maréchaussée
UK/ˈmaɹeɪʃəʊˌseɪ/
maréchaussée noun: a type of guard force in France, French colonies, or sometimes by extension other places, commanded by a marshal (formerly used as a police force before the introduction of the gendarmerie); loosely (chiefly humorous), the police, the constabulary.
Noun
maréchaussée (plural maréchaussées)
- A type of guard force in France, French colonies, or sometimes by extension other places, commanded by a marshal (formerly used as a police force before the introduction of the gendarmerie); loosely (chiefly humorous), the police, the constabulary.
- I do not unite the Maréchaussée, because that corps is destined for a particular service, to which it will be altogether applied in the course of the next campaign, nor should I think it advisable to convert it to any other purpose.1789, George Washington, letter, 6 Feb 1780
- Enquire of the citizen, the mechanic, if he repoſes not more quietly in his houſe from the certainty that it is not now liable to be entered by the marechauſſées, and that it is no longer poſſible for him to be forcibly taken out of it by a lettre de cachet, […]1792, Charlotte Smith, “Letter VIII. To Mr. Bethel.”, in Desmond. […], volume I, London: […] G[eorge,] G[eorge,] J[ohn] and J[ames] Robinson, […], →OCLC, page 134
Examples of maréchaussée in a sentence
- In Saint Domingue, free men of color and whites were enlisted in the militia and the maréchaussée to hunt runaway slaves, patrol the highways, and suppress maroon colonies […]1997 February 1, Caryn Cossé Bell, Revolution, Romanticism, and the Afro-Creole Protest Tradition in Louisiana, 1718--1868, LSU Press...
- Peasant communities were often effectively self-policing, while the newly reorganized maréchaussée served as an ancillary peace-keeping force.2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 156:
- The English sailor Henry Schroeder might have witnessed the mobilization of gens de couleur and slaves for the maréchaussée when he landed in Guadeloupe in 1787 […]2012 December 1, Laurent Dubois, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804, UNC Press...
Forms of maréchaussée
| plural | maréchaussées |
|---|
Origin of maréchaussée
From French maréchaussée. Doublet of marshalcy.
Questions about maréchaussée
- What does maréchaussée mean?
- Maréchaussée means a type of guard force in France, French colonies, or sometimes by extension other places, commanded by a marshal (formerly used as a police force before the introduction of the gendarmerie); loosely (chiefly humorous), the police, the constabulary.
- How do you use maréchaussée in a sentence?
- In Saint Domingue, free men of color and whites were enlisted in the militia and the maréchaussée to hunt runaway slaves, patrol the highways, and suppress maroon colonies […]
- What part of speech is maréchaussée?
- Maréchaussée is a noun.
- How do you pronounce maréchaussée?
- Maréchaussée is pronounced /ˈmaɹeɪʃəʊˌseɪ/ (UK).
- What is the plural of maréchaussée?
- The plural of maréchaussée is maréchaussées.
Words near maréchaussée in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: maréchaussée (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “maréchaussée.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mar%C3%A9chauss%C3%A9e. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.