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

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.