Foreign, Black, and Jewish Troops in the French Military, 1715-1831
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NATIONALIZING FRANCE’S ARMY Winner of the Walker Cowen Memorial Prize for an outstanding work of scholarship in eighteenth- century studies NATIONALIZING FRANCE’S ARMY Foreign, Black, and Jewish Troops in the French Military, 1715–1831 Christopher J. tozzi University of Virginia Press Charlottesville and london University of Virginia Press © 2016 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper First published 2016 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 library of Congress Cataloging- in- publiCation data names: Tozzi, Christopher J., 1986– author. title: Nationalizing France’s Army : foreign, Black, and Jewish troops in the French military, 1715–1831 / Christopher J. Tozzi. other titles: Foreign, Black, and Jewish troops in the French military, 1715–1831 desCription: Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, [2016] | Series: Winner of the Walker Cowen Memorial Prize for an outstanding work of scholarship in eighteenth- century studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. identifiers: lCCn 2015035152| isbn 9780813938332 (cloth : alk. paper) | isbn 9780813938349 (ebook) subJeCts: lCsh: France—History, Military—1789–1815. | France. Armée— History—18th century. | Jewish soldiers—France—History. | Soldiers, Black— France—History. | Mercenary troops—France—History. | Foreign enlistment— France—History. | Napoleonic Wars, 1800–1815—Participation, Foreign. | France. Armée—History—19th century. | France—History, Military—1715–1789. ClassifiCation: lCC dC152.5 .t66 2016 | ddC 355.00944 / 09033—dc23 lc record available at http: // lccn.loc.gov / 2015035152 CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 one The Army before the Nation: Foreign Troops in Old Regime France 17 two Nationalizing the Army 49 three Foreign Legions from the Old Regime to the Terror 86 four The Limits of Pragmatism: Foreign Soldiers and the Terror 115 five Constitutionalism and Innovation: Foreign Troops under the Directory and the Consulate 140 six Revolutionary Continuities: Napoleon’s Foreign Troops 170 seven Jews, Soldiering, and Citizenship in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France 198 Conclusion: Foreign Soldiers and the Revolutionary Legacy 217 appendix a Places of Birth for Troops in Foreign Regiments 221 appendix b The Foreign Regiments in 1789 226 Notes on Archival Sources 229 Notes 233 Bibliography 279 Index 301 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In contrast to my colleagues in the “hard” sciences, I work in a discipline in which little scholarship appears under coauthorship. That is a pity, because this book is hardly the fruit of my labors alone. Accordingly, it is with great pleasure that I acknowledge in the space below some of the colleagues, friends, and organizations whose assistance and encouragement made this project possible. I regret only that, for want of unrestricted space, many names of those who deserve credit will remain absent from these pages. In Paris, Bernard Gainot, Florence Gauthier, Jennifer Heuer, and Marie- Jeanne Rossignol offered guidance while I was performing the re- search that laid the foundation for this book. From the United States, Rafe Blaufarb, François Furstenberg, and Richard Kagan read early drafts of chapters that made their way into the manuscript. Wilda Anderson, Ste- ven David, Michael Kwass, and John Marshall provided comments on the project as a whole, which proved invaluable as I revised the manuscript for publication. I received feedback on separately published book chapters and journal articles, in which some of the ideas that made their way into this book had their first incarnations, from Reynald Abad, Mary Ashburn Miller, Vicki Caron, Hilary Footitt, Eddie Kolla, Khalid Kurji, David Moak, Kenneth Moss, Alyssa Sepinwall, David Woodworth, and a still- anonymous reader for the Journal of Modern History. The anonymous reviewers of my man- uscript for the University of Virginia Press helped enormously to sharpen the arguments and flesh out the substance of this book during the final stages of revision. I am grateful, too, to the staff of the University of Virginia Press, es- pecially Angie Hogan and Mark Mones, for making the preparation and production of this book a remarkably smooth and enjoyable process. Generous material support for research came from the Social Sciences Research Council (with funding provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foun- dation); a bourse Chateaubriand from the embassy of France in the United States; a Massachusetts Fellowship from the Society of the Cincinnati; a Jane L. Keddy Memorial Fellowship from the John Carter Brown Library; the Institut Français d’Amérique; a Carl J. Ekberg research grant from the Acknowledgments Center for French Colonial