``After two years of civil war,'' writes Molinari, ``the Vendee was no more than a hideous heap of ruins.About 900,000 individuals--men, women, children, and aged people--had perished, and the small number of those who had escaped massacre could scarcely find food or shelter.The fields were devastated, the hedges and walls destroyed, and the houses burned.''
Besides their faith, which so often rendered them invincible, the soldiers of the Revolution had usually the advantage of being led by remarkable generals, full of ardour and formed on the battle-field.
The majority of the former leaders of the army, being nobles, had emigrated so that a new body of officers had to be organised.
The result was that those gifted with innate military aptitudes had a chance of showing them, and passed through all the grades of rank in a few months.Hoche, for instance, a corporal in 1789, was a general of division and commander of an army at the age of twenty-five.The extreme youth of these leaders resulted in a spirit of aggression to which the armies opposed to them were not accustomed.Selected only according to merit, and hampered by no traditions, no routine, they quickly succeeded in working out a tactics suited to the new necessities.
Of soldiers without experience opposed to seasoned professional troops, drilled and trained according to the methods in use everywhere since the Seven Years' War, one could not expect complicated manoeuvres.
Attacks were delivered simply by great masses of troops.Thanks to the numbers of the men at the disposal of their generals, the considerable gaps provoked by this efficacious but barbarous procedure could be rapidly filled.
Deep masses of men attacked the enemy with the bayonet, and quickly routed men accustomed to methods which were more careful of the lives of soldiers.The slow rate of fire in those days rendered the French tactics relatively easy of employment.It triumphed, but at the cost of enormous losses.It has been calculated that between 1792 and 1800 the French army left more than a third of its effective force on the battle-field (700,000men out of 2,000,000).
Examining events from a psychological point of view, we shall continue to elicit the consequences from the facts on which they are consequent.
A study of the revolutionary crowds in Paris and in the armies presents very different but readily interpreted pictures.
We have proved that crowds, unable to reason, obey simply their impulses, which are always changing, but we have also seen that they are readily capable of heroism, that their altruism is often highly developed, and that it is easy to find thousands of men ready to give their lives for a belief.
Psychological characteristics so diverse must naturally, according to the circumstances, lead to dissimilar and even absolutely contradictory actions.The history of the Convention and its armies proves as much.It shows us crowds composed of similar elements acting so differently in Paris and on the frontiers that one can hardly believe the same people can be in question.
In Paris the crowds were disorderly, violent, murderous, and so changeable in their demands as to make all government impossible.
In the armies the picture was entirely different.The same multitudes of unaccustomed men, restrained by the orderly elements of a laborious peasant population, standardised by military discipline, and inspired by contagious enthusiasm, heroically supported privations, disdained perils, and contributed to form that fabulous strain which triumphed over the most redoubtable troops in Europe.
These facts are among those which should always be invoked to show the force of discipline.It transforms men.Liberated from its influence, peoples and armies become barbarian hordes.
This truth is daily and increasingly forgotten.Ignoring the fundamental laws of collective logic, we give way more and more to shifting popular impulses, instead of learning to direct them.
The multitude must be shown the road to follow; it is not for them to choose it.
