In the old mindset, joining the army was never seen as an obligation but as a right. They neither understood nor wanted to hear those newly invented terms, such as 'national interests' or 'patriotism.' What they saw was the new government arresting and executing their spiritual leaders while trying to force them to leave their farms to join the army and die.
What they found most unbearable was that the members of the National Guard sent from Paris were all so arrogant, being unwilling to go and die themselves but forcing others to do so.
So, unsurprisingly, when the conscription order for 300,000 people was issued to the provinces, these farmers rose up in rebellion.
Moreover, in the beginning, this movement could not even be called an uprising, as it did not have a unified organizer. Typically, residents of villages teamed up to kill the conscript officer who came to forcefully conscript them or spontaneously attacked lone republican soldiers to seize their guns and weapons.
