1815-1816 : Le peuple contre l’armée

Résumé 0

Under this title, the objective of this file is to study the population’s powerful rejection and reprisal movement against the military that is one of major components of the « White Terror ». Another component is the reaction in many parts of the country against the war effort imposed again: in Vendée and Britany, as well as in Marseille, Toulouse and Nîmes, the garrisons and individual soldiers are attacked. Senior bonapartist officers are also murdered, with or without legal proceedings, and the command structure is cleansed of its majority of officers who, after swearing loyalty to the King, tuned coat to join the emperor.The violence in the summer of 1815 reveals the popular opposition against the Consulate and the Empire that was kept underground by the authoritarian regime. The sudden reversal at the end of the Belgian campaign lets free rein to this hostility that is no more restrained by the Restoration. Of course the army, which was in symbiosis with the Revolution and the Empire regimes, is now the target of this reaction: Natalie Petiteau shows the local attempts at the individual punishment of high-ranking personalities, like Marshall Brune, Pierre Triomphe analyses the specific participation of women in the royalists’ demonstrations, Laurent Nagy delivers a striking example of the “half-pay” retired officers’ lives, Pedro Rújula, with his presentation of the Spanish civilian population massive participation in the Guerra de la Independencia shows that France’s case is but one amongst the other occupied countries.