请将“After the French army suffered a devastating defeat at Rossbach in 1757, demands for fundamental reform became widespread. These were partly directed at the luxurious life of the officers, partly at the influence of ‘money' in the army, partly again at the lack of enthusiasm for service. From 1757 to 1760, i.e. during the Seven Years War, some 1,500 officers had asked to resign and been permitted to do so. In the three decades that followed the war, additional and improved training facilities were established, the company economy was abolished along with the purchase of officer commissions, the influence of the ministry on promotions was extended and the re-purchase of commissions by the crown introduced. (At the outbreak of the Revolution, a large proportion of commissions were now the property of the crown.) Schools were also intro-duced for the sons of other ranks, and orphanages established for the children of fallen soldiers. Efforts were also made to improve arrangements for the treatment of wounded. These reforms went together with strategies designed to defend the pre-eminence of the old nobility in the army. In actual fact the nobility succeeded in 'confiscating' the reform, as Corvisier puts it.97 Many were ready to make a sacrifice in order to achieve this goal. They accepted the requirement of training, the abolition of the company economy with the loss of what were often substantial income opportunities, and the abolition of the practice of convocation; they ultimately accepted even the command to wear uniform. Certain competitive advantages of the nobility were ended in this way. Official strategies of exclusion were insistently demanded, however, and with increasing success, against all the recently ennobled who despite the massive social discrimination strategies of the officer corps could not be prevented from striving for an officer career. Besides the claims of the nobility for access to training establishments, instructions were already given to the army inspectors in 1758 only to propose candidates for officer appointments who could prove their nobility. The reform of the training system sharpened the demands for proof of nobility. In the 1770s, this was even extended to the artillery schools. The nobility thereby claimed supremacy over a military field that, for two hundred years, had been seen as less socially exclusive. In the royal guards regiments, officer candidates had to prove from 1774 that their family had been noble for two hundred years, a period that was soon after extended to three hundred years. The royal decree of 1781, known as the decree of Ségur, thus only regularised a practice that had already been implemented in the previous decades. All that was new in the decree was that the required evidence of nobility was now formalised (birth announcements, documents from the tax authorities, letters patents, etc.), in such a way that anyone who tried to present their noble status as older than it actually was, was deprived of the pleasure of deceit.
In a certain respect, the dissolution of the compagnies des gendarmes d'ordonnance in 1788 marked the apogee of these strategies to ensure the privi-lege of the old nobility in the army. It corresponded to the need for a reduction in costs. Whereas the gardes du corps, in which the high nobility dominated, were unaffected, the gendarmerie, in which there were also non-noble officers, and where, according to J.G. Devos and P. Waksman,98 a service ethic inde-pendent of estate had developed, fell victim to these economy measures.
The strategies of the nobility were in general successful in their attempt to keep the army as a noble institution. Yet those who had most vigorously pursued them, members of the poorer noblesse d'épée, profited from this success only to a limited degree. For what eventually emerged was a relatively exact convergence between estate hierarchy and military rank. Despite the establishment of stipends in the cadet schools, and the official abolition of the purchase of officer commissions, the military career for sons of the poorer nobility culminated in the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Higher ranks remained reserved for the court nobility. If the army of the 1770s and 80s still contained a few ennobled and bourgeois officers, these are estimated at no more than 1 to 2 per cent. Their career ended with the rank of lieutenant. After the military reforms of the 1760s, candidates to a junior officer position had to provide that they could read and write. This excluded competitors from the common people almost entirely. Scarcely anyone who did not hail from the well-off bourgeoisie reached a rank above that of corporal. As Corvisier points out, a virtual ‘second front' of exclusion practices arose in this way. Whilst the rank of lieutenant was the upper limit for roturiers, promotion for sons of the poorer strata of the population ended at the most junior officer ranks (corporals did not count as junior officers). This explains why the Revolution very rapidly constructed a new convergence between social and military hierarchy. The better-off social strata provided the officers, the people provided the soldiers.
The army always stood in the foreground of the French crown's fighting forces, in terms of military policy as well as financially and socially. It remained so even as the sites of power politics shifted, with ‘England' now replacing 'Austria' as the main enemy of 'France', and overseas strategies of trade and colonial policy gaining new importance. To a certain degree, how-ever, the conditions of generalised rule under the ancien régime are shown particularly clearly in the case of the navy. For as this was only really founded in the second half of the seventeenth century (at the end of the Thirty Years War, the crown possessed scarcely more than a handful of seaworthy ships), its development was not prevented by centuries-old traditions and long- established material interests. Colbert, who was controller-general of finances under Louis XIV, made sure that the navy did not become the plaything of competition for privilege. Both naval officers and the naval administration were selected according to competence, and the best specialists obtained for the arsenals. Given the development of naval artillery and the altered require-ments of shipbuilding and navigation that this led to, such an orientation to specialist expertise would seem quite unavoidable. Its most important expres-sion was the fact that positions of command in the French navy could not be purchased, nor could administrative positions (the officiers de la plume). But the navy could not be organised as a kind of social enclave. Patronage ensured that the higher ranks of naval officer were generally occupied by nobles, while bourgeois could only reach the rank of warrant officer and gain certain administrative positions. (The constant conflict between naval commanders and bourgeois officiers de la plume became one of the causes for the ineffectiveness of the French navy, once it was no longer under the strict con-trol of Colbert.)
