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The Disabled Soldier

Creator: Douglas C. McMurtrie (author)
Date: 1919
Publisher: The Macmillan Company, New York
Source: Available at selected libraries
Figures From This Artifact: Figure 2  Figure 3  Figure 4  Figure 5  Figure 6  Figure 7  Figure 8  Figure 9  Figure 10  Figure 11  Figure 12  Figure 13  Figure 14  Figure 15  Figure 16  Figure 17  Figure 18  Figure 19  Figure 20  Figure 21  Figure 22  Figure 23  Figure 24  Figure 25  Figure 26

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From this point on, in the interests of clearness, it will be advisable to trace the history of the care of the disabled soldier in France, first, and then to return to England, and then to review the provident measures as they were developed in America. Italy and Germany, politically disorganized in great measure down to the latter half of the nineteenth century, have little to offer that is interesting until we come to very recent times.

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In France, then, toward the end of the sixteenth century, after the close of the civil wars, the problem finally became acute. A multitude of crippled and broken soldiers appealed to the victor, Henry IV, for the "means to live at ease the rest of their lives." They were all ruined men, they said, because either they had several times endured capture by the enemy and had been obliged to ransom themselves, or else they had been wounded and had expended their worldly goods for medical treatment. "They had been reduced to beggary, a shameful thing for the military order." The king was touched; and after considering various expedients, hit upon the idea of providing a hospice for the war disabled.

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To this end, he took over an asylum that had been established for orphans who were to become apothecaries, changed its name to the Maison Royale de la Charite chretienne, and decreed that the Institution was to be supported by all the excess revenues that could be found in the budgets of the charitable institutions -- chiefly monastic -- in France. To gain admittance, the wounded soldier had to present a certificate from his captain or colonel stating how long he had served, the "combats, perils, and hazards he had been exposed to," his "valor," and in what "military actions" he had been wounded.

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Unfortunately, however, the commissioners of the institution were unable to collect a single livre from the administrators of the charitable institutions in France. Their budgets, so the administrators declared, contained no surpluses! In a few years the institution was practically defunct. In 1611, Louis XIII, successor to Henry IV, closed the doors of the Maison and returned it to the embryonic apothecaries. The disabled inmates who had survived were pensioned, and very liberally.

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But only for a little while. The need for state funds soon operated to reduce the annuities. The pensioners complained. "We receive," said they, "a mere alms, both odious and repugnant to the deserts of our quality, for the most part gentlemen, captains, and men full of honors and courage." The pension system was revised. Again the monasteries were drawn upon for funds. Each monastery was to support its quota of disabled soldiers. But the pension was inadequate, the red tape and trouble involved in collecting it was interminable. Before long most of the soldiers had sold their pension rights, and again the countryside was terrorized by wandering beggars, thieves, and cutthroats.

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Convinced of the defects of the system, Louis XIII abandoned it, and took up the institutional idea his father before him had essayed. He planned generously, and undertook construction in 1633. This new venture was destined to be the prototype of the famous Hotel des Invalides, the idea of which is usually attributed to Louis XIV.

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Very little is known of the history of the institution thus established by Louis XIII. In 1646, an official report declared that the building lodged only a gatekeeper, a pot-house, and the architect who had designed the structure; nowhere was there a soldier to be found. Doors and windows gaped, the roof leaked. In 1656, the building was given to the general hospital of the Salpetriere, which used it for the aged poor, as a madhouse, and as a prison.

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Louis XIV returned to the pension system, combining with it the plan of appointing the less severely disabled to garrison duty in the frontier towns. But there these unfortunates were so badly off that they declared "they had rather beg than submit to the posts that had been assigned them." The old abuses and disorders reappeared. In order to curb them, the king ordered that all disabled soldiers caught begging in the city of Paris were to be hanged; whoever gave them alms was to be fined 100 livres. All to no purpose. The situation became critical; to solve it, Louis XIV revived the institutional idea.

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The establishment, like everything else undertaken by Louis XIV, was on a magnificent scale. It was to house 4,000 pensioners. The king resorted to the monasteries for funds, but the yield was inadequate. In 1682 he decreed that on every livre that was spent for military purposes a tax of two deniers, later raised to three, was to be contributed to the support of the soldiers' home. During the war of the Spanish Succession, this sum amounted to 1,250,000 livres a year. The future of the institution was secure.

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All in all, measured by the ideals of its time, this latest venture was a great success. In the fourteen years between 1676 and 1690, over 5,000 soldiers applied for admission; during the next fourteen years, over 10,000.

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