All the gods having decided to marry, each one took the woman that fate had assigned to him. The god of War (Polemos), having stayed for the last draw, found only the goddess of Excess (Hybris). He fell madly in love with her and married her. That is why he accompanies her wherever she goes. Wherever immoderation appears, in a city or among nations, war and battle follow her" 1.

"1 "It is said everywhere that war today is becoming the most learned thing of all, that we need scholars... War, as long as it is war and we risk our lives in it, will always be essentially a matter of instinct.

"Contrary to conventional American wisdom, the French liked to fight. I accompanied them when they, Afghan troops and a handful of Americans invaded a Taliban-held valley. Despite comments from people who have no actual experience with them, French troops don't run from a contact. They like to advance toward the enemy and shoot. A lot" 3.

Europe has experienced, both on its own soil and outside its geographical area, 125 major conflicts since the Battle of Fornoua in 1495. France has been one of the main belligerents in 49 of them. It fought 185 battles during this period and won 132 of them, giving its armies the record for victories in Europe, far ahead of the United Kingdom and Germany. As Michel Audiard, a dialogue writer, humorously put it to one of his characters, the French are very unique in war. "My dear Ludwig, you know little about the French. We have the complex of freedom, it dates back to 89. We slit the throats of half of Europe in the name of that principle. Ever since Napoleon crushed Poland, we can't stand anyone doing it for us. It would make us feel frustrated" 4. The historian François Cochet underlines it more seriously in a recent book 5, the French say they love peace, but do not hesitate to often engage in armed conflicts.

The French therefore often go to war. They generally do it well, with a certain constancy and, as a legacy of their geography and history, in a singular way. This continuity and particularism is true throughout their military history, from Gergovie to Gao, through Fornoue, Valmy, Austerlitz, the Marne, Bir-Hakeim, Chipyong-ni, the Vrbajna bridge and the Alasay valley.

This article offers a brief overview of this specificity of the French fighting spirit, mainly as it was represented in This article offers a brief overview of this specificity of the French fighting spirit, mainly as it has been represented since the end of the 19th century; but also of its limits and its excesses; and above all of what it can and should really cover today.

After failing in his attempt to occupy Naples during the First Italian War, King Charles VIII withdrew to France with his army in the summer of 1495. The League of Venice opposed him at Fornoue on July 6, forbidding him to cross the Alps. Faced with a coalition far outnumbered, the French managed to counter-attack and, against all expectations, to shake up the opposing forces. The courage and ardour of the French troops, led by the king himself, were highlighted by Italian chroniclers, who spoke of a veritable "war of conquest". furia francese. The expression would flourish over the following centuries, serving to exalt the irresistible impetus of French troops in combat when they were well commanded.

After the defeats of 1870-1871, which were attributed to the defensive spirit of the imperial army, military authors and partisans of revenge highlighted this intrepidity characteristic of the French soldier inciting him to rush naturally towards danger by playing with his life, thus justifying the dogma of the excessive offensive of before 1914. Influenced by a partial, if not biased, reading of the writings of Ardant du Picq, the fashion for "moral forces" led to the belief that victory could only be won by the one whose will to win was the strongest. "To win, one must break the opponent's fighting mechanism by force. This requires attacks that are carried to the end, without ulterior motive; it can only be achieved at the cost of bloody sacrifices. ...] The offensive alone leads to positive results. Successes in war have always been won by generals who wanted and sought battle; those who have suffered it have always been defeated" 6. Without totally questioning this dogma, a few officers nevertheless, including Lieutenant-Colonel Pétain and Colonel Lanrezac, then professors at the École supérieure de guerre, were concerned about the lack of real tactical thinking marking the pre-1914 doctrine. In particular, they criticised the code of military instruction of 1901, which advocated charging in large units, bayonet atthe barrel7, and instead advocated manoeuvre, material power, movement and initiative. Addressing Marshal Pétain in 1931, Paul Valéry emphasised this discrepancy between pre-war doctrine and the reality of modern combat experienced from the summer of 1914. "You have discovered this: that lhe fire kills...I won't say it was ignored until you. We were only inclined to want to ignore it. How could it be? - It's that theories can only ever be built at the expense of reality, and there's no area where theories...ories are more necessary than in the field of preparation for war, where one must imagine the practice in order to be able to establish the precept.

