Levee en Masse

[Megas Methuselah]

How do you think Empires will portray Levee en Masse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev%C3%A9e_en_masse), which was arguably first introduced during the French Revolution?

As a result of this Levee en Masse, a mass conscription of able-bodied men and a sort of total war in a state, armies typically increased dramatically in size, while their training and disciplined became somewhat weaker. Napoleon marched into Russia with half a million men, an insane size compared to armies earlier in Empires' period in history.

:crowngrin:

[Mikeus Caesar]

If it does portray it, it shouldn't be too hard. Just allow to choose the option for units to be Levee en Masse style when you're building them. If they are LeM, then they should be double the size, but also with penalties. Perhaps lower buildtimes as well.

[GMaximus]

Maybe after a revolution, if you side with the rebels and conquer at least 80% of the former Royalist territory, for several turns you can recruit larger-than-usual, 0 buildtime new units that are more prone to routing out of a square (or pillar, or w/e was that thing called...) formation.

[anders]

I didnt know the quality of the mass consripted french forces were significantly lower than that of other forces, so just figured the french would have more availabele manpower and be able to raise more infantry than others. if the quality difference is significant there should be special cheap "mass-levied" units available in big numbers, with lower than usual build time.

[GMaximus]

I'm not quite sure, but I believe that the French levied infantry was of a lower quality than the professionals of other nations, which was, according to my big book o' wars, one of the reasons they fought in columns - the tightly packed formations supposedly gave the soldiers a greater sense of security.

[anders]

conscripts of course tend to be poorer quality than pros, but I thought the french infantry were second only to the brits, and in personal initiative, motivation and close combat were second to none.

there might be some big holes in my history knowledge, but I thought the levee en masse were the whole idea of the revolutionary french army, the idea of every able-bodied man being a candidate for being drafted thus increasing manpower, not the idea of poorly training and armin everyone in a hurry and sending them out as cannon fodder.

ie as far as I understand all non-elite/non-specialist french inf were levee en masse, but no poorer troops because of that.

[CBR]

It was just used in the early part of the Revolutionary Wars in a time of crisis. As the army more or less went from IIRC 150,000 to 750,000 men and by 1794 had lost 87% of its officers who had been active in 1789 it was indeed a very green army.

Records show both a shorter average height and younger age of the soldiers compared to the old army.


CBR

[Megas Methuselah]

It was just used in the early part of the Revolutionary Wars in a time of crisis.

Are you sure? Exactly how was Napoleon and his enemies able to raise vast amounts of troops?
(I know this sounds sarcastic, but it's not. I'm just curious about all this.)

[CBR]

The Levée en masse introduced the concept on universal conscription as was used in Napoleonic times so you could say it was the same thing. But the Levée en masse was an emergency decree that called in all unmarried men of age 18-25 which meant a huge boost in numbers and such a boost did not happen afterwards.

The army that invaded Russia was IIRC something like 500-600,000 men but only about a third was ethnic French. The rest were either from non-french parts of the Empire or from allied states. of course there were lots of French troops in Spain and at home so overall France still had many men under arms.

For other nations. I think Austria had some limited conscription but never went the whole way to universal conscription. Prussia did introduce it in 1813. Russia had basically been conscripting their poor serfs for ages but can't remember if they changed service time.


CBR