Ordinary Radicalization: Becoming a Citizen-Soldier during the French Revolution

This article follows the trajectory of a young Frenchman who volunteered to join the army in 1792 and who fought to defend the French Revolution from foreign invasion. Using his extraordinary correspondence with his family, I trace the process whereby Gabriel Noël became a citizen-soldier and a revolutionary protagonist. By analyzing his experience as one akin to racial passing, or to what the French call being a transfuge, I show the difficulties he had fitting into a new civic community in the making and the half-hearted, contingent radicalization that ensued. I suggest that this case, though unique in many ways, provides a new way to understand the mechanics of social transformation and ordinary radicalism in a time of war and revolution.