When the Constituent Assembly constituted him a sovereign, he let things go on; he did not know what he engaged to do, he had no idea of having allowed such a heavy claim against him.

But, in signing the social contract, he made himself responsible; in 1793, the note came due and the Convention collected it.[3263] Then comes Napoleon who put things in order.
Henceforth, every male, able-bodied adult must pay the debt of blood; no more exemptions in the way of military service:[3264] all young men who had reached the required age drew lots in the conscription and set out in turn according to the order fixed by their drafted number.[3265] But Napoleon is an intelligent creditor; he knows that this debt is "most frightful and most detestable for families," that his debtors are real, living men and therefore different in kind, that the head of the State should keep these differences in mind, that is to say their condition, their education, their sensibility and their vocation; that, not only in their private interest, but again in the interest of the public, not merely through prudence but also through equity, all should not be indistinguishably restricted to the same mechanical pursuit, to the same manual labor, to the same prolonged and indefinite servitude of soul and body.

Already, under the Directory, the law had exempted young married men and widowers or divorced persons who were fathers.[3266] Napoleon also exempts the conscript who has a brother in the active army, the only son of a widow, the eldest of three orphans, the son of a father seventy-one years old dependent on his labor, all of whom are family supports.

He joins with these all young men who enlist in one of his civil militias, in his ecclesiastical militia or in his university militia, pupils of the Ecole Normale, ignorantin brothers, seminarians for the priesthood, on condition that they shall engage to do service in their vocation and do it effectively, some for ten years, others for life, subject to a discipline more rigid, or nearly as rigid, as military discipline.[3267] Finally, he sanctions or institutes volunteer substitutes, through private agreement between a conscript and the able-bodied, certified volunteer substitute for whom the conscript is responsible.[3268] If such a bargain is made between them it is done freely, knowing what they are about, and because each man finds the exchange to his advantage; the State has no right to deprive either of them uselessly of this advantage, and oppose an exchange by which it does not suffer.

So far from suffering it often gains by it.