Partisan Movement in Southern France in 1814: The Case of Florian

Abstract

In the face of the invasion of the Allied troops into the territory of France, Napoleon highly relied on the popular resistance of the French to the enemy. The author considers the history of a partisan detachment operating in the South of France under the command of Florian, a “half-hero” or “half-robber”. What was the real contribution of partisans to the course of military operations? What was the motivation of their leaders? What was the relationship between the military command and the commanders of the partisan detachments? How did the civil authorities and the local civilian population treat the partisans? The paucity of official documents is compensated by sources of personal origin, which make it possible to reveal the human dimension of this “small war”. In 1814, “Captain” Florian, who led a detachment of twenty volunteers, behaved like a free corsair, whose actions at times situationally coincided with the interests of the military command. Lacking an official partisan patent, he attacked the allies’ supply trains, robbed army stores, intercepted English couriers, and did not disdain the capture of officers’ personal luggage. Having had a reputation as a marauder in Spain since 1813, Florian in 1814 allowed himself all sorts of “excesses” in relation to the local population. The civil authorities in the person of the prefect tried to reason with him and certain individuals disinterestedly worked for him as “pointers”. Only in March did Marshal Soult try to intensify the creation of partisan detachments and subordinate them to a single command. Florian claimed to have unlimited powers from Soult. However, the negotiations between Soult’s representative Major Bory de Saint-Vincent and Florian ended in nothing: the complaints of the civil authorities and the reputation of the partisan commander caused discontent on the part of the marshal. The last action of Florian’s partisans was an attack on April 12 on an English courier, from whom a watch and a large amount of money were confiscated according the “laws of war”. Mythologized in popular scholarship and educational literature of the 1870s, the partisan movement in France in 1814 was distinguished by a very modest scale and limited actions, and the line between ordinary robbery and a patriotic action was sometimes difficult to discern.