History Main / Conscription

** "WesternAnimation/DrafteeDaffy" features a frightened WesternAnimation/DaffyDuck being stalked by a fairly creepy draft board worker.
*** Odd that Daffy would avoid the draft as just a year or so earlier, he's taking on the Nazis on their own turf and having fun doing it.

In many countries the conscription serves as a RiteOfPassage: [[ARealManIsAKiller a man is not considered to be a man until he has served his conscription tour of duty]]. Conscription may also be the tyrant's method of breaking the will of his subjects and subjugating them to blind obedience. Another reason for conscription is to foster a sense of national solidarity; everyone will have the same experience of serving in the armed forces. Whatever the reason, conscription has a long history in both fiction and the real world.

* The Kingdom of Mendev uses conscription in ''VideoGame/PathfinderWrathOfTheRighteous'', and some military council choices give you conscript units of your own. In game terms, they're very cheap and very weak.

** The [[TheGoodKingdom Commonwealth of Esotre]] is a small nation, so it's forced to rely on conscription to maintain an army sizable enough to deter potential enemies. Conscripts include both humans and dwarves. The basic Sotran unit is Fusilier Militia, made up of recent recruits, who haven't even served a year. As such, they accuracy with their fusils is terrible, and it takes them 3 turns to reload, so they generally prefer to fight with their bayonets. Those who survive their first year earn a plume-tailed beret and become Fusilier Linesmen. They have much better accuracy and can reload fast enough to fire every turn.

* In ''Webcomic/{{Drowtales}}'' the Vel'Sharen clan has resorted to this following a 15-year {{timeskip}} that puts them on the losing side of the war with the upstart Val'Sarghress clan, drafting commoners into a slave army by force or sending them to a surface PenalColony. Naturally this does not help their reputation one bit.

In a nutshell the word "conscription" means forced service in one's country's armed forces or civil services on pain of prison or (worst case scenario) death.

Some people who find themselves in armed conflict aren't there by choice. Nations both real and fictional enact campaigns of conscription, forced military service, for a variety of reasons. Maybe they are a small nation overwhelmed by a superior opponent. Maybe a [[ZergRush war of attrition]] has left their forces decimated and badly in need of additional manpower. Maybe making it really easy to opt into alternative non-military service is cheaper and easier (for the government) than hiring hospital orderlies and highway clean-up crews on the open job market.

In many countries the conscription serves as a RiteOfPassage: [[ARealManIsAKiller a man is not considered to be a man unless he has served his conscription tour of duty]]. Conscription may also be the tyrant's method of breaking the will of his subjects and subjugating them to blind obedience. Another reason for conscription is to foster a sense of national solidarity; everyone will have the same experience of serving in the armed forces. Whatever the reason, conscription has a long history in both fiction and the real world.

But conscription is a double-edged sword. Like most armies, conscripts were often drawn from [[ArmyOfThievesAndWhores the lower classes of society]] -- on average poorer, less educated, inferior in discipline, and less loyal than volunteer forces to their upper-class commanders and rulers. And the [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney rich]], powerful, talented, or [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections well-connected]] could often find ways to [[DraftDodging get out of serving]] or serving in units with very little chances to go to actual war, anyway. It is also perfectly possible you end up, at the end of a war, with a significant number of lower class individuals with combat experience, access to weapons and a grudge against the higher echelons of society.

In cases of emergency, LoweredRecruitingStandards can occur. People with medical conditions or mental health issues, or young teens, or older people (50+) may get drafted. Or the military may release prisoners if they serve on the front.

Conscription is the TropeCodifier for CannonFodder and for MenAreTheExpendableGender, and TropeMaker for SlaveMooks. DraftDodging is when someone who has been conscripted seeks to get out of it somehow (by eluding recruitment, going into exile, or having wealthy parents pull some strings). See also PressGanged for when this is done with brute force, or GotVolunteered for when it might as well be. Also see PreWarCivilianCareer for what they did before their military service.

** Whenever a large threat appears the Imperial planets in the surrounding area conscript men and women into the Imperial Guard in large amounts and teach them an extremely rough form of the basics while on their way to the fight. Their helmets have a white stripe on the top so they can be easily identified and [[CannonFodder sent to die to help out actual trained guardsmen]]. Not that volunteers aren't commonplace, like most of the Imperium it depends on the world.

** In ''VI'', there are two Policy Cards that have names that tie into the TropeName, Conscription and its upgrade Levée en Masse. While neither give you a new unit like the original game or force population into units like ''III'' or ''IV'', it does reduce the maintenance costs of units (by 1 or 2 respectively) being a very useful Policy Card for civilization or any playthrough. Conscription is gained at State Workforce, one of the last Civics in the Ancient Era and Levée en Masse is earned at Mobilization, one of the first for the Modern Era.

* The Right of Conscription is available to the Grey Wardens in ''Franchise/DragonAge'', which allows them to conscript anyone they need into the Wardens, from prince to commoner. Generally, though, the Wardens only conscript exceptional people to get them out of trouble with the law or otherwise save them, i.e. conscripting a highly-skilled thief to save him from the gallows, a magi who unintentionally helped a blood mage and is facing [[MindRape Tranquilification]] as a result, or conscripting an elf who is facing trouble with the city guard after fighting through a noble's estate to save their female friends from being raped.
** As well, the Grey Wardens are only interested in the very best. Everyone else doesn't have good odds of surviving [[DeadlyUpgrade the initiation.]] They're all picked because they demonstrated their strength. It's shown in ''Awakening'' that they don't ''have'' to conscript people in trouble with the law, as you can conscript a rogue who has nowhere else to go, an elven keeper who has personal reasons for fighting Darkspawn, and a dwarven warrior with prior experience fighting Darkspawn who ''wants'' to join, in addition to the rogue mage facing execution for a crime he didn't commit. Oh, and another dwarven warrior who's ''already'' part of the cheerily-named "Legion of the Dead", and thus doesn't have much to lose.
** It should be noted that condemned people aren't recruited in order to save them as much as to assure their loyalty by giving them a way out. Seeing that the alternative is taking a dirt nap, condemned individuals are also usually much more willing to be conscripted than most fellows, which results in better motivated recruits. The Gray Wardens are above all pragmatic, not merciful. And the Wardens also have a very important secret which they don't tell new recruits until it's too late for them to do anything about it, namely that when you join the Wardens [[spoiler: you're actually just trading one death sentence for another, and the death sentence that comes with being a Warden might very well be worse than what was previously in store for you. The best case scenario is that you survive the intiation but end up with a drastically shortened lifespan and have nightmares for the rest of your days. The worst case scenario is that you die horribly during the initiation. If you try to back out of said initiation, you are executed so that you don't tell anybody what it entails. The reasoning behind this last one, according to Alistair, is that if people knew what they'd be forced to sacrifice after joining the Grey Wardens, a lot fewer people would be willing to join. Hence the deception.]]

* ''VideoGame/EuropaUniversalis IV'': The Quantity ideas tree causes your nation to embrace conscription (despite this only becoming common military practice by the real-life end of the ''EU'' timeline). The first idea in the tree is called ''Levée en Masse'', which was the name used for conscription by the [[UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution Revolutionary government]].

** Both sides of the Korean Demilitarized Zone draft their men. Kind of understandable given that they are technically still at war. In South Korea, conscription is highly valued as a hallmark of nationalism, and draft dodging is a big no-no. Multiple entertainers have seen their careers crash and burn after they did it.

* Many countries of Africa and Latin America. Among the latter, Costa Rica and Panama avert this, but that is because they literally do not have armies for people to enter to.

--->'''Washington:''' Gadzooks! I've been drafted!