The Garde mobile ("Mobile Guard"; also called Garde nationale mobile though it had nothing to do with the Garde nationale) was intended to be the body which would in effect conscript all who had been able to avoid military service. The Garde would also take in all conscripts on completion of their army service. Napoleon III took up the idea and announced on 12 December 1866 that the Garde Mobile would eventually attain a strength of 400,000 troops. Its members were colloquially known as "Moblots". It origins lay in the crises that led up to the Franco-Prussian War, when Adolphe Niel, Minister of War for France under Emperor Napoleon III, attempted to bolster French military power creating a service which would provide reserves to be added to the regular French army. Although there was conscription into the army, not only was it not universal but middle-class people could purchase exemptions for their sons in a system known as Remplacement.
The National Guard is a French military, gendarmerie, and police reserve force, active in its current form since 2016 but originally founded in 1789 after the French Revolution.
Napoleon III, the nephew of Napoleon I, was the first elected President of France from 1848 to 1852. When he could not constitutionally be re-elected, he seized power in 1851 and became the Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. He founded the Second French Empire and was its only emperor until the defeat of the French army and his capture by Prussia and its allies in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. He worked to modernize the French economy, rebuilt the center of Paris, expanded the overseas empire, and engaged in the Crimean War and the Second Italian War of Independence.
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the War of 1870, was a conflict between the Second French Empire and later the Third French Republic, and the German states of the North German Confederation led by the Kingdom of Prussia. Lasting from 19 July 1870 to 28 January 1871, the conflict was caused by Prussian ambitions to extend German unification and French fears of the shift in the European balance of power that would result if the Prussians succeeded. Some historians argue that the Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck deliberately provoked the French into declaring war on Prussia in order to draw the independent southern German states—Baden, Württemberg, Bavaria and Hesse-Darmstadt—into an alliance with the North German Confederation dominated by Prussia, while others contend that Bismarck did not plan anything and merely exploited the circumstances as they unfolded. None, however, dispute the fact that Bismarck must have recognized the potential for new German alliances, given the situation as a whole.
Both the left and the right in the Corps Legislatif took issue with the proposal. The right wanted an all-professional army; the left were opposed to Bonapartist militarism, or wanted a "People in Arms" as their defense service. Hence not much money was spent for the equipment or training of the Garde Mobile. Its authority to conscript was also diminished. Servicemen were trained fourteen days per year, each one not followed by another, so they could return home to sleep. This service was not even permitted to deploy beyond the local areas of which the units were formed; thus, they were hardly mobile.
The Garde Mobile had different uniforms from those of either the regular infantry, the National Guard, or the infantry of the French Marines. They did not get the excellent French Chassepot rifle. When the Franco-Prussian War broke out, troops were called up into the Garde Mobile, and they received a mixture of inferior equipment bought from foreign countries, the transport of which was secured by the French Navy.
The Troupe de marine are a corps of the French Army which regroups several specialties: infantry, artillery, armoured and airborne. Despite their designation, they are an integral part of the Army. The troupe de marine have been professionalized progressively since 1970.
The Chassepot, officially known as Fusil modèle 1866, was a bolt action military breechloading rifle, famous as the arm of the French forces in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/1871. It replaced an assortment of Minié muzzleloading rifles many of which were converted in 1867 to breech loading. A great improvement to existing military rifles in 1866, the Chassepot marked the commencement of the era of modern bolt action, breech-loading military rifles. Beginning in 1874, the rifle was easily converted to fire metallic cartridges, a step which would have been impossible to achieve with the Dreyse needle rifle.
Representation in Art
The Attack at Dawn (1877). The Garde Mobile rush from an inn to defend themselves from the advancing Prussian troops. The Walters Art Museum.
Related Research Articles
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday, 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in Belgium, part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands at the time. A French army under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated by two of the armies of the Seventh Coalition: a British-led allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington, and a Prussian army under the command of Field Marshal Blücher. The battle marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
The Belgian Defense Forces is the national military of Belgium. The Belgian Armed Forces was established after Belgium became independent in October 1830. Since that time Belgian armed forces have fought in World War I, World War II, the Cold War, Kosovo, Somalia and Afghanistan. The ParaCommando Brigade intervened several times in Central-Africa, for maintaining public order and evacuation of Belgian citizens. The Armed Forces comprise four branches: the Land Component, the Air Component, the Naval Component and the Medical Component.
The Austro-Prussian War or Seven Weeks' War was a war fought in 1866 between the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia, with each also being aided by various allies within the German Confederation. Prussia had also allied with the Kingdom of Italy, linking this conflict to the Third Independence War of Italian unification. The Austro-Prussian War was part of the wider rivalry between Austria and Prussia, and resulted in Prussian dominance over the German states.
