Gardes de la prévôté

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Guard, court service uniform 1786

The Gardes de la prévôté de l'hôtel (in German about guard of the castle bailiff , in the broadest sense also gendarmerie ) were an association in the Guard ( Maison militaire du roi de France ) of the King of France .

tasks

In contrast to the splendid guards such as the Cent-suisses (also known as Hundertschweizer), who more or less only performed representative tasks, the Gardes de la prévôté was a military association responsible for police and judicial tasks in the Residences and gardens inhabited by the king at the time were established. They had their own court, which was responsible for proceedings for murder or attempted murder in the royal properties.

Usually this troop was entrusted with the delivery of the lettres de cachet (royal arrest warrants) and the bringing in of those affected and other high-ranking state prisoners.

As soon as the king left the palace and moved in a carriage (not on horseback), the Gardes de la Prévôté took second place before the Cent-suisses, who always came immediately before the king.

history

In the 17th century, the royal palaces and gardens in France were a stronghold for dodgy rabble who liked to pickpockets and jewelry robbers in the crowd around the royal court and who were not deterred by the king's normal garden. To counteract this, the Gardes de la Prévôté was formed in 1664 with a strength of about 100 men. The captain of this guard was always the Marquis de Sourches , who bore the title Prévôt de l'Hôtel (bailiff) and Grand prévôt de France ( Grand Bailiff of France - as such commander of the entire gendarmerie).

structure

The association was divided into two companies , which in 1778 were reduced to thirty men each. 1787, mentioned again, the trace of this guard is lost in pre-revolutionary France. It seems to have been dissolved in the same year.

As such, the companies wore different uniforms. There were also various uniforms for officers and guardsmen, as well as for parade duty and normal security duty.

Motto

Until the time of Louis XIV, the motto of this royal bodyguard was " Erit haec quoque cognita monstris "; in German after Alison Saunders: "She too will become known to the monsters " [" Elle sera pareillement connue aux monstres "].

Guard in normal uniform

According to Leslie Gilbert Pine, this motto, together with the associated coat of arms, is Louis XIII. to interpret which one shows a club with this ruler. The Latin “ haec ” ( this, this, this ) means, according to Pine, the very club that - like the two of Hercules - would already be known to the monsters, whereby the monsters here meant heresy and rebellion . Accordingly, the German translation results again: " She (the club) will also become known to the (two) monsters ".

Later, under Louis XIV, the motto of this military association was " Nec pluribus impar ", in German: " Not even inferior to several ".

literature

  • Henri Bouchot: L'Épopée du costume militaire français. Aquarelles et dessins originaux de JOB. Société Française d'Éditions d'Art, Paris 1898.
  • Liliane Funcken , Fred Funcken : Le costume et les armes des soldats de tous les temps. Volume 1: The pharaoh à Louis XV. Casterman, Tournai 1966.
  • Liliane Funcken, Fred Funcken: L'uniforme et les armes des soldats de la Guerre en dentelles. Volume 1: France, maison du roi et infanterie sous Louis XV et Louis XVI, Grande-Bretagne et Prusse, infanterie, 1700 à 1800. Casterman, Paris 1975, ISBN 2-203-14315-0 .
  • Rigo [di: Albert Rigondaud]: Le Plumet. L'uniformes et les drapeaux de l'armée de l'Ancien régime et du 1er Empire. Paris 1971.

annotation

  1. ↑ Prévôté stands for several related terms in French, such as Vogtei, military police and military police. The most obvious one was used in the translation.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alison Saunders: The Seventeenth-Century French Emblem. A Study in Diversity (= Travaux du grand siècle. Vol. 18). Droz, Geneva 2000, ISBN 2-600-00452-1 , p. 133, online in the Google book search.
  2. ^ Leslie Gilbert Pine: A Dictionary of Mottoes. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London / Boston 1983, ISBN 0-7100-9339-X , p. 65, online in the Google book search.

Web links

Commons : Uniforms of the Royal French Guard  - collection of images, videos and audio files