was so great as to produce the rigorous emergency methods of the Reign
of Terror, the combined enemies of the Republic had less than 300,000
men in the field between Basel and Dunkirk. On the other hand, the call
of the "country in danger" produced more than four times this number of
men for the French armies within a few months. Louis XIV., even when all
France had been awakened to warlike enthusiasm by a similar threat
(1709), had not been able to put in the field more than one-fifth of
this force. The methods of the great war minister Carnot were enforced
by the ruthless committee, and when men's lives were safer before the
bayonets of the allies than before the civil tribunals at home, there
was no difficulty in enlisting the whole military spirit of France.
There is therefore not much to be said as to the earliest application of
the conscription, at least as regards its formal working, since any
system possessing elasticity would equally have served the purpose. In
the meanwhile, the older plans of organization had proved inadequate for
dealing with such imposing masses of men. Even with disciplined soldiers
they had long been known as applicable only to small armies, and the
deficiencies of the French, with their consequences in tactics and
strategy, soon produced the first illustrations of modern methods.
Unable to meet the allies in the plain, they fought in broken ground and
on the widest possible front. This of course produced decentralization
and subdivision; and it became absolutely necessary that each detachment
on a front of battle 30 m. long (e.g. Stokach) should be properly
commanded and self-sufficing. The army was therefore constituted in a
number of _divisions_, each of two or more brigades with cavalry and
artillery sufficient for its own needs. It was even more important that
each divisional general, with his own staff, should be a real commander,
and not merely the supervisor of a section of the line of battle, for he
was almost in the position that a commander-in-chief had formerly held.
The need of generals was easily supplied when there was so wide a field
of selection. For the allies the mere adoption of new forms was without
result, since it was contrary both to tradition and to existing
organization. The attempts which were made in this direction did not
tend to mitigate the evils of inferior numbers and _moral_. The French
soon followed up the divisional system with the further organization of
groups of divisions under specially selected general officers; this
again quickly developed into the modern army corps.