Not entirely true, militias of the adult male population existed in England as early as the 1500s if I remember correctly. And all the way back in the 1300s, King Edward III required all adult men to regularly practice the use of the welsh longbow, because English peasants would be conscripted for service on the Continent. This came into effect BECAUSE of the need to circumvent the feudal prohibition on vassal levies serving in the military for more than two months at a time. What the French did was universal conscription. That accompanied a sort of total-war and nationalization of warfare that also came about at the time. Armies of over a hundred thousand were put to the field for years on end a century before Napoleon (especially in the war of Spanish Succession).