Conscription in France

[1] The French Royal Army of the 17th and 18th centuries had consisted primarily of long-service regulars together with a number of regiments recruited from Swiss, German, Irish and other foreign mercenaries.

Universal conscription in the modern sense originated during the French Revolution, when the newly created Republic needed stronger military forces, initially to defend the country against counter-revolutionary invasion and subsequently to expand its radical ideas throughout Europe.

This previously unheard of policy of organised mass conscription allowed the French Republic to fight simultaneously against multiple invading armies, while also suppressing insurrections inside France itself (e.g. Vendée Uprising).

Following France's defeat in the Napoleonic Wars, the restored Bourbon monarchy returned to its traditional reliance on long service volunteers plus some Swiss and German mercenary regiments.

Numbers were filled out through limited conscription by lot, the burden of which spared the middle and upper classes who could afford to purchase exemption through the employment of paid substitutes.

As part of the 1913 measures, a limited form of selective conscription was imposed on the Muslim population of Algeria, who had previously been required only to offer volunteers for service in the French Army.

While reservists had been required to undertake periodic re-training in the form of annual manoeuvres, the territorials had no peacetime commitment and were not intended for employment in the front-line in the event of war.

France had retained conscription between the two world wars, though the country relied upon the French regulars of the Colonial Army, native regiments and the Foreign Legion to garrison its overseas empire.

Under German pressure, the small "Armistice Army" of the Vichy regime broke away from the now established French dependence on conscription in favour of voluntary enlistment.

Created in 1940 this body provided military style basic training for approximately 400,000 inductees serving for eight months, until the German occupation authorities forced its disbandment in June 1944.

However, conscripts were not required to serve in the Indo-China War of 1947–54, which was fought by French, North African and colonial volunteers plus the Foreign Legion and locally recruited forces.

It was still possible to draw on substantial numbers of Algerian Muslim volunteers and conscripts, although issues of divided loyalties made the North African troops less dependable towards the end of the war.

[8] The drawbacks of this reliance on short-term conscripts became evident at the time of the First Gulf War when France had to draw on its limited number of fully trained professional units to provide a significant contribution.

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