New Ways to Remember Fontenoy:
The Professionalisation of Soldiering in Eighteenth-Century France

Trinity College’s Centre for War Studies is delighted to welcome Professor Hervé Drévillon to deliver a seminar on the theme of ‘New Ways to Remember Fontenoy: The Professionalisation of Soldiering in Eighteenth-Century France’.  The seminar is organised under the auspices of the Centre for War Studies and funded with support from the Trinity Long Room Hub and the French Embassy in Dublin.  This seminar will take place at a date to be confirmed in Hilary Term.

Professor Drévillon’s paper will explore the evolution of the French army in social and cultural terms during the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV and will address themes such as the professionalisation of soldiering, the construction of military identity and civil-military relations over the course of the eighteenth-century.

Professor Drévillon is Professor of Modern History at the Université de Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and chargé de mission at the Institut des Sciences Humaines et Sociales of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) where he is principal investigator on a major inter-disciplinary and inter-institutional research programme, La Construction du militaire 1450-1850.  He has published extensively on the political and cultural history of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France and his books include L’Impôt du Sang: le métier des armes sous Louis XIV (Paris, 2005) and Croiser le fer: violence et culture de l’épée dans la France moderne: XVIe-XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 2002).

Funding Bodies