Military service

A signed poster of the burgomaster and aldermen let know with the future militiamans the date of the drawing of lots. The fixed day, one grouped the interested parties of all the communes belonging to the canton of militia. And pulling started without ceremony. The young villagers expected another thing that with this formality whose speed even prevented from feeling the fateful importance and who fixed the fate of the future infantrymen, riders and artilleurs.Un warrant officer little sympathetic nerve held a list. To the call of his name, one came to withdraw, of a kind of wood drum a paper sheet with the number; and the fate was thrown by it! Once the fallen verdict, it remained with the conscript ready to the service to be prepared with a long distance. If it had fortunate parents, there remained to him the possibility of buying a substitute, that they are luckier than him during the drawing of lots or a conscript of a preceding class which was ready “to pile up again”!
The system into force at the time authorized this practice. These replacements were the contract object often signed in front of notary and whose amount of the transaction represented an important amount of money (10 to 12.000 francs of the time), and were truly accessible only with “daddy's boys”. He thus allowed wire of families easy to escape a long and hazardous forwarding, at the same time as he provided an unhoped-for source of income to the poor stripped people…
For some, the good number caused festival and relief. To commemorate this event one printed postcards where a merry conscript showed his number.