French Royal Army (1652–1830)

Creation of professional royal army

When Louis XIV came to the French throne in 1661 he inherited a large but loosely organized force of about 70,000 men. Like the other European armies of the period it consisted of a mixture of mercenaries, guard units, local militias and levies conscripted only for specific campaigns and then disbanded. Organization, cohesion, training and equipment were generally of a low standard.

Under Louis' two Secretaries of War Michael Le Tellier and his son the Marquis de Louvois the Royal Army was recreated as a disciplined and professional force of permanent regiments under central control. Weapons, promotion, drill, uniforms and structure were improved or introduced and the army was nearly doubled in size. It became a model for the new "regimental" system that was to be imitated throughout Europe, and one of the most powerful in the world.

Military history of reign

When Louis' father, Louis XIII, died, Anne of Austria, the queen, became regent. She and her chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin, ordered the arrest of legislative opponents, causing the enmity of many nobles and common citizens. When the bloody Thirty Years' War, in which France had sided with Protestant-governed countries against other Catholic nations in Europe, concluded, the Fronde civil war broke out and Mazarin was forced to flee.

When Louis XIV came of age in 1652, the Fronde ended and Mazarin was permitted to return and appointed chief minister for a second time. The leader of the anti-Mazarin faction, the Prince de Condé, escaped to Spain, which soon went to war against France and its new ally, England, under the rule of Oliver Cromwell. Under the command of Marshal Turenne, the Anglo-French army decisively defeated the Spanish in Flanders, part of which was a province of Spain.

In 1667, Louis married the Spanish princess Marie-Thérèse. He claimed the Spanish Netherlands as her dowry, starting another conflict with Spain known as the War of Devolution. Turenne and Conde, who had been pardoned and allowed to return to France, commanded the French army. Their forces seized much of the Spanish Netherlands but, pressured by England, Holland and Sweden, Louis was forced to return the conquered territory, with the exception of some fortified towns.

From 1672 until 1678, France was embroiled in the Franco-Dutch War, again aided by England, now under the rule of King Charles II. The war did not go well for France, and England did not pursue the war after 1674. The war ended favorably for the Dutch, although France gained much of Franche-Comté.

The famed engineer Vauban designed his intricate fortifications during Louis XIV's reign. Vauban, a genius at siege warfare, oversaw the building or improvement of many fortresses in Flanders and elsewhere.

In 1688, the Catholic king of England, James II, was overthrown and William of Orange, a Dutch prince and old enemy of Louis, was installed as the next king. James fled to France, which he used as his base for an invasion of Ireland in 1690. As a result of James' ouster and, more directly, a French invasion of a German palatinate, the Nine Years' War broke out in 1689 between France and minor European states on one side and the League of Augsburg, including England, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Dutch Republic on the other.

The war ended with no major territorial gains or losses for either side, and the two alliances were at war again by 1701. The British, under the Duke of Marlborough, aided by Imperial troops under Prince Eugene of Savoy, inflicted major defeats on French troops at Blenheim, Ramillies, and Oudenarde. In Spain (the succession to that nation's throne was the war's cause), Spanish forces allied to the French lost Gibraltar. However, after the bloody Battle of Malplaquet in 1709, Marlborough's reputation was tarnished and, after gossip at the English (now British, after the union of England and Scotland) court, he was relieved from command. The war ground to a stalemate and ended in a treaty that favored the French in 1714.

Louis XV's reign

Louis XV, the great-grandson of Louis XIV, was the only direct heir alive when the elderly king died in 1715. His reign was much more peaceful than his great-grandfather's, although three major wars occurred. First was the War of the Polish Succession of 1733. The second, the War of the Austrian Succession, began when Maria Theresa was crowned Holy Roman Empress in 1740. Her father had appointed her as his heir, and other European countries agreed to respect his wishes. However, the new Prussian king, Frederick II, ignored the agreement, known as the Pragmatic Sanction, and annexed portions of the Empire.

