L’extension de la conscription des Juifs dans l’Europe napoléonienne

Abstract

The conscription of the Jews in republican France was linked to equality of the civil rights. Napoleon, willing to give more consideration to religions, made military service the crucible of national identity and at the same time a religious duty, first not allowing exemption to the draft by replacement for Jews, then reversing this policy. The extension of the conscription of the Jews in Napoleonic Europe generated various models, often inspired by imperial France, but trying more and more to free themselves from a system which did not always suit Judaism. The conscription of the Jews aroused in Poland a real opposition because the Jewish community was important, of a traditional religious spirit, and furthermore did not enjoy full civic rights. Holland and Westphalia, whose kings were Napoleon’s brothers, had different policies, levying an entirely Jewish unit in Holland, complete integration of the Jews in the military apparatus, with high offices for some of them, in Westphalia.