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Garde Nationale

Source:
The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French
Author(s):
Peter France

Garde Nationale. 

Originally a volunteer citizen's militia created in 1789, then a compulsory armed force (1793). Becoming a volunteer body again, its fortunes varied during the 19th c., but it was an increasingly conservative force for keeping bourgeois order. However, many of its sections supported the Commune, and it was disbanded in 1871.