Napoleonic Friendship: Military Fraternity, Intimacy and Sexuality in Nineteenth-century France

Abstract

This book is, one senses, something of a labour of love, written by a professor of French literature with a certain missionary zeal—it is one of the few academic books where the author's prologue is a genuinely moving testimony and explains much of the passion of what follows. ‘Napoleonic friendship’ is a phrase that recurs again and again—it almost, one feels, merits a registered trade mark—though it is not always clear what the author means by it in any particular context. It clearly covers those special bonds of friendship that develop among and between men in what he terms the ‘homosocial’ environment of the army, where access to women was limited, especially on campaign, and where both generals and politicians took new pains to exclude the hordes of camp-followers who routinely followed eighteenth-century armies. It may also be something of a military requirement in the new mass conscript armies of the period, what he terms ‘a vital skill for combat survival’. But the author clearly intends it to mean more than that. There are references to the swearing and ‘homoerotic’ language used by French soldiers on campaign (though one suspects that the use of ‘fuck’ in either France or England shocks far less than it does the sensitive ears of New England). There are suggestions, but only suggestions, that we might apply special significance to those French commanders who encouraged unfettered displays of grief and emotion—including Napoleon himself, who famously wept when he learned of the death of his companion-in-arms, Jean Lannes, on the battlefield. There are repeated references to the French military practice of sharing bunks when on campaign, with the inference that many ‘bunk buddies’ shared more than bed space. Fraternity, he believes, created unprecedented lateral bonds between soldiers, and the Revolution's assault on noble hierarchies and emphasis on camaraderie in the ranks created an army more tolerant of homosexuality than any previous army of the modern age.