Celibacy, Courage, and Hungry Wives: Debating Military Marriage and Citizenship in Pre-Revolutionary France
In: European history quarterly, Band 46, Heft 4, S. 647-667
ISSN: 1461-7110
Enlightenment reformers in France had very different visions about whether military men should marry. In one view, acting as a good soldier and citizen drew on new models of masculine virility, and required separating oneself entirely from the restraints of domestic life. Conversely, being a soldier-citizen could mean building on changing ideas of domestic virtue and respectability, combining a patriotic obligation to fight with responsibility to family. The marital status of soldiers provided a potent flash point for negotiating these tensions, while also engaging with pragmatic questions of providing for dependents, promoting military efficiency, and reinforcing population and state power.