Gendarmerie

The word 'gendarmerie' comes from the French gens d'armes via "gensdarmes" and means 'the armed', literally 'people under arms'.

Originally, it was a heavily armoured and armed force of knights founded by King Charles VII of France in 1445 as the first standing force. The 15 ordnance companies comprised 100 members each. The force survived as heavy cavalry until the Revolution of 1789.

The gendarmerie was originally a military unit of heavy cavalry, which had nothing to do with the present-day tasks of the gendarmeries. It was only in the course of the French Revolution that the need for a protective force for internal security was increasingly seen. As successor to the Maréchaussée of the Ancien Régime, the Gendarmerie nationale (at times also called Gendarmerie impériale) was created in France by law of 16 February 1791. The concept of the Gendarmerie spread throughout Europe as a result of Napoleon's wars and military occupations.

In the Holy Roman Empire, the respective lord of the manor (and in the urban environment the respective magistrate) had usually still been responsible for internal security, for which the lord of the manor held, for example, the right of common land succession. This changed with the establishment of modern state systems at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century and at the latest in the course of the European Revolutions of 1848/49, in which the landlordships were finally abolished. In order for the respective sovereigns to be able to establish protective units for internal security, recourse was made to the military, from which separate units were assigned for police duties. In the Kingdom of Bavaria, the establishment of a "Gensd'armerie" was already stipulated in the constitution of 1808. In Prussia, also following the Napoleonic model, the Hardenberg "Gendarmerie Edict" of July 1812 established the military-style Prussian Land Gendarmerie, which was to remain part of the army for over a century. With the annexation of the Lombardy-Venetian kingdom after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the Empire of Austria took over the gendarmerie regiment active there, which was just under 1,000 strong.