French National Guard (1789–1872)
프랑스 국민방위군 (1789–1872)
The citizen militia raised in Paris in July 1789, during the French Revolution, as a "bourgeois militia" and soon formed in towns across France. Separate from the regular army, it kept order and served as a reserve for home defence, and it elected its officers. It sided with the insurgents in the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 but put down the June rising of 1848. Opened to the working class during the siege of Paris in 1870–1871, it grew to some 300,000 men and became the army of the Commune, whose guardsmen were called fédérés. After the Commune was crushed it was disbanded on 14 March 1872.
In depth
On 13 July 1789, with Paris in uproar over Necker's dismissal, the National Assembly declared the formation of a "bourgeois militia", and the next morning its search for weapons led to the storming of the Bastille. With Lafayette elected its commander it was renamed the "National Guard of Paris", and similar bodies sprang up in other towns and rural districts. At first it was a militia of property owners open only to "active citizens" who paid direct taxes; its members kept their weapons and uniforms at home and turned out when called. In the summer of 1792, when the fédérés from the provinces were admitted and citizens armed with pikes enrolled, it became an armed force of the Revolution.
Napoleon distrusted the National Guard and partly disarmed it, but mobilised it for home defence in 1809 and 1814. Charles X dissolved it in 1827 without disarming it, and its muskets resurfaced in the July Revolution of 1830. Re-established in 1831, it put down the June Rebellion of 1832 and yet sided with the republicans in February 1848. The historian Zaidman wrote that when the Guard backed the forces of order one spoke of a riot, and when it went over to the insurgents the rising became a revolution. The Second Empire confined it to subordinate tasks.
After the Republic was proclaimed in September 1870, the Government of National Defence, facing the siege of Paris, opened enlistment to the working class and paid a daily allowance of 1.50 francs with food aid. By the end of September the Paris Guard numbered about 300,000 men in 254 battalions, and once the election of officers was allowed, revolutionaries such as Flourens, Ranvier and Varlin were elected to lead battalions. In February and March 1871 delegates of the battalions founded the Republican Federation of the National Guard, whose executive, the Central Committee, governed Paris after the rising of 18 March. The guardsmen of this federation were called fédérés, and the Commune abolished conscription and the standing army and declared every able-bodied male citizen a member of the National Guard.
In The Civil War in France Marx wrote that armed Paris was the only serious obstacle to the counter-revolutionary conspiracy and that the National Guard had entrusted its supreme control to a Central Committee elected by its whole body. During Bloody Week an estimated ten to fifteen thousand fédérés were killed in combat or executed. The regular army objected to so large an armed force outside its control, and the National Guard was formally disbanded on 14 March 1872 and replaced by territorial regiments. In 2016 the French government raised a reserve force of the same name in response to terrorist attacks; this entry covers the militia of 1789–1872.