AH Question French Army & Navy

During the French Rev how loyal is the French Army to its Senior Officers (Colonels and above)???

Same for Navy, How loyal is the Navy to Captains and other officers?

What was the effect of the aristocrat purges on the officer corps? Setcabk for Army and Navy in terms of effectiveness and organization or was it better off?

Overseas possesions, when news hit of the death of the king what was the reaction of colonial admin, staff, and military? On the same note, what was the structure of the colonial affaris office (divison of foreign affairs seperate office, member of privy council etc)? Where any of them royal colonies (directly ruled by King)?

Thanks

The Great Scott Marty
 
Well, very few of the officers in either service are of high birth, so not many will actually be purged - The Navy's loyalties to the Crown is rather low, as it's generally been starved for funds and held in low esteem (with predictable consequences for readiness and morale).

Loyalty to senior officers - well, most soldiers don't seriously conceive of mutiny or long-term desertion; things only get sticky when there's rifts within the officer corps, so that the enlisted have to choose which officer to support and obey. There are going to be such rifts here - military officers are conservative by nature, but few of them have any practical reason to oppose the new government...
 
The French military virtually started over, because it espoused the ideal of having the enlisted men elect their officers from within its ranks. The army did better because many of the officers were popular with their men and were simply elected back into power - for instance Napoleon's Marshal St Cyr, who was indeed 1st Marquis de Gouvion-Saint-Cyr, but the senior officers were by far the worst purged because the lower-ranking officers weer the ones more likely to support the revolution or be popular. However, France survived very well, at least in the mid to long term, as it raised some absolute gems of officers from its revolutionary supporters - some of Napoleon's Marshals had started off in the rank and file - and Napoleon was very hot on logistics. He (IIRC) founded the first logistics corps which did a lot of the administration that experienced colonels and generals would previously have done themselves, and he increased the support that senior staff had in carrying out their duties. Over time this made the French army the most efficient in the world.

The French Navy, by contrast, was devastated. It retained some very good captains but many many of their officers were disposed of, and a significant portion of these went straight to Britain to join the Royal Navy and dedicate themselves to fighting the revolutionaries. For a while, the French navy was made impotent and it took a long time for its new officers to train up their men and themselves and the purge is supposed to have reduced the French navy to being able to fire a broadside as slow as every two minutes in some cases due to total disorganisation and inexperienced officership, where the British could fire every 20 seconds. Some have even gone as far as saying the loss at Trafalgar was down to the French naval purge, though most put the victory down to superior British training (even without the purge no-one could match the British for firing broadsides stupidly fast, just like no-one could match how fast the British infantry could fire volleys).
 
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