ABSTRACT
The school battalions created by decree of 6 July 1882 were brought into being through a combination of potent factors: a strong desire for the physical and civic regeneration of schoolchildren (in the words of General Chanzy, ‘give us men, we will make soldiers of them’); to provide training from an early age to instil the ideas of defence and revenge and, later, premilitary instruction to prepare for the discipline of life in the barracks; and, most important, to fulfil republican ambitions to mould a nation of citizen-soldiers. In the east of France, marked since the defeat of 1870 by a revanchist nationalism, it was rather to be expected that this scheme would develop rapidly and successfully. Everything contributed to it: the region was conscious of being ‘on the frontier’, and gradually developed the feeling of having a national role that was out of the ordinary; there were many large garrisons, as the forts and entrenched camps of the Séré de Rivières lines were established; new barracks sprang up in the urban landscape, and social life was dominated by the military. All this led to the east of France (which formed the sixth and seventh military regions) making the institution of school battalions into a major pillar of premilitary training for children and adolescents. But although the start of this policy seemed very promising, it declined rapidly even before the Boulangist crisis. Surviving documentation, although incomplete, warrants careful study: not all departments show the same development of the school battalions, which sometimes existed only on paper.
