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This article follows the trajectory of a young Frenchman who volunteered to join the army in 1792 and who fought to defend the French Revolution from foreign invasion. Using his extraordinary correspondence with his family, I trace the process whereby Gabriel Noël became a citizen-soldier and a revolutionary protagonist. By analyzing his experience as one akin to racial passing, or to what the French call being a transfuge , I show the difficulties he had fitting into a new civic community in the making and the half-hearted, contingent radicalization that ensued. I suggest that this case, though unique in many ways, provides a new way to understand the mechanics of social transformation and ordinary radicalism in a time of war and revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]