The Battle of Leipzig or Battle of the Nations was fought from 16 to 19 October 1813, at Leipzig, Saxony. The coalition armies of Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Sweden, led by Tsar Alexander I of Russia and Karl Philipp, Prince of Schwarzenberg, decisively defeated the French army of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French. Napoleon's army also contained Polish and Italian troops, as well as Germans from the Confederation of the Rhine. The battle was the culmination of the German campaign of 1813 and involved 600,000 soldiers, 2,200 artillery pieces, the expenditure of 200,000 rounds of artillery ammunition and 127,000 casualties, making it the largest battle in Europe prior to World War I.
The Grande Armée was the army commanded by Napoleon I during the Napoleonic Wars. From 1805 to 1809, the Grande Armée scored a series of historic victories that gave the French Empire an unprecedented grip on power over the European continent. Widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest fighting forces ever assembled, it suffered terrible losses during the French invasion of Russia in 1812 and never recovered its tactical superiority after that campaign.
The Battle of Sedan was fought during the Franco-Prussian War from 1 to 2 September 1870. It resulted in the capture of Emperor Napoleon III and large numbers of his troops and for all intents and purposes decided the war in favour of Prussia and its allies, though fighting continued under a new French government.
The Imperial Guard was originally a small group of elite soldiers of the French Army under the direct command of Napoleon I, but grew considerably over time. It acted as his bodyguard and tactical reserve, and he was careful of its use in battle. The Guard was divided into the staff, infantry, cavalry, and artillery regiments, as well as battalions of sappers and marines. The guard itself as a whole distinguished between the experienced veterans and less experienced members by being separated into three sections: the Old Guard, Middle Guard and Young Guard.
The French Army, officially the Ground Army to distinguish it from the French Air Force, Armée de l'Air or Air Army, is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces. It is responsible to the Government of France, along with the other four components of the Armed Forces. The current Chief of Staff of the French Army (CEMAT) is General Jean-Pierre Bosser, a direct subordinate of the Chief of the Defence Staff (CEMA). General Bosser is also responsible, in part, to the Ministry of the Armed Forces for organization, preparation, use of forces, as well as planning and programming, equipment and Army future acquisitions. For active service, Army units are placed under the authority of the Chief of the Defence Staff (CEMA), who is responsible to the President of France for planning for, and use, of forces.
The Battle of Beaune-la-Rolande on 28 November 1870 was a battle of the Franco-Prussian War, won by Prussia. In an attempt to relieve the Siege of Paris, French General Crouzat's XX Corps launched an attack against three Prussian brigades resting in Beaune-la-Rolande. These brigades were from the Prussian X Corps which was detailed to guard the flanks and rear of the force besieging Paris and provide early warning of any French counter-attacks. The French committed a force of 60,000 men, largely conscripts of the Garde Mobile, and 140 guns against the Prussians' 9,000 men and 70 guns, mostly drawn from regular troops. Despite the overwhelming superiority of numbers the French attack failed to take the village and was ultimately forced to retreat by Prussian reinforcements.
The Royal Prussian Army served as the army of the Kingdom of Prussia. It became vital to the development of Brandenburg-Prussia as a European power.
The Voltigeurs were French military skirmish units created in 1804 by Emperor Napoleon I. It officially replaced the second company of fusiliers, which were also chasseurs.
The Royal Saxon Army was the military force of the Electorate (1682—1807) and later the Kingdom of Saxony (1807—1918). A regular Saxon army was first established in 1682 and it continued to exist until the abolition of the German monarchies in 1918. With the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine by Napoleon the Royal Saxon Army joined the French "Grande Armée" along with 37 other German states.
The Imperial Guard of Napoleon III was a military corps in the French Army formed by Napoleon III as a re-establishment of his uncle Napoleon I's Imperial Guard, with an updated version of the original uniforms and almost the same privileges.
The Imperial Russian Army was the land armed force of the Russian Empire, active from around 1721 to the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the early 1850s, the Russian army consisted of more than 900,000 regular soldiers and nearly 250,000 irregulars.
The Royal Prussian Army was the principal armed force of the Kingdom of Prussia during its participation in the Napoleonic Wars.
The Bavarian Army was the army of the Electorate (1682–1806) and then Kingdom (1806–1919) of Bavaria. It existed from 1682 as the standing army of Bavaria until the merger of the military sovereignty (Wehrhoheit) of Bavaria into that of the German State in 1919. The Bavarian army was never comparable to the armies of the Great Powers of the 19th century, but it did provide the Wittelsbach dynasty with sufficient scope of action, in the context of effective alliance politics, to transform Bavaria from a territorially-disjointed small state to the second-largest state of the German Empire after Prussia.
The Commemorative medal of the 1870–1871 War was a French military campaign medal awarded to those who served during the Franco-Prussian War.
Though not actually a belligerent in the Franco–Prussian War (1870–71), Belgian society and politics were heavily affected by the conflict, and in particular the fear of invasion by either side. The mobilization of the army in 1870 highlighted the inadequacies of the Belgian military and led to reform of the system of conscription and a programme of re-fortification towards the end of the 19th century which would greatly influence the early phases of the First World War.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
