"the large number of literate men who were drafted by the Revolution and Empire as rank and files"
??
Do you have figures for this literacy before & after to prove that this was the case.
Also were the majority of rural peasants really land owners, surely they were mostly agricultural laborers, besides which prior evidence suggests a far higher education level among urban population than rural.
The shift from urban to rural base for soldiers suggests a decrease in literacy not an increase.

This assumption that volunteers from urban areas were automatically the scum of society is very persistent but I have yet to see anyone put some proper numbers on it that point that way rather than the reverse.

Jeff Lewis