How can we explain such a gap between French military thought before 1914, which was, moreover, very widely shared by all Western nations, and the reality of industrial warfare, which was nonetheless foreshadowed by the feedback from the Civil War, the Boer War and the Russo-Japanese conflict? As the military chronicler Régi- nald Kann observed in 1905, a debate exists, however, opposing "two opinions or schools of thought: the new school which proceeds by envelopment, and the "historical" school which employs the mass on a decisive point; for the first, the great means of action is fire; for the second, it is shock. 9 It is the second school, embodied by Generals Langlois and Bonnal, the latter then director of the École supérieure de guerre, that finally won the day. The conception of military operations in France was at the time undoubtedly based on warlike virtues, already identified in antiquity and supposedly inherent to the French soldier. Courage, daring, physical strength, discipline and esprit de corps alone enabled the troop charging or receiving an assault to give the troop sufficient mass to dislocate an enemy device, or on the contrary to absorb it. The courage described by most of the philosophers of antiquity is synonymous with virility. Socrates said that the brave man is "one who stands without fear in the presence of a noble death, or some imminent peril that may bring death. 10 This quality is, according to him, a balance between cowardice and recklessness, sometimes found among certain peoples such as the Celts who fear only the fall from heaven. 11 He thus emphasizes that this uncontrollable recklessness can be dangerous and give rise to great excesses. "Moreover, he who fears absolutely nothing, neither earthquakes nor floods from the rising sea, could only be a man in madness, or completely insensitive, as the Celts are said to be. 12 Celtic audacity was also put forward by Caesar, both to give unity to his Western conquests, but also to value his successes.

"The inhabitants of the Gauls have always been more at war than men, especially in the first shock. These warlike qualities of the Gallic people were particularly highlighted at the end of the 19th century, when Renan, Bainville, Vidal de La Blache and Lavisse gave birth to the national novel that France so badly needed at the end of the 1870 war. "You will see that [your fathers] shed their blood in glorious battles for the honour of France among all nations. You will learn what you owe to your fathers, and why your first duty is to love above all else your homeland, the land of your fathers. The warlike spirit of the French people was thus personified through the figures of Vercingetorix, Clovis, Joan of Arc and Napoleon, while the battles of Gergovia (52 BC - 1850) and the Battle of the Bulge (1850 - 1850) were the most important in the history of the French people.C.), Poitiers (that of 732 and not that of 1356), Bouvines (1214), Marignan (1515), Valmy (1792) and Austerlitz (1805) became the high warrior places of the French people in arms. At a time when confrontations with knives, swords or bayonets, on foot or on horseback, were still perceived as the norm, the romantic figure of the soldier and his faithful "blade" triumphing in hand-to-hand combat became firmly rooted in the minds of the public. The historian Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau also points out that "before the implementation of modern weaponry, Western soldiers fought "upright bodies" on the battlefield. This posture was dictated to them by their weapon, the powder rifle, which could only be reloaded standing up. ...] This upright position was certainly imposed on the soldier by the technological conditions of combat, but it was also highly valued and rewarding in the eyes of the actors themselves. ...] For in the extreme danger of the battlefield, one stood upright. Physically, of course, but also morally" 15. 15 Epinal's imagery thus contributed to building the myth of the French combatant throughout this century, with its qualitiess martial qualities and furia francese, and to inscribe it in the collective unconscious as the most perfect illustration of the soul and of all French values.

Moreover, the memory of the revolutionary and Napoleonic campaigns, carried in particular by the studies of the Swiss Jomini and the Prussian Clausewitz, reinforced this perception among most French military thinkers at the end of the 19th century. In the French cultural and doctrinal representations of the time, the combat was thus often reduced to its paroxysmal phase, that of the assault. Since antiquity, combat has been essentially associated with the choc, in contact with the opponent, going as far as hand-to-hand combat and stabbing duels. The practice of such an act requires the strengthening of individual and collective qualities (physical strength, moral strength, discipline) based on a temporary denial of the deep social, cultural and psychological springs of compassion, respect for the lives of others and, above all, the survival instinct. This denial is expressed in its most total forms by the absolute negation of the humanity of the adversary, but also by a form of transcendence.This denial is expressed in its most total forms by the absolute negation of the adversary's humanity, but also by a form of individual transcendence acquired through death in combat, making it possible to overcome fear, astonishment and the unspeakable instinct of destruction, which are consubstantial with the extreme violence of the situations encountered. Aristotle thus asserts that "the noblest form of death is that which one encounters in war in the midst of the greatest of dangers. 16 However, this representation is both the origin and the consequence of murderous ideological, strategic and tactical constructs that lead to death.the Crécy (1346), Poitiers (1356) and Azincourt (1415) disasters, to the heroic but useless charges of the Marguerite division in Sedan in September 1870 and to the severe setbacks of the summer of 1914. The single battle of the frontiers on 22 August, during which 27,000 Frenchmen were killed in a single day, is one of the most striking examples. Western strategists and staffs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had underestimated the power of industrial fire and its multiplication by manoeuvre. The power of the air weapon, the quasi-surgical precision of artillery, that of missiles and, in fine, nuclear fire, seem today to have put a definitive end to the predominance of shock.