Britain allied itself with Maria Theresa, while Louis XV forged an alliance with Frederick. Louis provided military support in the form of detachments from France's Irish Brigade, in support of Charles Edward Stuart during the Jacobite uprising of 1745. The Pragmatic Allies defeated the French in the Battle of Dettingen in 1743, while the French won at Fontenoy in 1745.

The situation after the war was almost the same as before, but it set the stage for the Seven Years' War, which officially began in 1756, when Prussia and Austria again went to war. This time, however, France and Austria were allied and Britain and Prussia formed an alliance. French forces were defeated at the Battle of Rossbach in 1757. At the same time as the fighting in Europe, raiding parties composed of French-Canadian militiamen and Indians attacked English settlements in North America. This war, known as the French and Indian War, was the last of four wars that occurred in North America at the same time as a European conflict. However, by 1759, the British had gone onto the offensive in America and captured Quebec, the French colonial capital.

Fighting also occurred on the Indian subcontinent during Louis XV's reign. During the War of the Austrian Succession, French troops captured several settlements in India, but its allies were defeated by British troops in 1756. On the whole, the Seven Years' War went badly for the French, who were forced to sign an unfavorable treaty in 1763.

Collapse of the royal army

When Britain's North American colonies rebelled in 1775, France initially offered limited support. However, after the American victory in the Battle of Saratoga, Louis XVI of France authorized an expeditionary force under the Count de Rochambeau to sail to America and aid the revolutionaries. The expeditionary force participated in the Battle of Yorktown in 1781, which resulted in the colonies' independence.

By the 1780s, the political balance in France had shifted. The aristocracy had become despised by many lower-and-middle-class citizens who faced famine in the winter of 1788/89 and almost no political freedom. At an earlier stage in his reign Louis had succumbed to pressure from the nobility and banned promotion to officer status from the lower ranks of the Royal Army. This measure served to embitter long serving non-commissioned officers who could no longer aspire to reach commissioned rank, although the demands of regimental discipline and training still fell heavily upon them. Some of the now almost entirely aristocratic officer corps were still dedicated professionals but many neglected their responsibilities, preferring to spend excessive periods of leave as courtiers at Versailles or on their country estates.

Many French soldiers sympathized with the masses from which they were drawn, and increasing numbers deserted during 1789. The bulk of the rank and file of the Gardes Françaises: the largest regiment of the maison militaire du roi de France and the permanent garrison of Paris, refused to obey their officers at a crucial point in the early stages of the Revolution. Some Gardes joined with the Parisian mob on July 14, 1789 and participated in the storming of the Bastille, the medieval fortress-prison thought of as a symbol of governmental repression.

King Louis' powers were regulated by the National Assembly, which also authorized the creation of the National Guard, which was intended to be used as a counterweight to the royal army. The regular army was weakened by the flight of many aristocratic officers. Faced with the creation of soldiers' clubs (Jacobin committees), erosion of discipline, loss of their privileges as nobles and political mistrust, perhaps two thirds of the commissioned ranks emigrated after June 1791. They were largely replaced by experienced non-commissioned officers. In July 1791 twelve foreign regiments of mostly German mercenaries were amalgamated into the line, followed by the disbanding of the Swiss regiments a year later.

Major reorganizations of the army took place in 1791 and 1792. New officers were elected and the structure of the army was changed. Battalions of volunteers were authorized and subsequently merged with surviving units of the former royal army, to form amalgamated demi-brigades. This force underwent its first test during the Battle of Valmy in 1792, when an Austro-Prussian army invaded to restore the King's full powers. By now, the army was considered to be loyal to the First Republic, not to the king.

First Bourbon restoration

Louis XVI was guillotined in 1793. By 1800, the First Republic, at war with much of Europe, had adopted a weak form of government that was overthrown by General Napoleon Bonaparte, who later proclaimed himself Emperor of the French. When British, Russian, Prussian, and Austrian armies invaded France in 1814, Napoleon, whose empire had once extended all the way to Moscow abdicated. The dead king's brother, the Count of Provence, was declared King Louis XVIII. Under Louis XVIII, no major changes were made to the army, beyond the recreation of several regiments of the pre-revolutionary maison militaire du roi. However, when Napoleon returned from exile in 1815, the army, for the most part, went over to his side, and Louis fled.

