The citizen soldier: conscription in Italy in the Napoleonic era

These days we hear a lot about a possible restoration of compulsory leverage in order to empower and educate young people to the concept of respect and duty towards the State. The law on conscription in Italy has never been removed, but "suspended" in the sense that it can still be renewed in case of need. Public opinion has appeared divided on the usefulness of such a reintroduction: some argue that it is unthinkable for the State to again shoulder the enormous expenses for the maintenance of a non-professional army; others think that forcing young people to just six months of military life makes no sense. A clear majority, instead, hopes that the naja will report on the right path a youth judged to be weak and devoid of values.

Military conscription has its own history and arises from an important need that is superior to any political or educational calculation, namely the defense of the fatherland. This concept is placed in a period of great changes in European history and perhaps worth reviving; to do this we must move to neighboring France, in the 1790, immediately after the turbulent days of the Revolution.

From the endangered homeland to the Jourdan law of the 1798

The 14 July 1789 the French people caused an earthquake whose waves forever ravaged the European political landscape for over a century. The power managed by the centuries-old dynasties and the impenetrable wall erected among the social classes received a disruptive drive that abolished on paper the hateful marginalization of that conspicuous slice of the world that did not meet the requirements of the upper classes, the nobles and the aristocrats. The revolutionary government was however weak, although it enjoyed the dragging support of the population. All within the Constituent were informed on the fundamental role that the army would play, but the real sense of the importance of a national army was only when the same Paris was threatened by foreign powers that, in August 1791, signed the Statement of Pillnitz. The chaotic revolutionary France was not yet ready to clash on equal terms with the organized and disciplined Austro Prussian armies, but it could count on a factor that the two contending monarchies did not possess: the favor of the people.

The National Assembly, alarmed by the approach of enemy armies, carefully evaluated the proposal by Edmond Louis Alexis Dubois-Crancé, who suggested the levée en masse at least 300.000 men to defend the homeland soil. The first question was how to find sufficient resources to support such an apparatus since in the Old Regime the maintenance of the regiments could be defined as a private affair and not of the monarchy. The second argument on the government table was the training of soldiers, the way in which they were to be inserted into the old regiments or the possibility of forming new ones. The idea of ​​the citizen Dubois-Crancé actually initiated the conscription although it did not yet have the fullness of a complete law, but above all it did not fully involve the population. In fact, since the first months of government, revolutionary France had encouraged citizens to manage public order by serving in the National Guard: a voluntary service without pay that resembles a political police. The National Guard militias served as a dock for the recruitment of a subsequent wave of volunteers in the 1791, enlisted for a year of double-pay service compared to the regular army¹. For these new arrivals no insertion was foreseen in the regiments of Ancien Régime, in order to preserve a revolutionary identity with respect to a monarchical legacy still present among those who had served Louis XVI.

The separation between veterans and new recruits did not last long as Dubois-Crancé himself put in place the so-calledembrigadement, a primary phase of what was then called amalgams². The 23 August 1793 one of the most erudite members of the National Convention, Lazare Carnot, laid the groundwork for the conscription law by taking up the principle of the citizen soldier voiced by Dubois-Crancé: all unmarried citizens, including 18 and 25 years of age or beyond, they had to serve the country, without any exception or possibility of substitution. Thus, an army of volunteers passed to an army of citizens, who would have represented the nation in arms. A choice, the French one, that would change the fate of other armies still based on voluntary recruitment.

20 July 1798 (2 termidoro year VI) General Jean-Baptiste Jourdan (image) presented to the Council of the Five Hundred a bill that partly borrowed the idea of ​​Delbrel: he required the formation of an auxiliary army of 100.000 " defenders of the homeland "recruited according to drawing lots among young people from 18 to 21 years in peacetime and from 18 to 24 years in case of war for an engagement that would last five years³. With respect to the previous proposals, Jourdan-Delbrel reintroduced the drawing of lots, a practice that everyone had been very careful to legalize up to that moment. The same was true of the replacement rule which agreed to avoid military service as long as the extract found a substitute. Both measures were criticized by Delbrel himself, who rightly asserted that the drawing of lots was a method that could be easily manipulated, while the substitution would create a sort of "army of mercenaries" hired by third parties. .