However, while the primacy of fire seems to be the dominant feature of modern warfare, it is by no means the only key to success. For fire, especially when it is indirect and practised at a safe distance (stand-off), does not allow permanent control of the earth's environment, especially human. History, and more particularly recent Western interventions, have shown that fire alone does not allow strategic victory, let alone guarantee lasting peace. In spite of all the technological and cultural ruptures that have affected combat from the Neolithic period to the present day, its essential components remain today and will most likely remain so for a long time to come: shock, fire, manoeuvre,adaptation to adversity and contingency management . Only their combination is likely to vary. The disappointments of the summer of 1914 thus proved that the warrior spirit could not be confined to the sole aptitude for shock. The continuation of the conflict showed that, on the contrary, this state of mind had to change profoundly and rapidly. It was thus gradually characterized by moral, if not spiritual17 , and intellectual dispositions that allowed the combatant, whatever his level of responsibility, to both lead and toto both lead and endure the shock, to deliver and bear the fire, to combine the two when the opportunity presented itself in order to maneuver and especially to be able to counter in the long term the uncertainty characterizing the combat in all its manifestations.

Endurance,hardinessand resilience were thereforeadded tothe qualities needed not only by the combatants of the Great War, but also by the civilians in the rear and the political leaders. The jump off the Marne in September 1914, but especially the Battle of Verdun from February 1916, are perfect illustrations of this polymorphous and shared state of mind that allowed the whole country to adapt quickly to the changing and unpredictable nature of war. To use Clausewitz's metaphor: "war is a chameleon". The warrior spirit must therefore be able to adapt to each new context and each confrontation with new forms of adversity, new technological, cultural or tactical ruptures. It is exactly this adaptability, psychological as well as ideological and operational, that enabled the victory of 1918 that we are celebrating this year. In an article published in 1925, at a time when the doctrine of the French army was being renewed after the war, a trainee of the École supérieure de guerre, Captain Charles de Gaulle, nevertheless warned his contemporaries against the return of an approach that was too conceptual and dissociated from the real nature of war. He thus called for "this taste for the concrete, this gift of measure, this sense of reality that enlightens boldness, inspires maneuvering and makes action fruitful. 18 The turn of events in 1939 and the defeat of 1940 proved him right, showing that failure systematically stems from the discrepancy between a nation's moral ability to wage war, its military doctrine and the reality of the commitment to combat.

It would be inept, however, to deny or merely undermine the importance of contact combat. Shock (potential or actual) is a necessary evil. As the Emperor put it in a flowery manner, "in war as in love, to end it all, we must see each other up close" 19. 19 This is also what a Swiss military historian, Colonel Daniel Reichel, reminded us very pertinently in the early 1980s. According to him, "the primary, absolutely fundamental element of combat is shock" 20. 20 Fire and manoeuvre "are the necessary complements, of course, but only shock, ultimately, gives them their effectiveness". Yet, as Ardant du Picq notes, shock remains extremely rare in the history of warfare. Indeed, generally either a troop charged by another disintegrates and flees in panic before the collision, or on the contrary it holds firm and it is the assailant who retreated before coming into contact. To be convinced of this, it should be noted that the part actually occupied by hand-to-hand combat is not commensurate with its place in the imagination. Thus, during the period 1792-1815, the bayonet was responsible for only 4.5% of known injuries among French veterans. During the American Civil War, only 1% of victims suffered bayonet injuries. However, the First World War still saw its use during assault, supplemented by the use of knives, shovels, handguns, grenades and flame-throwers, which were more effective in the confined space of a trench. Captain de Gaulle was thus wounded in the thigh by bayonet in 1916 in the Douaumont sector. However, according to the statistics of the army health service, stabbing losses did not exceed 0.9% in 1914 and disappeared in 1917. These observations, however, only imperfectly reflect the reality of contact combat. Indeed, Reichel did not limit himself to the simple kinetic aspect. He also includes the psychological effect induced, leading "to paralyse the will and the reflexes of defence", "a sort of brutal and sordid revelation, according to which the situation would be hopeless". The real purpose of the shock is therefore the perception of the adversary and not his physical integrity. This stunning effect can be achieved by an assault, but it can also be achieved by "fire, or the threat of fire", which is in this respect "an extension of the shock".

