lowai对《The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen》的笔记(1)

Chapter 4 Armies of Legislators

这个看起来像是宪法红卫兵的样子. 而且以前宪法也要写得比较短 这样可以作为大字报贴在各处以便广为流传. 宪法还起到了募兵派人去送死的作用.
[以下为原文] 
The common soldiery of Ancien Régime Europe (and elsewhere) were rarely the downtrodden automata of legend. Many were committed and motivated actors, not mere sullen and damaged victims of coercion. Nonetheless, it is clear that some French Revolutionary  troops were politicised to a quite different level, in part because widely distributed written and printed constitutions now existed to serve as instructional and inspiring scripts. Take Joseph-Louis-Gabriel  Noël, a yeoman farmer and quiet family man from the still quieter  village of Ubexy in north-eastern France. When he signed up as an infantryman in a local battalion of volunteers in August 1791, he quickly came to represent himself, even in the privacy of his letters home, as a ‘soldier of the constitution’, a child of destiny. ‘We must be put to the test’, he wrote to his family sternly. What he read, saw, heard and was told by his officers convinced him, however, that  triumph was assured, and not just for France. ‘It is we’, he rejoiced, ‘who must attack to send shivers down the tyrants’ spines and free enslaved peoples.’