Second Bourbon restoration; July Revolution

Napoleon was defeated by a combined Allied army in 1815 at Waterloo, and Louis XVIII was returned to the throne. Realizing that the remains of the existing army had no loyalty to the restored monarchy, the government of Louis XVIII undertook a wholesale disbandment of what had been Napoleon's regiments. In their place a system of Departmental Legions was created with no historic connections to empire, republic or even the pre-1792 monarchy. His government appointed many aristocratic officers to the new army, which lost much of its morale, much as it had in 1789. In 1823, a French expeditionary force aided Spanish troops loyal to the Bourbon king of that country when his regime was threatened by an uprising. i In 1830, Louis XVIII's brother, Charles X, now king, was toppled in the July Revolution. The army participated in little fighting, and the king's cousin, the Duke of Orléans was installed as Louis-Philippe I in what was supposed to be a constitutional monarchy. The army transferred its allegiance to Louis-Philippe's Orléans Dynasty until his overthrow in 1848, when the short-lived Second Republic was established.

Wars participated in

Anglo-Spanish War

Franco-Dutch War

Nine Years' War

War of the Spanish Succession

War of the Polish Succession

War of the Austrian Succession

Seven Years' War/French and Indian War

American Revolutionary War

French Revolution/French Revolutionary Wars

French invasion of Spain

Notable personnel

Uniforms

From 1652 until 1685, French soldiers wore no specific uniforms. The first uniforms for the French Royal Army were designed in 1685. The guards regiments wore blue, the regular infantry wore gray-white, and the Swiss mercenary regiments in French service wore red. In 1690, during the Nine Years' War, each regiment was given a uniform. Eighty-eight regiments wore gray uniforms with red trim, and fourteen princely regiments wore blue. The first regulations detailing specifics of uniforms is dated to 1704. Unusually, grenadiers for most of the part wore a tricorn like the fusiliers, rather than a mitre or a bearskin. Bearskins came into full use by about 1770.

During the 18th century a series of revised dress regulations made for repeated changes in the facing colours of individual infantry regiments. The Swiss and Irish mercenary regiments retained their red coats throughout this period, while other foreign units generally wore medium blue. Cavalry wore a variety of green, blue or red regimental uniforms, largely according to the whim of individual colonels. The regiments of the Royal Household were similarly variegated, although dark blue dominated. The change from the white or off-white uniforms, traditionally associated with the line infantry of the royal army, to dark blue was completed in 1793 after the overthrow of the monarchy. White uniforms were restored after the Bourbon Restoration, although modified for a more modern appearance, introducing trousers rather than breeches, taller shakos, and Fleur-de-lis insignia. Dark blue coatees were adopted in 1819.

Weaponry

Like most other late-seventeenth and eighteenth-century armies, the French Royal Army was equipped primarily with muskets. However, fusils became standard firearms. Pikes were used by French forces early on during the reign of Louis XIV.

Recruitment

Voluntary enlistment for periods of six to eight years, through regimental recruiting parties, was the French Royal Army's standard method. However, periods of service might be compulsorily extended if individual units fell below strength. Conscription generally applied only to levies in war-time for part-time militia.

Recruitment was in part undertaken on a provincial basis, although up to half of the rank and file of a given regiment might be drawn from outside the designated regional area.

Employment of Swiss mercenaries

During the 17th and 18th centuries twelve regiments of Swiss mercenaries were employed in the French Royal Army, notably the Swiss Guards. During the 10 August riot of 1792, supporters of the French Revolution, including members of the radical-leaning National Guard marched on the Tuileries Palace. King Louis XVI escaped with his family, but, after a brief skirmish in the palace courtyard, the Swiss Guards were massacred by the mob. Some Guards, including the commander, were captured, jailed, and later guillotined.