The École Royale Militaire : Noble Education, Institutional Innovation, and Royal Charity, 1750-1788

This book explores the Paris __Ecole Militaire__ as an institution, arguing for its importance as a school that presented itself as a model for reform during a key moment in the movement towards military professionalism as well as state-run secular education. The school is distinguished for being an Enlightenment project, one of its founders publishing an article on it in the __Encyclopédie__ in 1755. Its curriculum broke completely with the Latin pedagogy of the dominant Jesuit system, while adapting the legacy of seventeenth-century riding academies. Its status touches on the nature of absolutism, as it was conceived to glorify the Bourbon dynasty in a similar way to the girls’ school at Saint Cyr and the Invalides. It was also a dispensary of royal charity calculated to ally the nobility more closely to royal interests through military service. In the army, its proofs of nobility were the model for the much debated 1781 Ségur decree, often described as a notable cause of the French Revolution. Front Matter ....Pages i-xvii The Paris Ecole Royale Militaire: An Introduction (Haroldo A. Guízar)....Pages 1-32 Financing and Administering the Ecole Militaire, 1750–1793: Its Origins, Evolution, and Demise (Haroldo A. Guízar)....Pages 33-78 Debating the Ecole Militaire: The School as an Institutional Solution to the Predicaments of the Nobility (Haroldo A. Guízar)....Pages 79-120 The Ecole Militaire’s Curriculum: Its Antecedents and Conception (Haroldo A. Guízar)....Pages 121-167 Testing Theory at the Ecole Militaire: The Implementation and Modification of Curricular Concepts, 1753–1785 (Haroldo A. Guízar)....Pages 169-216 Beneficent Paternalism: The Ecole Militaire as a Charitable Institution (Haroldo A. Guízar)....Pages 217-256 The Ecole Militaire: Some Conclusions (Haroldo A. Guízar)....Pages 257-263 Back Matter ....Pages 265-301