| Popis: |
As the guardians of the Revolution, the Civic Guard—Belgium’s part-time bourgeois force—was supposed to be the central element of the country’s armed forces. Yet, this chapter demonstrates how a combination of apathy and mismanagement led to its decline as a militarily effective force from 1848 onwards. As the closest link between army and society, this bourgeois expression of militarism was so dampened by the time of the 1886 workers’ riots that it was completely overtaken by the Gendarmerie as the State’s bulwark for the maintenance of law and order. Also shown here is how the Liberal–urban composition added to the authorities’ mistrust of the Civic Guard, which was not predisposed to the Catholic Government’s attempts to slow the process of society’s socialisation around the turn of the century. |