The Jourdan law thus gave a new impulse to the army, nevertheless it must be remembered that voluntary recruitment remained the preferred practice for filling the regiments. Unlike today the term "volunteer" was not well seen by everyone since what might have seemed a profession became in fact a refuge for desperate people. The voluntary system was, in fact, opposed to several members of the Assembly who considered it a fallback for the dispossessed without occupation and whose arrival in the army would have worsened the human condition and discipline of the army⁴. The aversion to the volunteers was corroborated by the facts, after the two levers of the 1791 and 1792, the army staff went into crisis again and only the Jourdan-Delbrel law allowed the filling of the ranks.

The compulsory conscription was amended only once during the Empire and revealed a fundamental law both for France, but also for the new "allied" states of the Empire who were forced to make their blood contribution to the glory and fame of the Emperor.

Conscription in Italy

The 29 May 1801 the then Minister of War Pietro Teulié presented to the Committee of Government of the Cisaplina Republic the proposal to introduce the law of conscription for all citizens from 18 to 36 years, from which 20.000 would be drawn by lot, requirements with the sole exclusion of single children, widowed with offspring and disabled, all with the possibility of replacement⁵. The compulsory leverage was also misunderstood by those who thought that Italy was not used to the craft of arms and that the best thing was still to rely on the most powerful French army and the few Polish contingents present in the peninsula. The motion presented by the Teulié became law only one year later, thanks to the will of President Francesco Melzi d'Erril and of the same Bonaparte; the 13 August 1802 conscription became a reality also in Italy.

According to the new law all young people included among the 20 and 25 years of age were subject to compulsory leverage. The requirements - linked to a four-year service - were divided into five classes, one for each year of age. The final lists had to be drafted by the councils of the districts, who were entrusted with the control of the "registrations" prepared by the municipal administrations⁶. These would then be exhibited in the district chancelleries to be publicly viewed and possibly contested individually. The state apparatus moved so that the whole population would accept the leverage as a sacred duty towards the state, but for most of the young it was not so. Enlisting meant taking time off work in the camps for long periods and above all meant risking life in war. Therefore, apart from the fraudulent methods to avoid the extraction of one's own name, the Jourdan law helped to trigger the alarming phenomenon of renitence, which added to that of desertion. Many were the boys who rejected the call, preferring to escape rather than wear the uniform; others, as soon as they passed through the door of the barracks, escaped, carrying with them uniform, equipment and rifle. Once the subjects took to the spot they were untraceable and often organized in bands that enjoyed the protection of the premises. The main instrument to counteract this phenomenon was the Gendarmerie which often used unpopular methods to get the fugitives to be delivered. The same administrations, with the hideous and hateful introduction of the sizes, moved to make the renitents return to the ranks.

The recruiter, as soon as he arrived at the regiment, received clothes and what he needed to survive, but the uniforms were not always available and therefore remained for a long time in civilian clothes, favoring their escape.⁷. On the other hand thearmy French, which was to serve as a model, was in very poor condition, as the general of division Giuseppe Lechi pointed out in a letter addressed to General Championnet on 15 October 1799: "Do you want to give us the chance to dress? How can you think that you trust this when we see the French troops failing everything?"⁸.

In the years of the Empire the situation worsened even more so as to push the Minister of War of the Kingdom Alessandro Trivulzio to define the desertion the "destructive worm" of the army⁹. The figures were worrying and the years of war could only make the unease worse; not to mention what happened during the Spanish campaign from 1808 to 1814, where the escape from the regiments reached a tragic dimension¹⁰.

