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The Nitpicker’s Guide to Ancient Warfare: Cohesion

The for-the-regiment cohesion does explain why any big reforms (not just in the military) get bogged down and backlash against them, seperate to whether said reform is good or not: you're getting rid of a regiment/police force/department/building everyone's invested emotion into.
 
In a similar manner, French Jews during WWI had a cause – to be accepted as French. They volunteered in large numbers for the infantry – the arm that carried the greatest danger. They did it to prove their patriotism and afterwards, there was no doubting their commitment to France, their willingness to fight and die for the country. And, for a decade or so, they achieved that aim.

To elaborate a bit, French Jews had been citizens of France since 1791, more than a century at this point. They still regarded this as relatively new and has just been given a lesson in how little their fellow citizens considered this to be fully the case during the Dreyfus Affair. A lot of them intended to pay in blood a tax to become citizens and are explicit about it to justify their asking for an infantry posting and to do some trench raids ahead of the assaults in their letters to their families.

Exactly the same process was happening on the other side.


Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men.
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!

I'm always fond of La Muette de Portici, whose lyrics:

Mieux vaut mourir que rester misérable ! Pour un esclave est-il quelque danger ? Tombe le joug qui nous accable Et sous nos coups périsse l'étranger ! Amour sacré de la patrie, Rends nous l'audace et la fierté ; À mon pays je dois la vie ; Il me devra sa liberté.

Better to die than stay miserable! What is danger to a slave? Let the yoke binding us fall, and its foreign master fall under our blows!
Holy love of the fatherland, Give us back boldness and pride; I owe my life to my country, it will owe its freedom to me

were the rallying point, if not the starter of the Belgian Revolution.
 
And there is a what appears to be a good example of the impact of cohesion going on right now, although the true impact of that may be harder to verify. Although that may also be linked to corruption (is there planned to be a chapter on that?)
 
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