Louise Vs The Troops Full Version
Ulpio Tregoning
Arbour also took issue with the military's failure to remove "the duty to report," which requires that troops report inappropriate or criminal behaviour even if the victim doesn't agree. That had been flagged as a major issue by victims' groups.
Napoleon recognised the limitations of poorly trained troops and requested that battalions formed entirely from conscripts be half the usual size to allow a better supervision ration from the units officers and non-commissioned officers. He employed such units as a means of holding static positions in his lines, though the Young Guard saw service as shock troops, deployed en masse in compact formations. Morale was variable but generally good, with few attempts at self-mutilation to escape service being recorded. Marshal Auguste de Marmont recalled his experience of this time: "The troops showed great value. Conscripts, arrived the day before, entered the line, and behaved, with courage, like old soldiers. ... one, very quiet under enemy fire, did not, however, use his rifle. I said to him, 'Why don't you shoot?'. He replied naively: 'I would shoot as well as any other soldier if I had someone to load my gun.' The poor child was so ignorant of his profession".[1]
Paris was in a state of high agitation in the early months of the French revolution. In Spring 1789, the Estates-General refused to dissolve, transforming itself instead into a constituent National Assembly. In July, King Louis XVI called in fresh troops and dismissed his popular Minister, Jacques Necker. On the morning of July 14, the people of Paris seized weapons from the armoury at the Invalides and marched in the direction of an ancient Royal fortress, the Bastille. After a bloody round of firing, the crowd broke into the Bastille and released the handful of prisoners held there.
McCullough's conclusions buttress much of the existing literature on French absolutism, although he overstates the fragility of Louis XIV's rule. The one general weakness of the book is its lack of a broader view. A more general discussion of "coercion" and violence (royal and local, military and paramilitary) would have been enlightening as well as providing a better introduction to the many paramilitary positions and provincial institutions mentioned in the book. The reliance on case studies leaves the reader unsure as to how widespread (and damaging) wintering soldiers on civilian communities, the most frequent and least coercive use of royal troops, really was; the connection between Louis's ever-expanding armies and the domestic situation could also have been more explicitly detailed. The final chapter on the Camisard revolt will be of interest to those seeking an early modern example of counterinsurgency operations, but the lack of maps is a regrettable omission. As a result of these lacunae, scholars already familiar with seventeenth-century France will gain the most from this work, but all readers will come away appreciating more fully the difficulties of using royal troops as tools of coercion in the age of absolutism.
Shortly afterward Louis sent troops to Paris, where he suspected the French Guards of being too sympathetic to the assembly. Rumors circulated that the king intended to suppress the assembly, and the dismissal of the popular Necker provoked the storming of the Bastille (July 14, 1789). Louis again had to capitulate; he ordered the withdrawal of the royal troops, reinstated Necker, and accepted the new national red, white, and blue cockade. Despite his outward acceptance of the revolution, Louis allowed reactionary plotting of the queen and court, and in August refused to approve the abolition of feudal rights.
In 1715 France had a sizeable overseas empire in America, Africa and Asia, its colonies garrisoned by thousands of regular officers and soldiers who belonged to the Navy's colonial establishment or by the French East India Company's troops. Though these troops are not usually covered in histories of the French forces, since the end of the 17th century, they saw considerable action against the enemy overseas. This last volume in a series of five (Men-at-Arms 296, 302, 304, 308 and 313) details the uniforms, arms and accoutrements of Louis XV's colonial and naval troops. The text is accompanied by numerous photographs and illustrations, including eight full colour plates.
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