Military Marauders in Nineteenth-Century French Popular Culture

Abstract

Marauding first emerged as a suitable topic for the popular imagery manufacturers located in France’s eastern garrison cities in the wake of the Allied invasions of 1814-15. During the nineteenth century, however, domestic marauders replaced foreign soldiers as a central theme in military imagery. While foreign soldiers were condemned for such actions, French soldiers were lauded for their marauding talent. Marauding was depicted as part of a martial re-education programme, in which rural recruits were taught to despise their peasant origins and to prey on their countrymen. Thus the soldier acquired a new military morality and developed the skills of quick-wittedness and individual bravura so necessary for his new occupation. Because such fl air was conceived of as inherently Gallic, marauding was also a process of becoming more French. For the state authorities, who censored the production of popular imagery and were even major customers (through the schools), such prints were a means of preparing young men for the transformation from peasants into Frenchmen.