Riots, rebellions, outrages: recent news recalls that the public force has difficulty imposing its authority throughout the territory. The historical detour makes it possible to better understand this phenomenon overloaded with dissonant and polemical interpretations. This is shown by the reading of the work that Aurélien Lignereux devotes to the rebellions of the first half of XIXe century.
A privileged place of discussion with the theories of the civilization process (Norbert Elias) or the monopolization of legitimate violence (Max Weber), the question of resistance to public authority is one of the best means of analyzing the growth of the State, major XIXe century. It is therefore a central subject of recent historiography. Observers of the upheavals of a revolution that does not want to end and the genesis of the social movement, historians have patiently dissected the rhythms and forms of these multifaceted disorders which remain difficult to define and interpret. The specifically regional – and often rural – dimension of these clashes has also fed the debate on the unequal integration of the national territory and on the difficult construction of the State.
Devoted to rebellions against the gendarmerie of XIXe A century and from a thesis precisely noticed, the work of Aurélien Lignereux is part of this wake, whose inspiration he claims, and in this heritage, whose weight he recognizes. The events on which he takes his gaze do not always have the prestige of the unpublished – one fifth of the affairs mentioned have already been the subject of studies. But the approach adopted presents the originality of moving the analysis and jointly approaching rebel and gendarmes. This is obvious that it is good to recall: how could there be rebellion without police forces ? Let’s go further: to what extent are the revolts caused by the recovery of public order ? Long skeletal and confined to a disembodied institutional history, the field of police and gendarmic history has been considerably enriched for ten years. As much and even more than a contribution to the history of rural societies, the book of Aurélien Lignereux is a stone brought to the building of this too long unknown history.
The adopted method also deserves attention. The richness of the archives accumulated in the national archives and in the less frequented funds of the historic defense service justified quite logically a quantitative approach which turns out to be all the more rigorous since Aurélien Lignereux chooses to carry out an exhaustive count of the 3,725 rebellions reported between 1800 and 1859. The mass of information processed force respect and the demonstration. However, the medal has its setback, since the book revolves around statistical data, at the risk of encouraging reducing readings of phenomena which the author underlines, however, Voce mezzothat they cannot be understood without resorting to micro-historical analyzes and fine put in political, legal, social or anthropological perspective. The reader who would stick to the precious summary paintings and who would back down before the falsely anecdotal mining of “ This mass qualitative treatment Would lose a lot.
The story of a step
Let us summarize the main features of a demonstration which is organized according to a chronological guideline. First major phase of development of the gendarmerie, the first empire constitutes an imposed starting point. Against the traditional image of the police state, Aurélien Linereux shows the limits of an insufficient and improvised security system according to changing priorities. The qualitative and quantitative mediocrity of the workforce is however not a factor of prudence, quite the contrary. Animated by a warrior spirit, the gendarmes of the first empire are responsible for imposing the national order – starting with the unpopular conscription – on reluctant rural communities. They do not retreat to the confrontation, from which they do not necessarily come out victorious. Far from the “ public force instituted for the advantage of all That promised the Declaration of Human and Citizen Rights, the gendarmerie sometimes has the appearance and behavior of a occupation troop. The political switching to restoration even more disturb the image of a body which changes several times of allegiance and which fails to extricate from the trap of partisan clashes: “ The confusion between political order and public order »Is at his height ; It legitimizes all rebellions and explains all repressive excesses.
Stabilization of the country, as of 1818, inaugurated a new period – “ polemics “(1818-1830) and” critical years (1830-1835) According to the expression of the author, who wants to highlight the uncomfortable situation of an vintage gendarmerie between two adversaries very different from each other: the liberals, who denounce the abuses of power and who claim individual freedoms against the repressive culture of “ the angle »» ; Village societies, which for their part defend traditions threatened by new social norms (the 1827 forest code constitutes one of the most famous examples) whose gendarmes are the most solid propagators. The work precisely sheds light on the springs of these critical speeches whose scope reaches a paroxysm around 1830. In the line of recent rereading of catering, it shows all the fertility of theories as innovative as that of “ Right to resistance “, Waitled on the eve of the three glorious against excess of power of all kinds. Led on this moving terrain, reduced to modest enrollment, the gendarmerie is weakening, loses in credibility and efficiency-which the author shows with finesse but by somewhat neglecting the social dimension of a phenomenon which is perhaps also explained by aging and by the embodiment of the body. It is this inversion of the balance of power which explains the extent of the rebellionary fever in the early 1830s.
