Social background of officers and other ranks in the French Army, 1750–1815

The standard career path was based on seniority and was rather inert; the mean age of promotion to captain was 45 years.

The military reforms after the Seven Years' War attempted to create a professionalized officer corps built on the petty nobility.

In consequence, many noblemen in the officer corps sided with the bourgeoisie in the struggle against the class prerogatives of the high nobility.

The early modern standing French Army recruited the other ranks through volunteer enlistment.

Domestic recruitment difficulties were solved through enlistment of Germans, Swiss, Irish, and others abroad.

The growth of the French Army during Louis XIV meant that most noblemen served as officers.

Members of the higher bourgeoisie and of the nobility were also found among the other ranks, although their proportion gradually diminished during the century.

As literacy played a decisive role in the selection of sergeant, a definite social pattern was found amongst them.

The commanders used false musters and other underhand methods to build up funds to cover expenses.

Besides this, there was among officers of all ranks a common, yet unofficial and illegal, scheme of selling the commission to one's successor upon promotion or retirement.

Those lacking funds to buy a company command, could become captain of grenadiers, a billet not open to venalité.

These rankers, or officiers de fortune, were ordinarily non-commissioned officers with very long time under the colors, 20 years or more.

The officiers de fortune took care of the daily routine that many of their brother officers from the nobility found less attractive.

[8][10][11] The three different promotion tracks created a lack of social homogeneity in the French Army officer corps.

The speedy promotions of the high nobility made contemporary sources refer to colonels à la bavette (colonels with bibs), pointing to the obvious antagonism between these and the older seasoned officers in the standard promotion track that served under younger and less experienced commanders.

Many families of the petty nobility could not afford to support a son during the one or two years without pay he had to serve as a supernumerary second lieutenant or as a badly paid officer cadet and he had to seek his fortune in the ranks.

Many of the tactical and technical improvements then introduced laid the groundwork for the French victories during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

The Ségur decree, requiring four quarterings of nobility as a condition for the appointment of officers, was not the result of an aristocratic reaction, but part of an attempt to professionalize the officer corps through the creation of military schools for poor sons of the nobility, the centralizing of the promotion system, the gradual abolishment of the vénalité, and the exclusion of rich bourgeois parvenus.

Many officers from the petty nobility began to be in agreement with the civilian bourgeoisie who saw themselves as the victims of discriminatory prerogatives.

[18] The merger of the regular (formerly royal) army and the newly raised regiments of volunteers in 1793 saw the creation of a promotion system based on both seniority and election by the troops.

In 1805, four years in the lower rank was established as the minimum time before further promotion could take place, but that was a rule that which was not followed later.

Officer and drummer with the regimental colors of the Régiment de Navarre 1745.
The common soldiers came from the common people.
An artist is drawing a sergeant in uniform model 1791. Sergeants were literate and many came from the petty bourgeoisie.
The high nobility had a yellow brick road to high command. Duke Louis François Armand de Vignerot du Plessis de Richelieu on his way to the marshal's baton .
Jean-Mathieu-Philibert Sérurier was an officer from the petty nobility who reached modest rank in the Royal army. Under Napoleon he became a Marshal of France .
Rank insignia of a port-drapeau, 1786; a rank reserved for promoted sergeants.
The Gribeauval system of artillery was the most successful technical reform at the end of the Ancien Regime. The comprehensive reforms planned for the structure of the officers corps, failed however.
André Masséna was one whose military talents were liberated by the French Revolution. As a Warrant officer, it was not long after the revolution before he became a general and later a Marshal of France .