Imperial Guard

The Imperial guard was a group of elite soldiers, originally, of the French Military. Napoleon the first was their commander in chief. They served as his elite guards and commandos but he hardly ever used them in battle.

Garde du Directoire was the guards’ origins which help to protect the French revolutionaries. They started out being fanatical republican supporters but as Napoleon rose to power he elected them as his own personal body guards. The Imperial Guard had three wings in it. The first was the Old Guard. The second was the Middle Guard. The third was the Young Guard. The Old Guard were Napoleon’s elite champions throughout his early campaigns.

The Middle Guard were composed of his veteran squad from 1806 to 1809. The Young Guards were the best yearly intake of conscripts and were never as good as the other two wings, but were still better than the rest of the regimental army.

Over a fifteen year period of time the number of Imperial Guards rose and fell. In 1800 there were 3,000 guards. In 1804 there were 8,000 guards. In 1805 there were 12,000 guards. In 1810 there were 56,000 guards. In 1812 there were 112,000 guards. In 1813 there were 85,000 guards and most of them were Young Guards. By 1815 there were only 28,000 guards left in the army.

The Imperial Guard had its own artillery, infantry as well as cavalry just like any other branch of a military. Napoleon took excellent care of his Guard and as such he paid them better than any other faction in his army, gave better rations to them, better equipment and better quarters as well.

They were all ranked one higher than all the other troops but Napoleon would not commit them to battle at times when he could have. This led to many enemies escaping instead of being utterly defeated. The Guard did play a major part in the epic battle of waterloo. They were thrown into battle against a heavy line of firing British troops and, for the first time ever, retreated without being ordered to do so. When the rest of his troops saw this unordered retreat from the Imperial Guard, they lost all hope of winning the battle.

A famous quote from the Imperial Guard is “The Guard dies, it does not retreat” which was said at the last battle of waterloo by Claude-Etienne Michel. The British army crushed back Napoleon’s army after this retreat and that was where Napoleon was finally stopped from conquering. He was also stopped in Russia.

The most common type of French soldier toy is wearing the uniform of an Imperial Guard. This uniform has a feather top hat with a tunic that has two white lines across it like an x. High, hard boots up to the knee area and a tight white pair of tights for pants. They carried musket type guns with a French bayonet attachment for close quarter fighting.

In the movie Time Bandits the dwarf sized thieves teleport to the times of Napoleon to steal all of his treasure. He liked them because they were funny and very short, just like Napoleon. They got him drunk one night and looted all of his golden dishes and cups and then took off into another portal.

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