It was from 1835 that we observed a recovery in the gendarmerie, whose coat of arms redeem somewhat and whose workforce progresses strongly. The law of 1850 which sets the objective of a brigade by canton enters a movement which began ten years earlier. More present throughout the territory, the gendarmes learn to face the rebels by favoring conciliation efforts. Time is no longer to the exaltation of saber blows and charges – “ weak and dangerous means that only irritate the masses “According to an officer’s formula – but praise moderation and” The patience that honors ». The importance of this cultural revolution is perfectly highlighted ; We can undoubtedly regret that its roots and its springs are not very explained, but the subject comes from another approach. The fact is that the gendarmes have settled at the same time as the country pacified, these two developments promoting a lull of rebellions. The new attitude of the institution does not, however, be worth renouncing the missions entrusted to it, as shown by the sudden “ Dramatization of issues “That we observe between 1849 and 1852. In a more sensitive context, the gendarmerie faces firmly, at the cost of a very clear but ephemeral” martial inflection ». The unleashing of violence in winter 1851-1852 must be understood as a parenthesis during which is asserted, once and for all, the authority of the public force.
The last part of the work abandons chronological analysis to dwell on the ambiguities of the concept of “ civilization “, Whose gendarmes would be” missionaries ». We will read with interest some suggestive developments on the organization of the body and its links with society. Without exhausting the subject, these lines of reflection eliminate preconceived ideas and hasty interpretations. They are accompanied by an analysis of the missions carried out which makes it possible to better locate the logics of the rebellions. But most of this fourth part is based on a geography of the rebellionary phenomenon, which Aurélien Linereux precisely identifies the extension: 43% of the country’s cantons escape the clashes, which are concentrated, on the other hand, on a quarter of the territory – mainly the south and the west, as well as the North and the Alsace, to a lesser degree. Is it necessary to specify how much this meticulous cartography, embellished with a typology robotive, will be used for historians ? The work is all the more commendable since the author does not hesitate to circumscribe the interpretation, by recalling wisely that the administrators of the XIXe century adopted their own reading grid, sometimes very far from realities. And to conclude on the modalities of the judicial repression of the rebellions, which obey their own logic.
From yesterday to today and vice versa
Why stop in 1859 ? The question has something mean when we measure the already unreasonable magnitude of the documentation collected ! The author is also ahead of criticism by recalling, completely convincingly, that it becomes impossible to carry out a serial treatment after 1859. All his demonstration proves, finally, that the breakdown of documentation, although accentlle, also corresponds to the completion of a sequence. In the middle of the Second Empire, the gendarmerie is installed ; It has become this public force whose legitimacy is no longer fundamentally contested: “ The frontal violence of the groups crumbles in an individualization of the dispute ». Marginalized, the rebellion gives way to other forms of protest, better suited to the new relationship of forces and undoubtedly more in line with political and cultural changes. And here we can think of anonymous denunciations, very frequent at the end of the century, or even the complaints filed against bad agents – without forgetting obviously much more subtle peaceful confrontation strategies.
By closing this book, the fact remains an obsessive question: what a link between yesterday and today ? Let’s face it, we are surprised-and even disappointed-to note that no reference is made to contemporary debates. The prudence of the author is understandable and defends himself, and we can only congratulate him to give up the temptation to project the situation of the Pyrenean countryside on that of modern suburbs. The historian is not intended to convert into self -proclaimed expert, and nothing prohibits him from leaving his reader to carry out his own work as “ Concordance of time ». It is therefore not the legitimate prudence of the conclusion that we will complain, but rather the silences of the introduction. Nothing indicates, in fact, that this work was matured at the heart of the debates on the local police, during the riots of autumn 2005, etc. Does this mean that he owes nothing to his context ? It doesn’t matter, to tell the truth, but we can think that the admirable learned rigor of research would not have lost anything to enrich a few round trips to the present.