How to locate French military records for 1682-1815, found at the Memoire des Hommes homepage , will present as a navigational challenge. Simply put, you need a road map to trek through the website, to make your way to reach the image records page. Instead of right and left turns associated with road directions, it’s ‘click here, click there and click more’ . In short, my tutorial is a GPS directional/navigator to the French military records location at the Memoire des Hommes website. Remember, this is a government site in France. You’ll need to change your VPN over to France in order access their pages. Even if you bookmark inner pages, the government page might still restrict you, as they did me. You’ll have to start from the main page to proceed
So let’s start from the front page of the Memoire des Hommes website. There are 5 sections to choose from, the section you are to click on, is “Recrutement et Parcours Individuels” This image looks as if you will land on the Military images page directly: It doesn’t. So click.
Let’s begin: Image 1
Which brings you to this page, image2. This image might be a bit self-explanatory, In this image, you’ll read the headline “Recrutement et Parcours Individuels” Where the red arrow directs you, click on ‘Registres d’enrôlement et matricules”.
You might have thought clicking of the Registres d’enrôlement et matricule’ might be the category link that lands on the military image place. No, it’s more clicking.
In image # 3, there are more refined sections with the documents or microfilm references. When you see the word ‘registres’, it means records/documents.The red arrow directs to what section you’ll need to choose from: The ‘Registres de contrôles de Troupes et Registres Matricules’ So click away
We’re almost there people! At the bottom of Image #4 ‘ of ‘Registres de contrôles de troups et registres matricules’ The red arrow points to the blue label ‘Faire une recherche das les intruments de recherche”. Click on the blue label. It guides you to the main page of the military enlistment and records of soldiers of all service branches.
Voilà, you have finally arrived! To help you to understand what you are seeing, and to explain and navigate through the maze. Please go to my ‘How to navigate the Memoire Des Hommes military records 1682-1815 tutorial 1 and tutorial 2 . I’ve written a brief introduction on what these archival images images are, and what to expect from the Ancien Regime (‘old order’before the French Revolution) military records.
Now on to Navigate the’ Memoire des Hommes for French military records tutorials’ —-> Part 1