Filling the ranks: the Remplacement Militaire in post-revolutionary France

Abstract

Abstract Many economists have analyzed the efficiency of a volunteered army relative to a conscripted army. However, they have rarely studied the working of real-world alternative, market-based, military institutions where exemptions from military service are traded among the citizens. This paper fills this gap by studying the rise and fall of the Remplacement Militaire in the eighteenth and the nineteenth century France. This system endured for more than three quarters of a century until the French government progressively moved toward universal conscription after 1872. At times of military expansion, the State regulated the replacement market. We argue that the goal of such regulations was to limit the increase in fraud and avoid a deterioration in the quality of the soldiery associated with increases in the price of replacements.