Francs-tireurs

Francs-tireurs (pronounced [fʁɑ̃.ti.ʁœʁ], French for "free shooters") were irregular military formations deployed by France during the early stages of the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). The term was revived and used by partisans to name two major French Resistance movements set up to fight against Nazi Germany during World War II.^[1]

This article is about military units in the Franco-Prussian War. For other uses, see Franc-Tireur (disambiguation).

The term is sometimes used to refer more generally to guerrilla fighters who operate outside the laws of war.^[2]^[3]

Background[edit]

During the wars of the French Revolution, a franc-tireur was a member of a corps of light infantry organised separately from the regular army. The Spanish word francotirador, the Portuguese word franco-atirador, and the Italian word franco tiratore, meaning sharpshooter or sniper, are derived from the word franc-tireur.

Other uses[edit]

Le Franc-Tireur was the name of an underground French Resistance newspaper published by the group in Lyon by the same name.

French Resistance

Maquis (World War II)

Lt. Colonel St. Etienne, Les Chasseurs des Vosges, Toul, 1906.

Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane. 1870: La France dans la guerre. Paris: Armand Colin, 1989.

Horne, John and Alan Kramer. German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.

Howard, Michael. The Franco Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870–1871, 1961. Reprint, London and New York: Routledge, 1988.

Mehrkens, Heidi Statuswechsel. Kriegserfahrung und nationale Wahrnehmung im Deutsch-Französischen Krieg 1870/71 (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2008).

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Stoneman, Mark R. "The Bavarian Army and French Civilians in the War of 1870–71" (MA thesis, University of Augsburg, Germany, 1994)

Stoneman, Mark R. "The Bavarian Army and French Civilians in the War of 1870–1871: A Cultural Interpretation", War in History 8.3 (2001): 271–93. Reprinted in Peter H. Wilson, ed., Warfare in Europe 1825–1914, The International Library of Essays on Military History, ed. Jeremy Black. London: Ashgate Publishing, 2006. 135–58.

abstract

Stoneman, Mark R. "Die deutschen Greueltaten im Krieg 1870/71 am Beispiel der Bayern", in Kriegsgreuel: Die Entgrenzung der Gewalt in kriegerischen Konflikten vom Mittelalter bis ins 20. Jahrhundert, ed. and Daniel Hohrath (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2008), 223–39.