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).

DEFINE: Lists the 14 successive French regimes from 1793 to the Fifth Republic, clarifying the extent of political upheaval France experienced during this period.

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