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ABSTRACT This article investigates the implementation and reception of Napoleonic conscription in the Norman department of the Seine-Inferieure. Specifically, it illuminates the strengths and weaknesses of conscription regulation, and from a broader perspective, it enhances our knowledge of the nature of Napoleonic rule in the departments, and of local Napoleonic history itself. Conscription studies of Napoleonic France have traditionally focused upon desertion and draft-dodging, and official responses to overcoming these problems. The importance of fraud-the illegal sale of military exemptions-as a means of conscription resistance has received far less historical treatment. The experience of conscription in the Seine-Inferieure, suggests fraud was more common and sophisticated than is generally assumed. The fraud involved not only peasants and village society, but also notables in collusion with Napoleonic officials including the prefectoral administration. Seen in this light, conscription fraud provides an invaluable source for understanding the complexity of Napoleonic local administration, especially the conflict that the prefecture faced between its role as a government agent and as a defender of local interests.
Military conscription was the most publicly contested aspect of the Napoleonic regime, and the prefectoral administration's greatest responsibility and challenge. First institutionalised in France under the Jourdan Law of 1798, conscription assumed a pre-eminent role in the French state's growing regulation of society and in shaping the mentalities and actions of the public. Conscription was integral to the struggles between a modernising state and a predominantly traditional agrarian society, between the Empire and the village, between national service and individual liberty, between the often irreconcilable demands of war and domestic life.
In recent years, conscription during the revolutionary-Napoleonic era has attracted growing attention, especially amongst Anglo-Saxon historians.1 Several chief historiographical themes have emerged. Firstly, it is commonly accepted that the prefectoral administration was ultimately successful in subjugating resistance to conscription in most regions of France. A very effective and formidable administrative machine developed, that only faltered in the final months of the Empire amidst military defeat and unbearable conscription levies. Secondly, there has been a growing awareness of diverse regional attitudes to conscription: whilst the north-east and Parisian departments were those most receptive to conscription, those of the west, south and Massif-Central were the least. Thirdly, resistance to conscription has been largely perceived as a...