The battles fought in February 1951 by theKorean Battalion east of Seoul in the Wonju area in February 1951. During an action led by the 2nd American infantry division commanded by General Ridgway, under whose orders the French were placed, Lieutenant Colonel Monclar 21's volunteers distinguished themselves during very violent fighting at Chipyong-ni. "Shortly after midnight the deafening sound of whistles and bugles signaled the initial Chinese attack. This first attack was met and defeated by Monclar's French battalion in close hand-to-hand fighting. The heroic French confused the Chinese raiders by cranking their own sirens before charging with fixed bayonets howling all the way - the Chinese were rattled and they turned and fled. The Korean Battalion will always be remembered for the legendary bayonet charge at Chipyong-ni. The spirited defense set the tone for the rest of the defenders of Chipyong-ni that night. During the engagement, the French naturally fixed their bayonets before the exchange of fire and used them when hand-to-hand combat finally came to the fore. It was during one of these assaults that Lieutenant Gildas Lebeurier, wearing a red headscarf to train his men, stood out under the stunned gaze of American journalists. Observers had the impression that the Chinese soldiers were more afraid of the bayonets they could see than the bullets they could not see. General Ridgway is quoted as saying: "The bayonet may not be the last secret weapon of the United Nations army, but it has undeniable aggressive power. I have heard of the bayonet twice in the Korean War, once from the Turks, once from the French. All units will be reminded that this instrument was not invented just to open cans. 23 Monclar, for his part, felt that the importance of the bayonet was exaggerated, but he recognized its eminent psychological effect, both for his men at the height of the fighting and for the adversary, paralyzed by French counter-attacks as brutal as they were unexpected. Thus, even in a modern engagement where firepower undeniably dominates, the ability to shock,both mechanical and psychological, remains the essential factor, although not sufficient, to counter adversity and the difficulty of regulating uncertainty and fear, and ultimately to control the environment. This is exactly what the definition of pugnacity covers.

Carrying or enduring shock and fire simultaneously over time thus requires particular individual qualities. Without them, there is no mastery of what instinct, fear, fatigue, discomfort and the unleashing of violence command in the most extreme situations. Henry Morel-Journel described in 1922 what became of an assault at the end of the Great War: "A bayonet charge is a bunch of frightened people, throwing themselves forward, closing their eyes and clutching their weapons to their chests. 25 Courage, pugnacity, hardiness and self-control, in addition to being innate and persistent virtues, are unlikely to be taught. Resulting from a combination of complex and little-known contextual and biological influences, faculties that can strengthen the ideal warrior spirit remain difficult, even hazardous, to distinguish. French historians of the 14-18 war are often divided into two schools: those who consider that the combatants 'consented' to the sacrifice out of patriotism and those for whom the 'poilus' were 'forced' in many ways 26. Without entering into this polemic of historians whose respective arguments remain coherent and convincing, we can however try to draw up, not a typology, but a characterisation of the combatant throughout the 20th century. Indeed, it would be pointless to attempt a typology because such a categorization would not reflect, unless it is caricatured, either the diversity of behaviour in fire, or the fact that men remain, without exception, fallible, sensitive to the wear and tear of combat, and very often inconsistent. As Joseph Conrad describes it very well in his novel Lord Jim 27, thesameindividual can behave heroically at the same time.in one moment and totally fail in the next, regardless of his will and initial qualities. The opposite also occurs, as Ernst Jünger reports, referring to his own experience in Storms of Steel 28.

Thus, forsome , thefight was indeed most certainly suffered and lived in a mainly passive way . It is, however, abusive to reduce these fighters to mere forced subjects, as the reality is undoubtedly much more complex. Many young Frenchmen enlisted or anticipated the call because of a sense of duty, patriotism, or simply because they had a taste for the "good life".adventure throughout the 20th century, only to discover, as circumstances dictated, that they were not adapted to the harsh conditions of combat. The French Expeditionary Force in Indochina, although only made up of volunteers, experienced its share of desertions and defections in the face of the enemy, as shown by the case of the "rats of Nam Youn" at Dien Bien Phu. The share of these passive fighters is indisputable but remains difficult to evaluate. In his study on Combat 29, Colonel Michel Goya estimates that they could represent in certain circumstances up to 80% of the fighting mass. This figure may seem considerable but seems to be well supported by the demonstration and examples provided by the historian. Without necessarily going as far as desertion, except to save their lives, these individuals generally did not constitute actors likely to play a decisive role in the conduct of operations. Moreover, they were generally not among those, relatively few in number in relation to the number of personnel involved, who were involved in the mutinies of 1917. Nonetheless, during the First World War, these combatants showed extraordinary stamina to endure the ordeals they were confronted with.

