How did the state protect and then subvert men’s household authority when the state was exclusively staffed by men? I answer the above question by critically fusing neo-Weberian scholarship on modern state development with feminist political sociology on gender and the state, and by examining establishment of the French conscription system. When first creating a mass army in the nineteenth century, the French state offered family-based exemptions, balancing between expanding state power and maintenance of men’s household authority. However, intensification of twentieth-century total war led to a decrease in family-based exemptions, and the state’s diminished support of men’s household authority. I thereby identify how the fiscal-military state first supported then diminished men’s household authority through one of the state’s most masculine arms.