The Military Enlightenment: War and Culture in the French Empire from Louis XIV to Napoleon by Christy Pichichero (review)

In a world full of hyperbole, it is no exaggeration to say that this is one of the most important books I will ever likely review. Christy Pichichero has produced a tour de force of elegance, breadth, and sophistication that is rare to find even from the pen of a senior scholar, never mind in the pages of a first book. While it is true to say that some of those working in depth on the Enlightenment know of the importance of military matters and military men in the life of the mind of the eighteenth century, and those working on the armed forces in this period have long been aware of a far greater propensity for reflection by sailors and soldiers on war and military institutions compared to previous centuries, even for these groups of scholars this book forces an alteration of perspective. Pichichero brings together some of the great themes of military culture, military reform, and the Enlightenment, injecting them with her own detailed research and perspectives, and uses debates over war and the armed forces of France as a lens through which to view the transformative cultural changes of the eighteenth century, thereby forcing us to place the armed forces at the center of the Enlightenment. The significance of this emphasis and the book’s analysis is that all those researching or teaching these fields must reckon with the “Military Enlightenment” that Pichichero compellingly presents. Pichichero shows that military men—and some civilian thinkers, including women—were an integral part of the shift long deemed the essence of the Enlightenment in France: the shifting of primary emphasis in intellectual enquiry away from literature, morals, theology, and natural philosophy to broader, deeper questioning of the human condition and society. The Military Enlightenment additionally demonstrates that to register the involvement of these military men in this secularizing shift is to come to see that the French Enlightenment, with its strong whiff of anti-clerical activity, saw the laity playing a far greater part in the formal and informal education of the king’s subjects than has been recognized. As Pichichero puts it, participants in her Military Enlightenment “applied a critical philosophical spirit” to better understand war and the military. Military officers were active participants in and receptive passive recipients of Enlightened culture, while civilian writers and intellectuals grappled with issues of war and the military. Both groups, and especially military intellectuals, played their mutually shaping parts.

But if one sees the Enlightenment as also being about progress and the pursuit of happiness, is not the expression “Military Enlightenment” an oxymoron, as Voltaire seemed to opine? Pichichero’s detailed exploration of the many facets of this phenomenon—and some areas she omits—indicate the ambivalence of the eighteenth century’s quest for more effective and efficient armed forces in France (and elsewhere, such as Austria). To start with the omissions, her brief discussions of military atrocities against civilians and pressure on campaign areas could have been expanded, and what there is raises the question whether the Military Enlightenment was concerned with humanity and sensibilité primarily within the army and navy, even if by no means exclusively so. But perhaps this is a case of practice lagging well behind theory and prescription about the way civilians should be treated? In addition, had the book explored the artillery and associated technological developments, one might be led to think that the best brains in the armed forces were focused on ways of killing more men and horses more efficiently, using science and the emerging study of tactics to achieve greater mobility and firepower. But stopping with the technology and the arts of tactics and strategy—undoubtedly part of the Enlightenment world of rational enquiry, secular learning, and categorization—would not do justice to the cultural world of thinking by and about the military that Pichichero...