Financial Standing of Officials of the Special Gendarme Corps

Abstract

The article focuses on the level of prosperity of the ranks of the Special Gendarme Corps and its trends during the post-reform and late imperial period. It carries out comparative analysis of several categories of gendarme employees and identifies disparities in their financial standing. There were more than a dozen basic and supplementary allowances, which were both permanent and temporary and were paid for by the Treasury. During the period under review, there was the growth in the monetary income of gendarmes, which enabled them to see themselves as being superior to people of other socio-professional categories such as senior and mid-ranking army officers and police officers. This thesis implicitly confirms that bribery was not widely spread among gendarmes. However, there was impoverishment among the gendarmerie personnel because they did not have any other source of income besides service-related earnings. This made them rather vulnerable, resulting in revitalization measures of social support of gendarme employees. A characteristic feature of material provision for gendarmes during the period under review was a widening gap between allowances for the officers and lower ranks. Gendarmes of lower ranks usually had big families and therefore were often in want for money. In other words, they had a lower standard of well-being. As a result, many of them being unable to support their families had to leave the Special Gendarme Corps and search for other livelihoods. Partially, they managed to improve their predicament by using alternative sources of income such as renting out, subsistence farming and service-related odd jobs. However, these sources were not widely available.