INDUSTRIALISATION BRINGS A POOL OF UNEMPLOYED,
AND OUT-OF-WORK TEENS JOIN THE RIGHT
Without the discipline, social ties and solidarity that come from work, they turn to delinquency and conservatives mobilize them through pay
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"Young Martin, aged 16 ...
after mounting a barricade on rue Menilmontant * five times, on the sixth try stabbed an insurgent who was carrying the flag under a hail of bullets. General Cavaignac embraced him with affection, gave him the Legion of Honor and said, 'you have well deserved it.' "
* In tumultuous eastern Paris.
They appear for the first time in June '48 and at first frighten the privileged...
They cry "long live social reform!" and sing the Marseillaise [revolutionary then]. "They left us full of doubt and fear as to the intentions of those youths, or rather those children, who then more than anyone held our fates in their hands."
-- Toqueville
...but salaries, uniforms, youthful recklessness and officers' authority make them formidable soldiers:
"The bravery of these children of the garde mobile ... cannot even be imagined by those who have not seen it. The sound of shooting, the whistling of bullets, seem like a new game that they love ... they rush to attack, climb up crumbling blocks of stone with a marvelous agility ... a joyous emulation carries them on and hurls them toward death."
-- Toqueville
Internet article (in French)
That ardor is available for whoever can capture it:
Underclass youth will fight
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