Maréchaussée

The Maréchaussée (French for 'Marshalcy') were corps of soldiers in the armies of France initially put in charge of military policing and justice during the Middle Ages, and later extended to civilian responsibilities.

[15] During the Middle Ages and to a lesser extent until the end of the ancien régime, the functions of the police and the justice system were closely intertwined.

[16] The Constable gathered under him lieutenants bearing the title Marshal of France who led royal troops into battle and judged their actions.

Judgements on the acts of soldiers such as desertion, treason and disputes with the general population were rendered along with punishments in the Court of the Marshals which existed by 1317.

[23] The tribunals were seated at the marble table [fr][c][24][25] in the Palais de Justice in Paris during the late 14th century under Charles V in part through his June 1373 edict.

[29] With continued war between France and her neighbors, organized gang violence involving disbanded soldiers (écorcheurs) lingered and grew into the 16th century.

[29][22] In 1445, Charles VII recruited suitable members of these groups to help form the first paid standing army in Europe (the compagnies d'ordonnance) to prosecute war.

[28] However, after 1464 and into the early 1500s, the army as well as the marshals' provosts would be called on to also put down the remaining écorcheurs as the ordinary means of policing by bailiffs (bailli) and seneschals was ineffective.

[30] Whereas the maréchaussée had been historically mobile, the ongoing problems spurred Louis XII to create the first provincial constabularies on 20 January 1514, at the urging of the provinces.

[22] The power of the provosts and their archers [a] was limited to the military and the écorcheur bands, leaving out oppressive gangs of civilians who wandered the roads or encamped in the land.

Francis I addressed the problem in a royal decision on 25 January 1536 (Edict of Paris) that extended the judicial authority of the maréchaussée to policing the countryside and main roads of the kingdom, taking on all highway crime regardless of whether the perpetrators were French soldiers or foreigners, military or civilian, vagabonds or residents.

[39] Louis XIV's administration profited from selling lieutenant-general posts to head up policing for Paris (created in 1667) and following a 1699 ordinance, for principal towns to oligarchies or feudal lords who sought the titles from vanity or an interest in the job.

[40][41][42][page needed] When Louis XIV died in 1714, it was estimated they had only 1,000 men to police all of rural France with companies of Maréchaussée based in larger towns with at times overlapping jurisdictions under the charge of commanders holding a variety of venal titles.

[43][42][page needed] These and other problems led to a series of reforms (1720, 1731, 1768, 1769, 1778)[40][44] beginning on 9 March 1720[45] propelled by the Secretary of State for War Claude Le Blanc to make it more effective, reinforce its military character,[44] and improve coverage in the countryside.

[45] Although the level of these problems had reduced at least in part due to the economic recovery after the end of the wars and the 1709-10 famine as well as existing Maréchaussée efforts, the Ordinance expressed concern about the great number remaining who "beg with insolence, more often through idleness than genuine necessity.

[45] Le Blanc appointed two paymasters in the Maréchaussée in February 1719 to buy back command positions that had been sold or inherited and abolished the old companies and titles in favor of a more structured and hierarchical system.

[46] The Maréchaussée was symbolically placed under the administrative authority of the marshals and the elite Gendarmerie de la Maison du Roi,[45] a heavy cavalry corps integrated into the household of the king and later dissolved on 1 April 1788.

Nevertheless, in 1779 the Maréchaussée had no more than 3,300 men divided into 34 companies, one for each region (including Corsica), plus one for Paris and the Île-de-France, and another to ensure the king's security when he traveled, and 800 squads for the entire Kingdom.