Everything about Francs-tireurs totally explained
The phrase
francs-tireurs was used to describe
irregular military formations deployed by France during the early stages of the
Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) and from that usage it's sometimes used to refer more generally to
guerrilla fighters who fight outside the
laws of war. The term was revived and used by French partisans to describe the
French Resistance movements set up by the French against the Germans during
World War II.
During the wars of the
French Revolution, a
franc-tireur was a member of a corps of light
infantry organized separately from the regular army. The
Spanish word
francotirador and the
Portuguese word
franco-atirador, meaning
sharpshooter, are derived from the word
franc-tireur.
Franco-Prussian War
Francs-tireurs were an outgrowth of rifle clubs or unofficial military societies formed in the east of France at the time of the
Luxembourg crisis of
1867 (for which,
see History of Luxembourg). The members were chiefly concerned with the practice of rifle-shooting, and were expected in war to act as
light troops. They wore no
uniforms, were armed with the best existing
rifles, and elected their own officers.
In the words of the
1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, they "were at once a valuable asset to the armed strength of France and a possible menace to internal order under military discipline." The societies strenuously and effectively resisted all efforts to bring them under normal military discipline; as a result, the
Germans were within the laws of war in executing captured francs-tireurs as irresponsible non-combatants found with arms in their hands.
As with any irregular or
guerrilla force, the character of at least some of the francs-tireurs has, at times, been disparaged. Nonetheless, it's hard to question at least the courage of people who, rather than join a regular army, fought in a manner where they know that to fall into enemy hands was to be sentenced to death or worse.
In July 1870, at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, the societies were brought under the control of the minister of war and organized for field service, but it wasn't until November 4 – by which time the
levée en masse (universal
conscription) was in force – that they were placed under the orders of the generals in the field. After that they were sometimes organized in large bodies and incorporated in the mass of the armies, but more usually they continued to work in small bands, blowing up culverts on the invaders' lines of communication, cutting off small reconnaissance parties, surprising small posts, etc.
The
1911 Encyclopædia Britannica describes it as "now acknowledged, even by the Germans," that the francs-tireurs, by these relatively unconventional tactics, "paralysed large detachments of the enemy, contested every step of his advance (as in the
Loire campaign), and prevented him from gaining information, and that their soldierly qualities improved with experience."
Francs-tireurs blew up the Moselle railway bridge at
Fontenoy,
January 22,
1871. The defense of
Chateaudun (
October 18,
1870) was conducted by francs-tireurs of
Cannes and
Nantes, along with
Lipowski's
Paris corps.
The francs-tireurs were often vilified by the German armies and popular press as murderers and highwaymen and seemed to the Germans to have an unerring sense of the most vulnerable parts of the German armies in France. However, the francs-tireurs caused fewer than 1000 German casualties and ultimately played only a minor part of the Franco-Prussian War. Despite this, an ambush by francs-tireurs often resulted in violent German reprisals against the nearest village or town. Whole regiments or divisions often took part in "pacifying actions" in areas with significant franc-tireur activity and bred a lasting enmity and hatred between the occupying German soldiers and French civilians.
World War I
The experiences of French guerilla attacks and of
asymmetric warfare in general during the Franco-Prussian War had a profound effect on the German General Staff, resulting in the unusually harsh and severe occupation of areas conquered by Germany during
World War I.
After the war, General Erich Ludendorff, Germany’s chief military strategist and its commander-in-chief on the Western Front at the end of the war tried to defend German behavior in his 1919, two-volume
Meine Kriegserinnerungen, 1914-1918, which was published that same year in London by Hutchinson as
My War Memories, 1914–1918 and in New York by Harper as
Ludendorff’s Own Story, August 1914–November 1918.
In an article in the September 13, 1919 issue of
Illustrated London News G. K. Chesterton responded to Ludendorff's book by remarking:
It is astounding how clumsy Prussians are at this sort of thing. Ludendorff can't be a fool, at any rate, at his own trade; for his military measures were often very effective. But without being a fool when he effects his measures, he becomes a most lurid and lamentable fool when he justifies them. For in fact he couldn't have chosen a more unfortunate example. A franc-tireur is emphatically not a person whose warfare is bound to disgust any soldier. He is emphatically not a type about which a general soldierly spirit feels any bitterness. He isn't a perfidious or barbarous or fantastically fiendish foe. On the contrary, a franc-tireur is generally a man for whom any generous soldier would be sorry, as he'd for an honourable prisoner of war. What is a franc-tireur? A franc-tireur is a free man, who fights to defend his own farm or family against foreign aggressors, but who doesn't happen to possess certain badges and articles of clothing catalogued by Prussia in 1870. In other words, a franc-tireur is you or I or any other healthy man who found himself, when attacked, in accidental possession of a gun or pistol, and not in accidental possession of a particular cap or a particular pair of trousers. The distinction isn't a moral distinction at all, but a crude and recent official distinction made by the militarism of Potsdam.
World War II
The
Francs-tireurs partisans (FTP, "Partisan irregular riflemen") were fighting formations of the
French Resistance during
World War II, which had as political front the
Front National movement, created by
French Communist Party (PCF) members
Jacques Duclos and
Pierre Villon.
They took their name from French irregular light infantry and saboteurs, first employed in the Franco-Prussian War.
Initially called
Organisation Spéciale (OS), they were created by the
Communist Party of France (PCF). A number of their leaders had served in the
International Brigades during the
Spanish Civil War (for instance, "
Colonel"
Henri Rol-Tanguy).
Although individual communists had opposed the German occupation, prior to the
German invasion of the
Soviet Union on
22 June 1941 (see
Great Patriotic War) the official communist position wasn't to offer resistance.
FTP became the first
resistance group in France to deliberately kill a German. The FTP were integrated in the
Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur in February 1944. Called the "party of 80,000 executed people" (
le parti des 80 000 fusillés), the PCF's electoral success after World War II was, to a large extent, due to its prestige as a centre of resistance.
The foreign workers' section, FTP-MOI (Franc Tireurs Partisans-Main d'Oeuvre Immigrée; see French-language article ) became especially famous when the
Missak Manouchian Group was captured, its members executed, and the execution publicly advertised in the infamous
Affiche Rouge. Another FTP-MOI member was
Alter Mojze Goldman, father of
Pierre Goldman and
Jean-Jacques Goldman.
Prisoner status
The term
Francs-tireurs has been used for an armed fighter who, if captured, isn't necessarily entitled to
prisoner of war status. This issue was a point of disagreement at the 1899
Hague Conference and was the genesis for the
Martens Clause. The Martens Clause was introduced as a compromise wording for the dispute between the
Great Powers who considered
francs-tireurs to be
unlawful combatants subject to execution on capture and smaller states who maintained that they should be considered lawful combatants.
In the
Hostages Trial (or, officially,
'The United States of America vs. Wilhelm List, et al.), the seventh of the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, the tribunal found that on the question of partisans, the then current laws of war (the Hague Convention No. IV from 1907), the partisan fighters in southeast Europe couldn't be considered lawful belligerents under Article 1 of said convention. On Wilhelm List, the tribunal stated » "We are obliged to hold that such guerrillas were francs tireurs who, upon capture, could be subjected to the death penalty. Consequently, no criminal responsibility attaches to the defendant List because of the execution of captured partisans..."
With the
Geneva Conventions, namely Article 4 of the
Third Geneva Convention of 1949
francs-tireurs were entitled to prisoner of war status provided that they're commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates, have a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance, carry arms openly and conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
Other
Le Franc-Tireur was the name of an underground French Resistance
newspaper.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Francs-tireurs'.
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