@neologist,
Perhaps you delude yourself . . . no, wait, you always delude yourself.
The term cannon fodder only dates to Chateaubriand's criticism of Napoleon. Before the French revolution, aries were almost always small, professional forces. If there were inexperienced, poorly trained and equipped forces in their number, they would have been the peasant levies of the nobility, from the lands they controlled. Massive armies only arose at the time of the French revolution, when Robespierre's government instituted the
levée en masse as a means of countering attacks by two different armies in five different places. The theory was that they should put large numbers of troops to confront each threat, and prevent a situation in which one or more of the forces would invade France while her own forces were engaged elsewhere. Without going into the intrinsic superiority of the French military system, which would soon manifest itself, it had a certain grim logic.
There were no priests involved. Robespierre is the one who had signs put up in Paris cemeteries reading "Here is only eternal sleep."
