Jourdan law
주르당-델브렐 법
French law adopted on 5 September 1798 (19 Fructidor An VI) that imposed obligatory military service on all French men aged 20 to 25. Unlike the exceptional, temporary 1793 levée en masse, it established a standing, regular conscription system. Article 1 read: 'Tout Français est soldat et se doit à la défense de sa patrie.'
In depth
Background to adoption
The law's formal title was 'Loi relative au mode de formation de l'armée de terre, du 19 fructidor, an VI'. It was proposed under the Directory by the deputies Pierre Delbrel and Jean-Baptiste Jourdan. The great demobilization after 9 Thermidor had reduced the army from 700,000 men in 1794 to 380,000 in 1797, and the Directory, refusing to apply the law of 23 August 1793 as a law of exception, sought to remodel it into a permanent, regular recruiting system. A further aim was to limit the duration of service and rotate old soldiers out for new levies.
Drafting
General Jean-Baptiste Jourdan, deputy and rapporteur of the military commission at the Conseil des Cinq-Cents, presented a report on 12 January 1798 on a new mode of army recruiting instituting 'conscription' as universal and obligatory. The Conseil des Cinq-Cents deputy Pierre Delbrel filed reservations on 24 February 1798 opposing the age limit, the ballot and the auxiliary army, arguing that every citizen should be liable to personal service. The final text took months of discussion between Jourdan and Delbrel.
Main provisions
Title I, 'Principes', article 1 read: 'Tout Français est soldat et se doit à la défense de sa patrie'; article 3 provided that, except in case of danger to the fatherland, the land army is formed by voluntary enlistment and by military conscription. Title II covered volunteers aged 18 to 30 with a certificate of good conduct. Title III, article 15 provided that conscription includes all French men from 20 years completed to 25 years completed. Conscripts were divided into five classes, each comprising men born in the same year; each year one or more classes were called according to military need, with the youngest first-class men of 20 always called first. Communes and cantons compiled lists of all French men of their district aged 20 (articles 24-26).
Exemptions and dispute
Married men and widowers with children were exempted; the English-language account adds the clergy, industrial workers essential to the war effort, students of selected Grandes écoles and public office holders.
Sources conflict on whether the 1798 law itself permitted paid replacement. The Assemblée nationale account states that legislators wished conscription to be compatible with equality among citizens and that voluntary replacement of one man by another was proscribed because it rested on inequality of fortune. English Wikipedia attributes legally sanctioned replacement to the law, allowing anyone able to purchase a substitute. Fr.wikipedia's article on French military service dates the legal possibility of replacement to the law of fructidor an VII (August 1799), a year after the Jourdan law, and notes that the 1804 imperial decree and the 1818 Gouvion-Saint-Cyr law extended paid substitution. Pigeard's thesis likewise treats replacement as authorized over the 1798-1814 application. This dictionary reports the conflict rather than resolving it.
Significance
The law enabled Napoleon to supply his armies until 1815. Pigeard's thesis treats its application as running from 5 September 1798 to 4 June 1814. Estimates of conscripted men range from 1.5 to 3.5 million, with up to half a million evading or deserting. The principle it established, that every Frenchman is a soldier and owes himself to the defence of the fatherland, remained in force across regimes until the professionalization of the armies decided by Jacques Chirac in 1996. The law's own period of application must therefore be distinguished from the long persistence of its principle, and no single date of repeal can be asserted.