Le Soldat Sensible: Military Psychology and Social Egalitarianism in the Enlightenment French Army

Abstract

Between the end of the seventeenth century and that of the eighteenth, France's military decline sparked much thought regarding reforms that would increase combat effectiveness. While some reformers believed the problem to be technical and thus targeted tactical and organizational aspects of the military system, others maintained that the problem was moral, social, and political stemming from a corrupt civil society. Espousing a more anthropocentric and phenomenological account of war, the latter group pioneered ideas in military and social psychology that set the stage for changes in military policy and for the foundation of a more modern vision of selfhood and the experience of war. Entre la fin du dix-septième siècle et celle du dix-huitième, le déclin militaire de la France suscita de nombreuses réflexions visant à améliorer les performances françaises sur le champ de bataille. Si certains objectèrent des défaillances techniques et proposèrent donc des ajustements tactiques et organisationnels du système militaire, d'autres soutinrent une origine morale, sociale et politique liée à l'état corrompu de la société civile. Epousant une analyse plus anthropocentrique et plus phénoménologique de la guerre, ce dernier groupe de penseurs développa de nouvelles idées portant sur la psychologie sociale et militaire et posant les jalons d'une conception plus moderne du « moi » et de l'expérience de la guerre.

Military Men of Feeling? Gender Boundaries and Military–Civil Encounters in Two German Soldier Plays (1760‐80)

“…9 A number of these new treatises pay attention to the emotional impact of the experience of combat on the soldier's mind and the harsh conditions of military life. 10 It became one of the aims of the military Enlightenment to understand the military mind more fully, especially concerning the soldier's emotional behaviour, his fears, his self-interest but also his longing for home and in general his 'emotional needs'. Emotions became a part of the soldier's sociability within the army, as the following account of a French lieutenant in the 1740s illustrates: 'The substance of an officer is his mind [l'esprit], his heart and his sentiments.…”

Courage, Honour, and Phlegm: A Study of Eighteenth‐Century Military Writers' Descriptions of Soldiers' Combat Emotions and Motivation

“…This is certainly a focus of Christy Pichichero's own research into the vast array of unpublished or obscure French military treatises surrounding the French enlightenment army, addressing the military psychology and social egalitarianism discussed in those less well-known works. 6 Where my work deviates from hers, and similar works by Bien and Bell, is that it is less focused upon a national analysis of French military culture, the literature's role as a process of reform in organization and efficacy, and the search for more egalitarian and humanitarian principles, aiming rather to look in European literature for the definitions of phrases such as courage and honour and the descriptions surrounding these words that motivated soldiers to fight during the eighteenth century. 7 A large part of these military treatises were written by authors who had either been or still were officers or generals in their respective armies and so likely had first-hand knowledge of the psychological conditions of their troops.…”