One Army, Many Languages: Foreign Troops and Linguistic Diversity in the Eighteenth-Century French Military

Abstract

Napoleon Bonaparte reportedly once declared of the Alsatian soldiers serving in his army, ‘Let them speak German as long as they wield their swords in French’ (Maugué 1970: 146). This statement, though perhaps apocryphal, alluded both to the linguistic diversity among French troops during Napoleon’ lifetime and to his toleration of such heterogeneity so long as it did not interfere with military operations. Yet Napoleon’ attitudes on the topic of linguistic diversity in the army were far from representative of those of other French regimes during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In an era of considerable political tumult in France, policies on the languages spoken by soldiers as well as the strategies intended to bridge language barriers among troops varied widely, reflecting the broader agenda of the state and the changing notions of political legitimacy which underlay it.KeywordsEighteenth CenturyLinguistic DiversityAuxiliary UnitForeign CorpsFrench ArmyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.