The Science of Diagramming Dances and Military Drills in Enlightenment France

During the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV, the traditional military role of the noble estate in France was increasingly filled by trained professionals. Military leaders had been distinguished by their noble bearing learned through dance. By the early eighteenth century, military training included learning to read drill diagrams. Tracing the development of diagrammatic visualizations from the paintings of Sauveur Le Conte and the military treatise of Pierre Giffart in the late seventeenth century to the more precise notations detailed in Gabriel Pictet's 1761 military manual, Maurice de Saxe's 1757 memoire, and the Encyclopédie, one finds that military diagrams shared much in common with dance notations. Shared visual conventions included simplification, analysis, juxtaposition of unlike elements, and ever greater prevision and standardization. The flood of French contredanse notations published in the middle of the eighteenth century featured a notation system that was much more simplified than earlier Beauchamp/Feuillet notation. Contredanse notations more closely resembled movement patterns found in military drill diagrams. These dances, distinct from French court and English country dances, were usually performed in a square formation of four couples, with one couple on each side. The emphasis on patterns rather than steps made them more accessible, reflecting a burgeoning social mobility - both on the battlefield and in the ballroom - in Enlightenment France.