Warfare on the scale which France had experienced between 1792 and 1814 remained firmly embedded in public consciousness. Too many men had seen their adolescence interrupted and their ambitions cut short; too many, whether they were volunteers or conscripts, had suffered and died in the pursuit of revolutionary liberty or Napoleonic glory. The impact of war was not confined to those who served in the armies. Civilians, too, had seen their livelihoods destroyed, their homes turned into emergency billets, their farmhands and apprentices called to the colours, their crops and livestock requisitioned for the war effort. Gender roles had been challenged as women were forced to take over the farm or supplement the family income in the absence of the principal breadwinner, while land risked falling out of production through a shortage of young, able-bodied labourers. The natural tenor of the generations was interrupted, as sons died before their fathers, and mothers were left to the chill reality of widowhood and a lonely old age. War left France both economically weakened and facing serious demographic consequences that would not magically disappear with the return of peace. Alone of the great powers France had been involved in an almost unbroken land war since the early 1790s. French losses and suffering over a whole generation – there were men conscripted in 1812 and 1813 whose fathers had volunteered in 1791 or been caught up in the levée en masse two years later – can be quite realistically compared to those of the First World War, even if they occurred more gradually, over twenty years rather than four.