Neither Cowardly Nor Greedy? Buying and Selling Escape from Conscription in Revolutionary and Post-revolutionary France

Abstract

Abstract In late revolutionary and Napoleonic France, arranging for a paid substitute to fight in one’s place could be a straightforward contract. But it was also a vexed relationship; those who avoided fighting could appear cowardly and selfish and those who accepted money to risk their lives foolhardy or greedy. This article examines replacement from its uneasy institution with conscription in the late Revolution, through its apparent banalization under Napoleon, to its end with peace and a new government—and its quiet return as part of a new law on recruitment in 1818. This approach uncovers the centrality of ideas of family, free choice and sacrifice for both proponents and critics of the practice. It also shows how much the consequences of revolution and war reverberated long after peace was declared, as contemporaries wrestled with the ideological and practical legacies of obligatory military service and the contracts that had promised ways of escaping such service.