Gendarmerie impériale
The Gendarmerie impériale ( French : Reichs - Gendarmerie ) was a French gendarmerie and military police that existed from 1799 to 1814 and was Napoleon Bonaparte's central instrument of rule in France itself and in French-occupied Europe during the coalition wars.
Tasks and missions
The troop was founded on November 9, 1799 ( 18 brumaire ans VIII ). It served both to fight the so-called brigands and political opponents of the republic and, from 1804, Napoleon. The first general inspector was Brigadier General Étienne Radet (1762-1828), who had already been a member of the royal maréchaussée , an institutional forerunner of the gendarmerie. The office took over in 1801 division general Bon-Adrien-Jeannot de Moncey ; However, Radet remained one of his deputies. In 1804 Moncey was promoted to Reichsmarschall .
In March 1800 a good 1200 gendarmes were sent to the Vendée and Brittany to fight anti-republican forces ( Chouannerie ). On the night of July 6th, 1809, gendarmes under Radet's leadership arrested Pope Pius VII in the Quirinal Palace . For occupied Spain , a separate troop was formed from the gendarmerie, the Gendarmerie d'Espagne , which primarily fought the local guerrillas .
Workforce
On July 31, 1801, the gendarmerie consisted of 15,000 men. The force was divided into 26 legions at the departmental level as well as 1750 brigades with gendarmes on horseback and 750 brigades on foot (a gendarmerie brigade consisted of six gendarmes). In 1814 the number of personnel had grown to 24,000 gendarmes, while the Maréchaussée from 1789 only had 4,000 members. However, the largest area of the empire covered 860,000 square kilometers with 44 million inhabitants. The number of legions rose to 34 by 1811; the 34th was in Bremen .
Gendarmerie d'élite
In addition, Napoleon I. a gendarmerie d'élite under the command of Colonel (Colonel) Savary created which was especially devoted to him and the function of a bodyguard and honor escort had. Her personnel ranged from 600 to 1100 men, from 1806 she was fully mounted.
Use in Germany using the example of the Duchy of Oldenburg
When northwest German territories were incorporated into the French Empire in 1811, the regional and local police forces were partially dissolved. On December 13, 1811, the Duchy of Oldenburg was declared to belong to the Empire by a simple decision of the French Senatusconsult and the greater part of the Duchy was integrated as the Arrondissement of Oldenburg into the department of the Weser estuaries ( Département des Bouches de Weser ) based in Bremen . A decree of July 4, 1811 introduced the French constitution and justice system, which resulted in the dissolution of the Duchy of Oldenburg's police dragon corps .
Police power was now incumbent on the 34th Legion of the Gendarmerie impériale in Bremen with a captain commandant as leader. Gendarmerie brigades on horseback with a strength of four to six gendarmes were stationed in the city of Oldenburg , Varel , Westerstede , Ovelgönne , Elsfleth and Delmenhorst ; in Abbehausen a brigade on foot. In addition, a special commissioner was appointed who was a member of the State Council and was based in Varel. The gendarmerie was u. a. Responsible for the rigorous persecution of deserters or their family members who supported their relatives in deserting. Both the army and the navy were recruited from the Oldenburg region , especially for Napoleon's Russian campaign .
Due to these extremely negative experiences, after the end of Napoleonic rule in the duchy - in contrast to the Kingdom of Prussia - the use of the term gendarmerie was deliberately abandoned and the term land dragoon was introduced instead for the new gendarmerie .
literature
- Pierre Montagnon: Histoire de la gendarmerie. Pygmalion, Paris 2014, ISBN 978-2-7564-1429-4 .
- Heinrich Lankenau : The police dragon corps of the Duchy of Oldenburg (1786-1811). The history of the oldest association of the Oldenburg state police. in: Yearbook of the Association for Antiquity and Regional History , Vol. XXX (49), 1926, pp. 5–128. (Simultaneously Phil. Diss.)
- Friedrich Wilhelm Schaer, Albrecht Eckhardt: Duchy and Grand Duchy of Oldenburg in the Age of Enlightened Absolutism (1773-1847). In: Albrecht Eckhardt, Heinrich Schmidt (Hrsg.): History of the state of Oldenburg. A manual. 3rd edition, Isensee, Oldenburg 1988, ISBN 3-87358-285-6 , pp. 271-331.