When the crown began its immense shipbuilding programme, it was not hard to find officer candidates. In 1689, the French naval strength was over 120 vessels.99 Not only was this twenty more than the English crown had at its disposal at that time, but these were ships built according to up-to-date experience of the most favourable combination of striking force, speed and manoeuvrability. This technical advantage of the French navy over the English lasted until the end of the ancien régime. Yet it did not lead to a military superiority on sea, as the navy was drastically cut back after the War of the Spanish Succession (by 1739 it was down to 50 ships, while the English strength had risen to 124). The structural inefficiency of the eighteenthcentury French navy had two other important causes, which could not be overcome by the tremendous reconstruction programme that was begun in the 1750s (by 1756 its strength was back up to 70). The first of these resulted from a government disinterest that had persisted for decades. Promotions were effected almost without any heed paid to ability, training of new recruits was neglected, and friction between administration and ship's commanders was a constant problem. In the last instance, the officers of the fleet were an undisciplined bunch. The second structural problem of the French navy was the difficulty of manning. Even the great efforts made in Colbert's time could not solve this. To ensure adequate manning of the galleys, which at that time were still organised separately, courts were requested to sentence more pris-oners to this punishment. It was also hoped that volunteers could be found for the navy, but this was in vain. The adequate manning of warships was not only threatened by natural disadvantage but also by military conflicts, since trading ships were seized by foreign corsairs, or else commandeered by their owners for temporary pirate expeditions if they received lettres de marques from the crown; wages in the merchant navy were also higher as a rule than on the king's ships. The government then resorted to press gangs, but the results of this recruitment practice were disastrous both on sea and on land. To appease the discontent of the population and help root out unsuitable personnel, a so-called system of classes was introduced in 1689. All ablebodied seamen between 18 and 60 had to be registered - more precisely, the male population of the coastal districts. They were grouped into classes, and their working life was supposed to be divided between three-year terms in the navy interspersed with half-pay periods on land.100 To implement this service obligation, a special judiciary was appointed. The whole arrangement, however, was immediately blocked, not only by those who potentially were directly affected, but also by local officials. Even the crown's request to priests to preach the duty of royal service did little to help matters. The service obligation was evaded by flight, and the local authorities refused to prosecute the offenders. As for those who were successfully recruited, they frequently rose up in mass mutinies. Many deserters hired themselves on French or foreign merchant ships. The view was long widespread among historians that the reason for the lack of trained seamen in the French navy lay in the competition with the prospects offered on merchant ships and corsairs. In his detailed study of the French navy in the age of Louis XIV, James Pritchard has refuted this argument quite decisively. Over the decades, he found, many men in France did serve on naval ships for shorter or longer periods, not only those recruited through the system of classes, but also volunteers from inland districts. When the alternation arrangement was abolished at the start of the eighteenth century, life-long service engagement became possible and more common. The principle of half-pay was then established as a provision for old age and a support for the injured and crippled. As early as 1689, seamen in the French navy were given certain privileges, such as exemption from the billeting of soldiers, from tax collection and local guard service, even if, right from the start, these privileges were very often infringed. But all this, so Pritchard finds, did not impede manning so long as wages were more or less regularly paid. The ineffectiveness of the navy in his view was above all the result of the system of financial management. This was in the possession of private financiers, who provided the crown with short-term credits and earned immense sums in a pretty regular way. A short time after the start of the Seven Years War, the payment of wages stopped and suppliers' bills were not settled. Sailors could now only be found if five months' wages were paid in advance, instead of the previous two months'. Even so, the number of deserters rose so greatly that the death penalty for desertion had to be de facto suspended. Returned or captured deserters were punished only with deduction from their pay - which they might well not receive anyway. War at sea was financed almost entirely on the basis of forced loans that the crown imposed on suppliers and the ships' companies. Even later on, these debts were not settled. In such circumstances, it was not surprising - in Pritchard's view - that many ships had to be destroyed or surrendered to the enemy. In 1758, it is estimated that at least 20,000 seamen were in English captivity, rising to 26,000 in 1762. This was despite the fact that many thousand prisoners annually fell victim to the spread of infection.”翻译为中文