The National Guard of the Second Empire

After the paris commune, the national guard will be abolished permanently. They would soon become one of the key parts of the municipal government. The ranks of the guard boomed to 350 thousand, with nearly 75 % of the eligible population of paris joining up. In those working class companies, military experience took a back seat to political disposition. So it was important to shed all the dangerous elements like students and artisans and any members of the working class. And then even after all this was done to insure its political reliability, the National Guard was still almost never called in for serious business.