For others, the sacred mission of defending their country and fulfilling their civic duty was sufficient individualresilience to accept the discomfort, the proximity to violence, and the possibility of death or injury. According to the mass of correspondence and testimonies of these actors, this state of mind probably animated the most common case during the two world conflicts. The refusal of defeat and the spirit of resistance embodied by the first Free Frenchmen, then by figures who were diametrically opposed ideologically, such as Jean Moulin, François de La Rocque, Pierre Georges, known as "Colonel Fabien", or Honoré d'Estienne d'Orves, also illustrate remarkably well what a civic commitment pushed to the ultimate sacrifice can be.

This general framework being established, it is no less simplistic, given the diversity of backgrounds and the deep motivations of each fighter, to the detriment of the other.The general framework being established, it is nevertheless simplistic, given the diversity of the backgrounds and deep motivations of each combatant, to try to confine them to distinct and well-defined categories, as if the state of mind of these soldiers were not to vary over the course of the trials. One is thus inclined to think that warrior qualities could be altered or developed collectively and be strengthened before and then at the very heart of the action. For many combatants, including today, war can be experienced as a means of giving meaning to their lives and of finding a form of transcendence through identification with a group, especially in hindsight. Combat and its preparation, by allowing the partial erasing of social boundaries, strongly encourages the emergence of specific bonds such as comradeship, solidarity and esprit de corps. Moreover, the confrontation with violence, danger, death and mourning usually gives rise to a powerful identity factor.

That of a sense of pride and belonging to a very closed community of warriors capable of sacrificing themselves for a cause, an ideal, or even simply for a way of life. This state of mind can sometimes even be exalted in the writings of certain authors such as the historian Dominique Venner: "Men of war come from another time, from another sky. They are the last followers of an austere religion. That of courage and death. They are the kind who shave themselves to die. They believe in man's redemption through the virtue of exercise and rhythmic stride. They cultivate physical fitness and good looks. They have the luxury of early awakenings in icy mornings and harrowing walks for the joy of testing themselves. They are the last poets of absolute gratuity" 30. 30 This quasi-priestly feeling is all the stronger when it is recognized by specific decorations that allow the warrior to be distinguished from the common man. This is what Monclar points out when he notes that "rewards are a strong, powerful stimulus to morale" 31. 31 An aphorism taken from a work by Coppola at the end of the 1980s, today often taken up by young French veterans, testifies to this need for singularization felt by those who have experienced fire: "To us and to those of our race! And there are no more masses of them! "» 32 . 32 Moreover, the maintenance oftraditions , ceremonial rites (kepi handing over, taking up arms, awarding decorations) and body specificities, Camerone's celebrations for thegionnaires, Bazeilles for the colonials, Sidi-Brahim for the hunters, and weapons festivals, far from being survivals of the past, contribute to the maintenance of this powerful factor of integration and identification of individuals with a singular group.

This phenomenon of identity can also be explained by the latent need of each combatant to give a higher meaning to the experience of war, to find a justification for sacrifices and losses. Finally, a last type of combatant stands out in all conflicts, that ofabsolute warriors. Those for whom combat serves as an individual revelation and during which they are able to take advantage of their extraordinary qualities. One immediately thinks of Conan, the fictional character of Roger Vercel33 , but the formidable fighters who were Georges Guynemer, Ernst Jünger, Marcel Bigeard, Roger Vandenberghe, among so many others, are not the only ones to be considered as absolute warriors.others, show over and over again that simple citizens who were not predestined to take up arms can sometimes be called upon to become exceptional soldiers. For them, the end of the fighting is a much more difficult ordeal than the combat experience. This is what journalist Éric Deschodt describes in his biography of Captain Claude Barrès. 34 "The stunning peace evoked by de Gaulle fell on France and life lost its meaning. Everything has to be done, built and rebuilt. But there are masons for that and the SAS do not see themselves as masons. They don't like it, they don't know, they only want to fight. They contracted this madness during the war". This feeling was shared by many French and German veterans after the First World War, giving rise to the emergence of a major historiographical concept in the 1990s, that of brutalization 35. 35 This is the meaning of this quotation attributed to Ernst von Salomon: "Kinder, Geniesst Den Krieg... Der Friede Wird Fürchterlich" 36. As a consequence of the trivialization of violence and the sacralization of the war experience, this brutalization is said to have contributed to the rise of European totalitarianism during the inter-war period.

