Survivors of War: French Soldiers and Veterans of the Napoleonic Armies

Abstract

The Napoleonic Wars have been the subject of an abundant historiography, but it is a very uneven one, both in its focus and in its quality. Historians of the period have tended to concentrate on the wars themselves, on the nature of the fighting, and on the details of battlefield operations. They have been concerned, above all else, with the chronology of military events. But by envisaging the years between 1800 and 1815 from a strategic or diplomatic point of view, historians have for too long neglected to view the period of these wars as a time of remarkable social experience. Too little attention has been paid to the everyday aspects of life that result from such long and intense years of military campaigning, years of constant fighting which bore so many of the characteristics of total war. 1 What is more, the historiography of these years has failed to recognise the exceptional human experiences that resulted from war on this scale as a major rupture in human history, a crucial moment in the development of civil society. 2 At the time civilians were most cruelly affected by large-scale recruitment, and especially by the series of annual conscriptions that were launched by the Loi Jourdan in 1798, which demanded that all young men should present themselves for army service, and that they should draw lots to decide who would serve in the regiments. Later, civil society was also affected by problems posed by the return of soldiers from war and their reintegration into the social fabric of the villages and urban areas from where the young, in their thousands, had poured forth to join the military. They returned fundamentally changed by their experience of battle, and not always well-prepared to resume their role in the workplace or in civil society.

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