Table Of ContentWAR,
CULTURE AND SOCIETY,
1750–1850
Policing Cities in
Napoleonic Europe
Antoine Renglet
War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850
Series Editors
Rafe Blaufarb, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA
Alan Forrest, University of York, York, UK
Karen Hagemann, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel
Hill, NC, USA
The series aims to the analysis of the military and war by combining polit-
ical, social, cultural, art and gender history with military history. It wants
to extend the scope of traditional histories of the period by discussing
war and revolution across the Atlantic as well as within Europe, thereby
contributing to a new global history of conflict in the eighteenth and
nineteenth century.
Antoine Renglet
Policing Cities
in Napoleonic Europe
Antoine Renglet
Université Catholique de Louvain
Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Université Saint-Louis
Brussels, Belgium
ISSN 2634-6699 ISSN 2634-6702 (electronic)
War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850
ISBN 978-3-031-11053-5 ISBN 978-3-031-11054-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11054-2
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
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Series Editors Preface
’
The century from 1750 to 1850 was a seminal period of change, not
just in Europe but across the globe. The political landscape was trans-
formed by a series of revolutions fought in the name of liberty—most
notably in the Americas and France, of course, but elsewhere, too: in
Holland and Geneva during the eighteenth century and across much of
mainland Europe by 1848. Nor was change confined to the European
world. New ideas of freedom, equality and human rights were carried to
the furthest outposts of empire, to Egypt, India and the Caribbean, which
saw the creation in 1801 of the first black republic in Haiti, the former
French colony of Saint-Domingue. And in the early part of the nineteenth
century they continued to inspire anti-colonial and liberation movements
throughout Central and Latin America.
If political and social institutions were transformed by revolution in
these years, so, too, was warfare. During the quarter-century of the
French Revolutionary Wars, in particular, Europe was faced with the
prospect of ‘total’ war, on a scale unprecedented before the twentieth
century. Military hardware, it is true, evolved only gradually, and battles
were not necessarily any bloodier than they had been during the Seven
Years War. But in other ways these can legitimately be described as the first
modern wars, fought by mass armies mobilized by national and patriotic
propaganda, leading to the displacement of millions of people throughout
Europe and beyond, as soldiers, prisoners of war, civilians and refugees.
vii
viii SERIESEDITORS’PREFACE
For those who lived through the period these wars would be a formative
experience that shaped the ambitions and the identities of a generation.
The aims of the series are necessarily ambitious. In its various volumes,
whether single-authored monographs or themed collections, it seeks to
extend the scope of more traditional historiography. It will study warfare
during this formative century not just in Europe, but in the Americas, in
colonial societies, and across the world. It will analyse the construction
of identities and power relations by integrating the principal categories of
difference, most notably class and religion, generation and gender, race
and ethnicity. It will adopt a multi-faceted approach to the period, and
turn to methods of political, cultural, social, military, and gender history,
in order to develop a challenging and multidisciplinary analysis. Finally,
it will examine elements of comparison and transfer and so tease out the
complexities of regional, national and global history.
Tallahassee, USA Rafe Blaufarb
York, UK Alan Forrest
Chapel Hill, USA Karen Hagemann
Acknowledgements
This book is the outcome of several years’ postdoctoral research,
supported by institutions and numerous individuals to whom I owe my
sincerest thanks. I would first like to thank Xavier Rousseaux at the
University of Louvain-la-Neuve and Andreas Fahrmeir at the Goethe
University in Frankfurt am Main for welcoming me onto their research
teams. Their support was also essential in obtaining grants from the
Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS) and the Alexander
von Humboldt Foundation. Together, they provided me with the time
and resources and stimulating environment required to pursue this
project. Many young scholars dream of working in such conditions and
they made that possible for me. I also want to thank the Université Saint-
Louis of Brussels for its financial support during the preparation of the
manuscript.
Over the years, many colleagues have influenced my thinking on
the topics of policing and the Napoleonic era. Those colleagues have
also given me valuable advice, encouragement and collegiality, making
this research project a collective venture. I particularly owe thanks to
Catherine Denys, Emmanuel Berger, Vincent Milliot, Jeanne-Laure Le
Quang, Francesco Saggiorato, Vincent Denis, Aurélien Lignereux and
Michael Broers.
A study like this takes root in the reading of the Clive Emsley’s studies,
along with John Merriman’s ‘Police Stories’. Both of them were great
historians and extremely generous human beings.
ix
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I also want to thank Luke Giraudet and Clair Pickworth for their
precious help, advices and corrections regarding my weak English skills.
This book could never have been written without the unwavering
support of my wife Sarah Auspert, whose sacrifices to make time for my
research are too numerous to be listed. She took it upon herself to look
after our four children so many times while I travelled around Europe in
search of archives or a research contract. This book is dedicated to her.
