of readers." It should be noted that the review of the book is written in an accessible language and is interesting. Review of the book by Forrest A. Beyond the edge of the battlefield. The life of the military during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. – M.: ROSSPAN, 2022. competently designed, written vividly, vividly and interestingly. It will undoubtedly arouse interest in Forrest's book, as well as in the topic of military routine, which to date has not aroused much interest among researchers, as well as in the topic of historical memory, the question of what descendants remember from the history of important and fateful events, wars, revolutions in general and the life of the "military in times The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars." The review itself will undoubtedly arouse the interest of readers of the journal, as well as a wide audience (students, undergraduates, graduate students, etc.). .