Studies; a Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Jew- ish Studies Award from Johns Hopkins University; a research grant from John Hopkins funded by J. Brien Key; and an award from the Singleton Center for the Study of Pre- Modern Europe at Johns Hopkins. Howard University provided a research grant, as well as a reduction of my teaching load, that supported the completion of this book. I owe much, too, to my colleagues at Howard, especially Ana- Lucia Araujo, Jef- frey Kerr-Ritchie, and Edna Greene Medford, for their mentorship while I worked on the manuscript. I have been extraordinarily lucky to have the support of a host of friends who, on both sides of the Atlantic, made the years I spent research- ing and writing this book such rich ones for mind and soul. Will Brown, Sara Damiano, Cole Jones, and Jessica Walker were particularly supportive colleagues and companions in Baltimore. Anne- Lise Guignard provided a futon, and some excellent tarte flambée, during research in Strasbourg. In Paris, Nimisha Barton, Philippe Florentin, Lucy Gellman, Kelly Jakes, Michael Kozakowski, Vanessa Lincoln, Anton Matytsin, Malgorzata Prze- piórka, Katherine McDonough, Laura Sims, Kelly Summers, and Karen Turman helped me to make the very most of days inside the archives, as well as evenings on quai de la Tournelle. I am profoundly grateful to David A. Bell, whose boundless generosity, unfailing encouragement, and exceptional direction not only assured the success of this book, but also did very much to make possible the reward- ing life I now lead as a teacher and researcher. Some material in chapter 7 is adapted from my essay “Jews, Soldiering, and Citizenship in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France,” in The Journal of Modern History 86 (June 2014). © 2014 by the University of Chicago 0022- 2801 / 2014 / 8602- 0001$10.00. All rights reserved. Some material that appears in chapters 1, 4, and 6 on languages spoken by foreign troops is adapted from my essay “One Army, Many Languages: Foreign Troops and Linguistic Diversity in the Eighteenth- Century French Military,” in Hilary Footitt and Michael Kelly, eds., Languages and the Military: Al- liances, Occupation and Peace Building, 2012, Palgrave Macmillan, re- produced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan. I am grateful to the publishers of both of these works for allowing me to adapt parts of these contributions for use in this book. More personally, I remain deeply indebted to my parents, Barbara, Anthony, and Carole Tozzi, for their unflagging support during the years I worked on this project, even when it was not at all clear how a terminal degree in French history would translate into gainful employment. My viii Acknowledgments grandmothers, Dorothy Schatzle and Mary Ann Tozzi, will not see these pages in print, but their love is inscribed onto each one of them. So, too, is that of my grandfathers, Robert Schatzle and Antonio Tozzi—sons of im- migrants, soldiers in their time—who made their livings with their hands, yet are proud that I have not. I dedicate this book to my grandparents, who gave so much to assure the privileged life I live. Finally, I owe more than I can say to Kate Sohasky. Her love and com- panionship were, by far, my luckiest finds in the course of working on this book, and they sustained me through much of it. (Her role in acquainting me fully with the stimulative power of caffeine did not hurt, either.) I am endlessly blessed to be able to look forward to a lifetime and more with her. ix NATIONALIZING FRANCE’S ARMY INTRODUCTION The turbulent years between 1789 and 1815 saw more than a half-dozen regimes rise and fall in France. Isidore Lynch, whose career as a soldier and army administrator spanned more than four decades, served nearly all of them. He first enlisted in 1770, when he became a sous- lieutenant in the Regiment of Clare. His service in the French expe- ditionary forces in North America a decade later, during the American Revolution, helped to secure him promotion to colonel of the Regiment of Walsh in 1784. In 1792, after the outbreak of the French revolutionary war, Lynch commanded the vanguard of the French army at the pivotal battle of Valmy, where he “distinguished himself most brilliantly, leading his troops with great tranquility and guiding them firmly under fire for more than twelve hours,” according to a superior officer. His subsequent suspension and imprisonment during the Reign of Terror in 1793 did not dispel his taste for service in the army, in which he reenlisted in June 1795. Reservations about fighting fellow Catholics in the Vendée prompted him to retire a few months later, but he reenlisted in 1800 as an inspector in Napoleon Bonaparte’s army. It was not until 1815, when a Bourbon king sat once again upon the throne of France, that Lynch definitively ended his military career.1 Lynch’s long