French Royal Army

• 1. Introduction

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  The French Royal Army, known in its own language as the Armée Royale Française, was once considered the greatest military force in Europe. At its height under Louis XIV, it swelled to over 400,000 soldiers during wartime. It fought across three continents and shaped the battlefields of the 17th and 18th centuries. Yet it was not destroyed by a foreign enemy. It was undone from within, by the same social tensions that eventually brought down the monarchy itself.

  How did a feudal patchwork of militias and mercenaries transform into a disciplined continental superpower? Why did soldiers who had served the king join a Paris mob storming the Bastille? And what happened to the army when the Revolution swept away the world that had created it? Those are the questions this documentary sets out to answer.

• 2. From Feudal Levies to Standing Force

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  Charles VII established France's first permanent paid army in the early 15th century, driven by the desperate need for reliable troops during the Hundred Years' War. Before that, French kings had depended on feudal levies, men summoned for specific campaigns and sent home when the fighting stopped. Charles' innovation was to keep the army on, paying regular wages rather than relying on land obligations.

  The cavalry core of this early force was the Compagnies d'ordonnance, units of gendarmes stationed throughout France and assembled into larger armies when needed. Alongside them were the francs-archers, a militia of bowmen drawn from the non-noble classes, though these units were disbanded whenever peace returned. The bulk of the infantry still came from urban and provincial militias named for wherever they had been raised.

  In the late 15th century, Swiss instructors arrived and began working with these militias. Some of the informal bands, called Bandes, were combined into temporary Legions of up to 9,000 men, who were now paid, contracted, and trained. Henry II pushed further still, creating standing infantry regiments to replace the militia structure altogether. The first four of these permanent regiments, Picardie, Piedmont, Navarre, and Champagne, were given an honorific name: Les vieux corps, or The Old Corps.

  The standard practice was to disband regiments after each war to save money, with the Vieux corps and the French Royal Guard as the only survivors. When Louis XIII came to the throne, he dissolved most of the existing regiments, keeping the Vieux and a small handful of others. These survivors were renamed the Petite Vieux and earned an extraordinary privilege: they could never be disbanded, even after a war ended.

• 3. Louis XIV Builds a Machine

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  In 1661, Louis XIV inherited a force of roughly 70,000 men that was large but loosely organized. It was a familiar European mix of mercenaries, guard units, local militias, and campaign-only conscripts. Cohesion was poor, training was uneven, and equipment was inconsistent.

  Louis' two Secretaries of War, Michel Le Tellier and his son the Marquis de Louvois, drove a sweeping transformation. They rebuilt the army into a professional force of permanent regiments under central control. Weapons were standardized, promotions were regulated, drill was introduced systematically, and uniforms became the norm. The army nearly doubled in size under their supervision.

  The regimental system that emerged became a model imitated across Europe. By 1690, there were 90 French line infantry regiments, though they varied enormously in size. The weakest regiment, the Périgueux, had only 15 companies, while the Picardie had 210. A standard field battalion was authorized at 800 men. The cavalry was equally massive, with 112 regiments in 1690, including 105 French and seven foreign.

  Uniformity came gradually. The guard regiments of the Maison du Roi adopted complete uniforms in the early 1660s, replacing cassocks worn over civilian clothing. Line infantry colonels chose their own regimental colors through the 1660s and 1670s. By 1690, during the Nine Years' War, a formal allocation was made: 88 regiments wore gray uniforms with red facings, and 14 princely regiments wore blue. The Swiss mercenaries in French service wore red throughout, a distinction they kept until the end.

  The famous engineer Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban contributed another dimension of military power. During Louis XIV's reign, Vauban designed elaborate fortification systems across Flanders and beyond, overseeing the building or improvement of many fortresses. His genius at siege warfare made the taking and holding of towns a French speciality.

• 4. Wars Across Three Continents

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  The War of Devolution in 1667 was the first major test of the reformed army, and it demonstrated what the new force could do. Marshal Turenne and the pardoned Prince de Condé commanded French forces that seized much of the Spanish Netherlands with speed and efficiency. The Triple Alliance forced Louis to return most of his gains in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, though France kept eleven towns including Lille, Armentières, Bergues, and Douai, all of which remain French territory today.

  In May 1672, the army launched its most dramatic campaign, invading the Dutch Republic and nearly overrunning it entirely. The Dutch still call that year het Rampjaar, the Disaster Year. France fought this war with England and Sweden as allies, then with Sweden alone after England withdrew in 1674. Against a Grand Alliance including the Habsburg Emperor, Brandenburg-Prussia, Denmark, and Spain, the French armies steadily advanced in the Spanish Netherlands and along the Rhine. The eventual Peace of Nijmegen left France substantially enlarged in the Spanish Netherlands.

  The War of the Spanish Succession from 1701 to 1714 brought severe reversals. The allied armies under the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy inflicted major defeats at Blenheim, Ramillies, and Oudenarde. The French position seemed desperate, but the catastrophic allied casualties at Malplaquet in 1709 opened a political crack. When Marlborough's opponents won the 1710 British general election, he was removed from command. Marshal Villars and Marshal Vendôme led a French recovery, including a significant victory at Denain in 1712. The war ended in a stalemate that somewhat favored France.