The educational power of conscription

In the three years of the Jacobin period and in the Napoleonic era the malfunctioning of the conscription and the rampant desertion - as Della Peruta has specified - "eroded the authority and prestige of the Government and obscured the image of political security and administrative efficiency of the new regime"¹¹. The shortcomings of the state were many, but the damages caused by the fugitives were just as serious. Because of the conscription the government coffers progressed towards an inexhaustible bleeding that sooner or later would collapse. Moreover the formation of bands of defectors subtracted actual for the maintenance of the public order, creating a strong dissatisfaction among the population. The conscription gear started weak already at the level of local authorities and broke definitively once the individual wore the uniform. Strict methods, physical punishment and abuses of officers and non-commissioned officers contributed to the disruption of the military apparatus. In this regard the Minister of War and Navy of the Kingdom of Italy, François Auguste Cafarelli du Falga issued a directive which forbade any kind of corporal punishment to the detriment of the military, forbidding officers and non-commissioned officers to bring with them the so-called "cane" "Or stick (used to beat). In addition, the minister tried to remedy the bureaucratic dysfunctions within each regiment by soliciting a timely issue of "money" or pay for the enlisted. The minister's wishes were partially fulfilled, at least in the form, nevertheless the malpractice of the robbery inside the barracks continued until the fall of Napoleon and even beyond.

With the end of the Italic Kingdom and the Napoleonic parable the Italian military apparatus - the first in this sense a military under a tricolor flag - was dismantled by the Restoration. The budget was negative, also because to the effects of dishonesty we must necessarily add the high number of Italian dead in the campaigns for the glory of the Empire. We must not forget, however, the high emotional value generated by the formation of an Italian army, whose echoes continued until the years of the Risorgimento, where many had already fought for the Emperor. The memory of the army of the Kingdom of Italy ignited the warrior spirit of the Italians who courageously faced the Austrian occupation.

Napoleon appreciated Italian soldiers, often comparing them to the legionaries of Ancient Rome. The emperor knew how to win over the sympathies of his men and peoples whom he subjugated: all were useful to the cause and each of them had to provide his heavy contribution of blood. According to the memoirs appeared in the second half of the nineteenth century, the imperial war experience was a real success, at least for those officers who left their experiences on the printed paper. In the general vulgate, however, Napoleon remained an important figure, the only one - according to many - who aroused in Italians a spirit of belonging destined to re-emerge in the early years of the Risorgimento. The Italians of Napoleon became a propaganda manifesto even in the twenty years, thanks to the contribution of rigorous historians such as Antonio Lissoni or Ambrogio Bollati who - devoid of any politicization - sang their praises, contributing in an important way to the national Napoleonic historiography.

An answer for the present

Military conscription in the Napoleonic era was the starting point for a global experience: led to the birth of mass armies, absolute protagonists of the first and second world war.

In Italy the establishment of military service has had several implications, but especially in the post-war period it was a redemption factor for many men, who still believed in certain values ​​stripped of fascism and the September 8. From the 1950s onwards, there were millions of Italian kids who wore the uniform, more or less convinced: if for some military service was an opportunity to learn something new, for others it was an unacceptable waste of time . Likewise, old habits such as hazing, harassment by superiors, and even stealing from the state remained in the barracks. Obviously the multiple clauses allowing the reform or the possibility of obtaining postponements always warded off the phenomenon of desertion, even if the cases of non-return, rebellion and self-harm continued.

If today we have to think of the naja as a starting point to rebuild a generation of children educated to the sense of the state, we are probably off the road because this would mean a step back from the evolution that the army has done thanks to the end of the conscription. The barracks today no longer represent that microcosm to which they were in past years, places where time seemed to have stopped to make way for tradition. Soldiers have become professionals in all respects, with their rights and duties and the "contamination" of the civil working world has certainly helped to improve the lives of those who are called to serve their country, in every corner of the world. The education of a young person always starts from the family and progresses in the school. Rather than reintroducing military service, it would be desirable to revise the scholastic programs and set new rules, which give greater authority to those behind the chair.