Conscription for Russia

The system dated from the Jourdan law of 1798: all men from twenty to twenty-five were registered, then a drawing of lots designated, in each canton, those the contingent required. Review boards discharged the unfit; well-off families could buy a substitute, which made the blood tax fall on the poor countryside.

Against defaulters and deserters the administration had mobile columns of gendarmerie and garrison troops billeted on the parents at their own expense until the missing man presented himself.

For the army that was to enter Russia, more than the ordinary levies was needed. The senatus-consultum of 20 December 1811 called up a hundred and twenty thousand conscripts of the class of 1812 and authorised drawing in advance on the following classes — that is, taking men before the legal age.

The Grande Armée of 1812 would in any case be only half French: the German, Italian and Polish contingents and those of the annexed provinces made up the other half. The Empire's recruitment had long since passed beyond the frontiers of France.

From 1800 to 1814 more than two million men would be called up. The rate of evasion, low in the years of victory, rose again with the bad news; the west and the south hid their refractories.

After the disaster in Russia the levies accelerated further: the classes of 1813 and 1814 were called up early, and those adolescents whom the troops would call the 'Marie-Louises' fought the German campaign. Conscription, accepted so long as it paid in glory, became the first grievance against the Empire — and one of the reasons why the France of 1814 would not rise.