The Decline of Military Values: The Theme of the Deserter in Eighteenth-Century French Literature

Abstract

The Decline of Military Values: The Theme of the Deserter in Eighteenth-Century French Literature ADRIENNE D. HYTIER The Prince de Ligne once said, "Il y a bien peu de soldats qui dans le cours de leur terme n'aient pas eu envie de deserter. Ils me l'avouent tres souvent,"1 and he adds that it is "une chose impossible" not to have desert­ ers in ones army. The fact is that desertion has always been an important military problem. It was prevalent in the French Revolution and under Napoleon; it was rampant in the American Revolution and during the Civil War, and, as is well known, it was considerable in all the armies of the eighteenth century. "La vraie plaie des armees d autrefois c est la deser­ tion,"2 wrote Leon Mention in LArmee de I'Ancien Regime. Colonel Reboul , in his volume on the French army in the eighteenth century, called it "la principale plaie de ce temps."3 Ludovic Jablonski, in LArmee frangaise a travers les ages, declared, "L'armee etait . . . rongee par un mal terrible: la desertion . . . etait un mal endemique dans les armees du 18e siecle."4 Capitaine Bacquet, in L'Infanterie au XVIIIe siecle, deplored the "deser­ tion chronique, mal incurable qui mine l'armee."5 Contemporaries were fully conscious of the problem, as is well shown by Eleazar de Mauvillon, who discussed repeatedly the "frequente desertion"6 of French soldiers in his Lettres frangoises et germaniques. Exactly how extensive a problem is, however, hard to tell. Statistics are usually lacking and those which are available are often unreliable. Keep­ ing this in mind, a few specific examples are revealing. In the milice de­ 147 148 / H Y T I E R tachment going to Italy in 1705, it is known that, between March 17 and May 19, out of 13,929 men 3,071 deserted.7 A memorandum sent to Choiseul estimated that, between 1748 and 1757, the French army lost 90,000 men through desertion. Deserters constituted "l'elite des corps etrangers des armees espagnoles, italiennes, piemontaises, allemandes et hollandaises ."8 Andre Corvisier, in his monumental study of the French army during the first two-thirds of the eighteenth century, estimated that "un homme sur quatre ou cinq aurait deserte pendant la periode 1716-1763 et au moins un homme sur quatre pendant la guerre de succession d'Espagne ."9 This is a conservative estimate, which, for all practical purposes, can be adopted. In order to understand the problem of desertion in the eighteenth cen­ tury, it might be well to remember the system of recruitment.10 In the first place, there was no real conscription anywhere. The closest to a citizen army was the French milice, but only peasants served in it and they were selected by drawing lots. If they got the "mauvais numero" and they had a little money, they could always buy a replacement. Service in the milice was dreaded and abominated. The Cahiers de doleances in 1789 are full of complaints about it. The regular army was theoretically made of volun­ teers. In peacetime, particularly during economic crises, most were prob­ ably really volunteers, often from the dregs of society, and, in any case, without family or social ties. During prosperous years and in wartime, volunteers were scarce, so trickery and even violence were used to per­ suade the men to join. The "fours" in which they were locked up have re­ mained famous. The officer corps was an entirely separate class. Its members were all volunteers, most of them noble or bourgeois "vivant noblement" and most of them had bought their commissions. Rising through the ranks was extremely rare. Officers, like their men, changed camp, although the word desertion was hardly ever applied to them. There were a few spec­ tacular cases like the Comte de Bonneval, who first served France, quar­ relled with the War Minister, joined the Austrian forces in wartime, served with Prince Eugene, quarrelled with the Austrians, fled, became a Moslem, reorganized the Turkish army and became a three-tail Pasha. The numbers of such cases, however, are even harder to estimate than those of the soldiers. Peasants impressed into...