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The Underappreciated Nikola Tesla, and Other Under-Recognized Historic Figures

Khalid Elhassan January 12, 2020 32 min

Nikola Tesla - A New System of Alternating Current Motors and Transformers — Nikola Tesla. Pintrest

4. Creating the World’s Biggest Army

French revolutionary army infantry on the attack. Wikimedia

The son of a lawyer, Lazare Carnot attended a military school, and upon graduation in 1773, he was commissioned a lieutenant in the French royal army. He was a captain when the Revolution broke out in 1789. He entered politics, and by 1792, had been elected as a deputy to the National Convention. Assigned to the Committee for General Defense, Carnot exhibited a genius for administration.

He introduced mass conscription, known as the levee en masse, which put the entire French population at the disposal of the war effort. The French army grew from about 645,000 in 1793, to over 1,500,000 by 1794.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.