  During Louis XV's reign, the army fought in three more major conflicts. At Fontenoy in 1745, Marshal de Saxe achieved what the source describes as a great triumph, enabling French forces to conquer much of the Austrian Netherlands. The Seven Years' War, however, went badly. French forces were defeated at the Battle of Rossbach in 1757, and by 1759 the British had captured Quebec, the French colonial capital in North America. France signed an unfavorable treaty in 1763.

  The army's final American campaign began after the Battle of Saratoga convinced Louis XVI to commit. The comte de Rochambeau led an expeditionary force to America, and French troops participated in the Siege of Yorktown in 1781, the engagement that secured colonial independence.

• 5. Class, Rank, and Resentment

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  Almost 90% of the rank and file of the Royal Army came from the peasantry and working class. About 10% came from the petite bourgeoisie. For these men, advancement was heavily constrained. Privates were usually promoted directly to sergeant, bypassing corporal altogether, and a third of sergeants at the time of the Revolution came from the petty bourgeoisie or higher classes.

  For officers, three separate career tracks existed depending on birth. The high nobility advanced rapidly, reaching the rank of colonel at a mean age of 36 years. The standard track for middle and lower nobility relied on seniority and moved very slowly; the mean age of promotion to captain on this track was 45 years. A promoted sergeant could normally rise no higher than substantive lieutenant or captain by brevet, even though over two-thirds of promoted sergeants came from the petty bourgeoisie or higher classes by social origin.

  Military reforms after the Seven Years' War tried to create a professionalized officer corps built on the petty nobility. The effort failed because the privileged career track for the high nobility was retained. The result was a peculiar social tension: many noblemen in the officer corps actually sided with the bourgeoisie in the broader political struggle against high-noble class privileges.

  By the 1780s, that tension was explosive. Louis had earlier yielded to aristocratic pressure and banned promotion from the lower ranks to officer status. This embittered long-serving non-commissioned officers who had spent years bearing the real burdens of training and discipline, yet now had no path to a commission. Meanwhile, many aristocratic officers neglected their duties, spending long periods as courtiers at Versailles or retreating to country estates. In 1784, Jean-François Coste was appointed Chief Consulting Physician of the Camps and Armies of the King, a sign that the institution was at least attempting to address the welfare of its men.

• 6. Revolution Tears the Army Apart

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  By 1789, the Gardes Françaises, the largest regiment of the maison militaire du roi and the permanent garrison of Paris, were stationed in a city on the edge of revolt. Many soldiers sympathized with the people from whom they had been drawn. Increasing numbers deserted as the year progressed.

  On the 14th of July 1789, some Gardes joined the Parisian mob and participated in the storming of the Bastille, the medieval fortress-prison that had come to symbolize governmental repression. Their refusal to obey their officers at that critical moment was more than an act of insubordination. It was a signal that the army itself was fracturing along the same lines as French society.

  The National Assembly authorized a National Guard intended to counterbalance the royal army. Faced with the creation of Jacobin committees within the ranks, the erosion of their noble privileges, and political mistrust, perhaps two-thirds of the commissioned officer corps emigrated after June 1791. They were largely replaced by experienced non-commissioned officers who had been denied promotion for years under the old system.

  In July 1791, twelve foreign regiments composed mostly of German mercenaries were merged into the line. Swiss regiments were disbanded a year later. Major reorganizations in 1791 and 1792 created new elected officers and merged volunteer battalions with surviving units of the former royal army into amalgamated demi-brigades. During the 10th of August riot of 1792, when supporters of the Revolution stormed the Tuileries Palace, the Swiss Guards fought back. After fighting broke out in the palace courtyard, the Swiss Guards were massacred by the mob, and those captured, including their commander, were later guillotined.

  The combined force faced its first real test at the Battle of Valmy in 1792, when an Austro-Prussian army invaded to restore the king's powers. The army held, and the republic declared it no longer served the king.

• 7. Restoration, Collapse, and Dissolution

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  Louis XVIII, Louis XVI's brother, returned as king when Austrian, British, Prussian, and Russian armies forced Napoleon to abdicate in 1814. The Count of Provence, now Louis XVIII, made few changes to the army beyond recreating several pre-revolutionary regiments of the maison militaire du roi.

  When Napoleon returned from exile in 1815, most of the army went over to him, and Louis fled. After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, Louis returned again. This time, recognizing that the existing army had no loyalty to the restored monarchy, his government disbanded what had been Napoleon's regiments wholesale. In their place came a system of Departmental Legions with no historical connection to empire, republic, or even the pre-1792 monarchy. The new army was staffed heavily with aristocratic officers, which drained its morale in almost exactly the way the old system had.

  In 1823, the army carried out one final Bourbon mission. An expeditionary force named the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis marched into Spain to support the Bourbon King Ferdinand VII against an uprising threatening his regime. The Battle of Trocadero that year was among the last actions of the royal army tradition.

  King Charles X was forced to abdicate in the July Revolution of 1830. The army participated in little fighting. His cousin, the Duke of Orléans, was installed as Louis Philippe I in what was designed as a constitutional monarchy. The French Royal Army, which had served the Bourbon dynasty from Louis XIV's reign in the mid-17th century through Charles X's fall in the 19th, was permanently dissolved. White uniforms had already been restored after the first Bourbon Restoration, and dark blue coatees had been adopted in 1819, but neither uniform survived the monarchy itself. The July Revolution ended both.