French peasants experienced conscription as an unwelcome blood tax to a distant, impersonal master.

Evidence

This, however, does not mean that the French peasants accepted service in the colors without hesitation. Indeed, “for many Frenchmen the service demanded by the government quickly assumed the guise of a new and unwelcome corvée, a tax in blood to a distant and impersonal master, imposed in the name of a national cause that they understood only in the dimmest terms.” “Nationalism, the dream of ‘la grande nation’ so dear to the historians of the First Empire, had little appeal to those who were called on to fight in its name.” — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1364

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with the corvée/labor-service framing in my existing reading on pre-state institutions and coercion.