La formation du discours militariste sous le directoire
Wolfgang Kruse
Annales Historique de la Revolution Francaise, 360 | avril-juin 2010
This article examines the representation of the relationship between the army of the Revolution and civil society in the political discourses used by the military and civilians between 1795 and 1799. It gives an account of the evolution of a plan for the domination of civil society by the military, considered as a prerequisite to the seizure of power by Bonaparte, and as a point of departure for modern militarism. This project comprised three stages, each characterized by a certain discourse, resulting in the rejection of the revolutionary concept of a civilian army : the development of a fundamental opposition between the military personnel of the Revolution and that of so-called degenerate civil society, the intense politisation of this opposition at the time of the « coup d’État » of Fructidor 1797, and the transformation of this thesis into a militarism having certain objectives at the time the war resumed in 1798 and 1799.