Beyond individual qualities and martial postures alone, the role of leaders, whoare also not spared from uncertainty, discomfort, fear and astonishment, is essential to animate and maintain the necessary momentum and cohesion at crucial moments. In addition to designing and then leading the action, the essential role of a leader is to give it meaning and purpose at all times, especially after it is completed. This is emphasized by the philosopher Alain, whose real name is Émile-Auguste Chartier, who, although he is exempt and in spite of his pacifist convictions, does not have the right to be a leader.He did not hesitate to enlist in 1914, not supporting the idea of remaining in the rear when the best were sent to the front. "Military art is exercised beyond what man can want. At the moment when the human forces are at their limit, one must still march; at the moment when the position is no longer tenable, one must still hold on. In these men crushed by inexorable forces, it is therefore necessary to find the means to make the last convulsions that will give victory stand out". To deny the fundamental role of the leader in combat, whatever his rank, and to assimilate all the combatants into a coherent mass with its own will is therefore not only absurd, but also constitutes a fundamental denial of historical facts. The recapture of the Vrbanja bridge in May 1995, asrecountedby Lieutenant Bruno Héluin 38 and theaccount ofits unit commander, Captain François Lecointre, are in this respect quite revealing of the role of the chief and what he himself may experience during the action. "The precise moment when I ultimately measure what it's going to be like... What I measure well is fear too. Because I'm beginning to understand what's going to happen. The moment I measure what's going to happen and how close it's going to be, is the moment when the order is given to put the bayonets on the guns.

39 Whether as a contact officer or in charge of the conduct of operations at the highest level, the military leader remains indispensable in guiding and supervising action. Indeed, it is also another major ideological and historical misconception to seek to dissociate senior military officials from the fighting troop by denying their essential role in the success or failure of operations. Accounting before the nation for the lives of the men under their command, it is to put them on trial for obscuring their capacity to instil combativeness and the will to win, if only through the confidence they inspire. It is also to refute, out of ignorance or intellectual dishonesty, that before being great leaders, they have generally been part of this fighting mass. The suddenness of the French expeditionary force in Indochina at the end of 1950 with the appointment of General de Lattre de Tassigny 40, wounded five times during the Great War, is particularly evocative of these aspects. The President of the Council, Georges Clemenceau, was not mistaken either, when he designated Foch as Generalissimo in 1917: "I said to myself: let's try Foch! At least we will die with the rifle in our hands! I left that sensible, sane man Pétain; I adopted that madman Foch. It's the madman who got us out of there! "» 41. 41 Finally, it is appropriate to note that Foch and de Lattre each lost a son, killed to the enemy, which puts into perspective the grievance commonly made to the high military hierarchy of the time, to disregard the losses suffered.

On the other hand, in its most extreme drifts, the uncontrolled warrior spirit potentially leads to a dangerous distancing from the reIn contrast, in its most extreme aberrations, the uncontrolled warrior spirit potentially leads to a dangerous distancing from reality, leading to the trivialization of losses, useless if not counter-productive violence, and in the worst cases, behavioural aberrations or even exactions. The phenomenon of brutalization was in fact already evoked by Clausewitz with what he called absolute war (absoluter Krieg). The Prussian strategist decomposed this notion through what he called an "astonishing / remarkable trinity" by highlighting in the war "[...] the original violence of its element, the hatred and animosity, which is the basis of the war, and which is the basis of the war itself....] the original violence of its element, hatred and animosity, which must be considered as a blind natural impulse, then the play of probability and chance which makes it a free activity of the soul, and its subordinate nature as an instrument of politics, by which it belongs to pure understanding. The first of these three aspects is of particular interest to the people, the second to the commander and his army, and the third to the government. 42 This concept thus puts the three vertices of a triangle in permanent relationship: first the people and their passions, then the army, its character and effectiveness, and finally the state and its political objectives. Clausewitz thus reminds us that war is above all a political instrument. It is merely a continuation of political relations between several competitors.

War does not therefore suspend relations with the adversary or adversaries, who remain the interlocutors of a political dialogue, which occasionally takes a violent and armed form. In this dialectic of wills, the primary goal remains to exhaust the will of the opponent - interlocutor by making him/her realize the improbability of success or its exorbitant cost. It is therefore up to the political decision-maker, as much as to the military leader, to show the nation's determination to a fair degree and to resume negotiations once the military objectives have been achieved. The spirit of war must therefore be understood through the prism of the Clausewitzian trinity. There can be no coherent warrior spirit without the expression of political will. As Marc Bloch forcefully points out, "the powerlessness of our government to honestly define its war aims",43 without entirely clearing the military leaders of the time, is one of the fundamental causes of the 1940 disaster. This moral disposition must therefore be framed and measured against clearly fixed political ambitions, since from this warlike spirit will eventually flow the use of force necessary and strictly sufficient to achieve these objectives.

