Des citoyens et des soldats. Histoire politique de l'obligation militaire en France de la Révolution au début de la Troisième République (1789-1872)

Abstract

The liberal French Revolution of 1789 rejects all ideas of military service but, forced by the 1789 armed revolution and radicalisation that led to war, the French revolution is compelled to resort to enforcing enrolment before it established a military conscription and defining five classes of conscripts for the Republic. Making use of this conscription, Napoleon's government develops it further by enforcing recruitment which makes military enrolment rational recruitment. This is the kind of enforced recruitment that the French Restauration will put in place in 1818 under the name of appeal , having abolished the conscription for building up a professional army. But the same tensions are experienced as during the rising up of the French Revolution during the XIXth century. In opposition to those who want to identify citizens with soldiers, those who want to reduce the standing army which demonstrates too openly the military power of the State or those who want to turn the national guard into a national militia, those who want to bring together citizens and soldiers by turning the standing army into a national military high school, there are always those who want a distinct differenciation between the civil and military society of the State - it is them who defend the possibility of replacement and a long lasting military service. From the Monarchy of Juillet to the second French Empire, they were responsible for the failure of numerous projects of reform. In fact, we must wait for the emergence of Prussian power, and especially the disaster of 1870, to establish again the principle of personal service. Nevertheless the syncretism of 1872, for which the main point is the deletion of the replacement, does not identify symbolically the citizen with the soldier as was the case during the French Revolution, and furthermore, it does not see in each citizen an effective soldier. The professional army born under the French Restauration does not disappear, even if it has a new function : that of providing military training to new citizens. Finally the law of 1872 establishes two principles : obligation for every citizen to enrol during wartime - legitimated by patriotic duty - and a first military organisation of the nation (not in the form of this armed militia claimed since the French Revolution - an army merged in the nation - but in the form of an armed nation, with a military system geared to enrol its citizens during wartime.