Since the execution of Louis XVI in 1793, the French army had been subject to the First Republic, the Directory, the Consulate, the First Empire, the First and Second Restorations, the “Bourgeois Monarchy” of Louis-Philippe, the Second Republic, the Second Empire, the Commune, the Third Republic, Pétain’s Vichy and de Gaulle’s Free French Committee, the Fourth Republic, and now the Fifth Republic. Each change of regime had contributed fresh divisions within the army, and added new confusion as to where loyalties were ultimately due—a compound of experience shared by no other army in the world (outside, perhaps, Latin America).

XREF: Connects to how institutional loyalty and identity persist (or fracture) across political upheavals — parallels loyalty questions in other institutions facing frequent restructuring.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1078