In other words, the philosopher Monique Castillo clearly describes the problems arising from the Clausewitzian analysis of the phenomenon of war. She stresses the responsibility incumbent both on the person who, in a democracy, decides on the use of armed violence, but also on the military leader, who has the role of supervising the furia francese in action. "Force is our responsibility; it is not a material instrument to be used at will; it needs solidarity, ethicality and even spirituality. It needs solidarity, ethics and even spirituality, for it is a figure of culture that returns to violence when it "naturalizes" itself, that is to say, when it naturalizes justice, honor or dignity by transforming them into unbridled physical violence. Europeans learned this at their expense in the wars of the still recent past. At that time, voices tried to make themselves heard to say that peace is the blossoming of strength. Peace, true peace, is not a weak state where man resigns. Nor is it a reservoir that is indifferent to the good or the bad. It is strength" 44.

44 The spirit of warfare is thus constitutive of the first principle of war, that of freedom of action, the key to political and strategic authority and to the ability to weigh sufficiently on the will of the enemy to deprive him of it. Twenty-five centuries ago, Thucydides already stated that "the strength of the city is not in its vessels or its ramparts, but in the character of its citizens".45 The strength of the city is not in its vessels or its ramparts, but in the character of its citizens. 45 The soldiers who fell at Valmy, on the Chemin des Dames, at Bir-Hakeim, the resistance fighters of the Maquis du Vercors, and those killed at Uzbin were not victims but citizens who fell in defence of the values and security of their country. This warrior spirit cannot and must not be the prerogative of the soldier alone. Such a state of affairs would once again and for a long time act as a dissociation between a nation and its army. The development of an above-ground warrior spirit, decorated with political ambition and today's societal realities, would be at best a mistake, at worst a new path to military failure. This moral stance is indeed above all a common heritage. It is rooted in representations, a particularly rich history, geography, mentality and values specific to our society.

At a time when nuclear power is being systematically circumvented and Western technological superiority is being challenged by adversaries using hybrid modes of action, it is the guarantee of a renewed deterrent capability. Indeed, this posture makes it possible to affirm a nation's determination to commit itself to hand-to-hand combat and symbolically to the point of stabbing, in order to defend its values and way of life. It is therefore likely to make a powerful contribution to discouraging the adversary from acting, making him doubt his ability to win, making him give up. The reactions of the French people as a whole after the attacks of January and November 2015 show that their combativeness and determination, even today, are not just a figment of their minds. However, like national identity, the warrior spirit is neither decreed nor taught. When it comes to values, it can only be transmitted through genuine civic education and non-exclusive memorization, free of outdated ideological garments that are harmful to national cohesion. The studies currently being carried out on the future universal national service therefore naturally raise the question of the necessary synergies to be established between the national education system and the armed forces in order to promote the transmission of these values. In addition to its purely national aspect, the stakes are high, because far from being a sign of a retreat into identity, the strengthening of this French warrior spirit may, on the contrary, constitute the necessary ferment for the development of a true European defence spirit that is so slow to assert itself.

1 Aesop (570-526 B.C.), Fables, The God of War and Excess (fable 319), re-edited. Editions de la Tonnelle, 2017.

2 Ardant du Picq, Charles, Études sur le combat : combat antique et combat moderne, Hachette & Dumaine, 1880, reprinted. Economica, 2004. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k750536/f1.image

3 Hernandez, Chris, The truth about the French Army Pt III: The French Don't Run, published July 22, 2013, https://

www.breachbangclear.com/the-truth-about-the-french-army-pt-iii-getting-into-fights/

4 Un taxi pour Tobrouk, directed by Denys de La Patellière, 1961.

5 Cochet, François, Les Français en guerres, Perrin, 2017.

6 Conduite des grandes unités: service des armées en campagne, Charles-Lavauzelle, 1914. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6224772c/f7

7 Gaston, Jean-Jules, Manuel d'escrime à la baïonnette : description du fusil d'assaut pour l'étude précise du double jeu et du corps à corps, méthode d'enseignement, Berger-Levraut, 1910. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k853148c.image

8 Reply by Mr Paul Valéry to the speech by Marshal Pétain, 31 January 1931. http://www. academie-francaise.fr/reponse-au-discours-de-recep-tion-de-philippe-petain

9 Kann, Réginald, Les théories tactiques et la guerre actuelle, published in Revue de Paris, 12 th year, Tome I, Jan-Feb 1905. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ ark:/12148/bpt6k17481s/f679.item.r=reginald%20kanntactique%20tactique.

10 Aristotle (384-322 BC), Ethics at Nicomacheus, Vrin - Library of Philosophical Texts, 1990.

11 Arrien (c. 95-v. 175), Histoire d'Alexandre: L'anabase d'Alexandre le Grand et L'Inde, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k58007915, reprinted. Éditions de Minuit, 1984.

