Institutional History of the French Technical Corps

This chapter goes into the institutional history of the technical corps. The artillery and engineers gradually militarized in the course of the eighteenth century by pooling technical specialists with fellow officers having a more markedly military profile. The two corps were unified halfway through the century. Essentially, it was not until the Revolution that the engineer corps received troops, something the geographical engineers never did. These last had a more fraught development and did not become a proper military corps until imperial times.