Conscription Canes

It is in the twilight of 18th century, in 1798, that the General Jourdan instituted, in France, the very unpopular forced conscription.

The wars of the Directory require troops more and more. The voluntary enrolment, which hitherto had provided the army in cannon fodder was not enough any more.

We are with the birth of the 1st Empire and from that time on gradually arise all the traditions surrounding the conscription, among other that of the cane, which will be often of glass.

The conscription becomes gradually, in the popular spirit, a true initiation of the passage from the adolescence to the adulthood.