12 Aristotle, Ibid.

13 Caesar, Julius, Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, c. 52/51 B.C., reprinted. Garnier Flammarion, 1993.

14 Lavisse, Ernest, Histoire de France, cours élémentaire, Armand Colin, 1913. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k648847.texteImage

15 Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane, Fighting. Une anthropologie historique de la guerre moderne (XIX-XXI e siècle), Seuil, 1995.

16 Aristotle, Ibid.

17 Venard, Guillaume et Christian, Chaput, Gérard, La densification de l'être: se préparer aux situations difficiles, Pippa, 2017.

18 De Gaulle, Charles, Doctrine a priori ou doctrine des circonstances, published in the French military review, n° 43, January 1925. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ ark:/12148/bpt6k121946c/f319.item.r=de%20gaulle.

19 Las Cases, Emmanuel, Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, or a diary in which is recorded, day by day, what Napoleon said and did for eighteen months. Magin & Comon, 1840, reprinted. Points, 2016.

20 Reichel, Daniel, Le Feu (I) and Le Feu (II), 1982; Le Feu (III), 1983; Le Choc, 1984; La manœuvre et l'incertitude, 1986, edited by the Federal Military Department, Bern.

21 Then Lieutenant General and on the eve of his retirement, Raoul Magrin-Vernerey, known as Ralph Monclar, volunteered in 1950 to take command of the French UN Battalion, which was being trained to intervene in Korea. He agreed to leave as a lieutenant-colonel so that he could command it.

22 Gugeler, Russell A, Combat Actions in Korea, Paperback, 2013.

23 Awarded by several authors relating the epic of the Korean Battalion to General Matthew Ridgway in a February 1952 agenda, the author of

However, this article has not succeeded in finding an exact reference, attesting to the veracity of this quotation.

24 des Vollerons, Edme, Le général Monclar, un condottiere du XX e siècle, Economica, 2000.

25 In Goya, Michel, Sous le feu : La mort comme hypothèse de travail, Tallandier, 2014.

26 The first school is often attached to the Historial de la Grande Guerre de Péronne, the theses of the second group are developed by CRID 14-18.

(International Research and Debate Collective on the 1914-1918 War).

27 Conrad, Joseph, Lord Jim, Blackwood & Sons, 1900, reprinted. Gallimard, 1982.

28 Jünger, Ernst, Steel Storms (In Stahlgewittern), 1920, reprinted. Le livre de poche, 2002.

29 Goya, Michel, Ibid.

30 Venner, Dominique, Armée: les derniers fidèles d'une austère religion, published in Item magazine, December 1977.

31 Magrin-Vernerey, Raoul, dit Monclar, Ralph, Catechisme du combat, typewritten in the historical service of defence, published in 2002 by

the French Military History Commission and the Institute of Comparative Strategy, under the direction of Hervé Coutau-Bégarie. http://www.institut-strategie. en/Monclar.pdf

32 Gardens of stones, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, 1987.

33 Vercel, Roger, Captain Conan, Albin Michel, 1934, reprinted. 1965.

34 Deschodt, Éric, L'orgueil du guerrier: Claude Barrès, Perrin, 1994.

35 Mosse, George, Fallen Soldiers. Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars, OUP USA, 1990, published in France under the title De la Grande Guerre au totalitarisme. La brutalisation des sociétés européennes, Hachette, 1999.

36 "Children, enjoy the war... Peace will be terrible. "quoted in von Kageneck, August, Lieutenant de Panzers, Perrin, 1994.

37 Alain, Mars ou la guerre jugée, 1921, Gallimard, reprinted. Folio, 1995.

38 In Goya, Michel, Op. cit.

39 Remarks by Colonel François Lecointre reported by Sud-Ouest on 20/07/2017. https://www.sudouest.fr/2017/07/20/video-le-nouveau-chef-d-etat-ma-jor-raconte-sa-charge-a-la-baionnette-a-sarajevo-3632928-710.php

40 Pellissier, Pierre, de Lattre, Perrin, 1998.

41 Jean Martet, Le Tigre, Albin Michel, 1930, cited in Bénédicte Vergez-Chaignon, Pétain, Perrin, 2014.

42 Von Clausewitz, Carl, De la guerre, 1832, reprinted. Tempus, 2014.

43 Bloch, Marc, L'étrange défaite, Société des Éditions " Franc-Tireur ", 1946, reprinted. Gallimard, 2006.

44 Castillo, Monique, Justifying Extreme Violence? in Inflexions n°31, January 2016.

45 Thucydides (c. 465 B.C.- c. 495 B.C.), History of the Peloponnesian War, Classical Folio, 2000.