Hi All!

We have a family story about an ancestor who supposedly was a conscript in the Napoleonic era. I know a decent amount about him, birthday, place of birth and residence etc.

During the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, the French became masters at mobilizing men through mass conscription. Millions of men served, but do records exist still? How would one go about searching?

I'm trying to get a picture of what he went through, and if he was anywhere famous? How did the draft process under Napoleon happen? I imagine it took a lot of organization to get SO many men under arms.

Anyway, here's some info on my ancestor to see if maybe the context clues could help my search?

His name was Andreas Schaub. He was born in 1788 in a town called Albersweiler in the Palatinate region of Germany. When Andreas was a child in 1793, the entire region was invaded by France during the Revolutionary wars and Albersweiler (along with most "German" land west of the Rhine river) was directly annexed by France, and organized in Departments and Arrondissements like all of mainland France. Albersweiler became a town in the new "Arrondissement de Mont-Tonnerre". I'm assuming the conscription age to be right around 20, so he maybe entered service in 1808?

Did French military units recruit by location during this period (similar to how the UK did, regiments based on location), or did fresh conscripts get parcelled out to whoever needed bodies most at the given time?

The only other family story we have regarding this fellow is that he was captured at one point by the UK, and they were going to send him to India at one point, until his family paid someone in jewels in order to get him out of it. The trunk these jewels were presented in stayed in the family, and even made their way to America with us (although this chest is in possession of a distant cousins; this family was BIG, my mother has 40 first cousins alone). That tidbit is probably very anecdotal and diluted through multiple retellings ,but maybe there's just enough to help me somehow.

I know this is a really specific question about a really specific guy, but I'd also love to hear about what life was like for a poor conscript being sent god knows where in the huge machine that was Napoleon's Army?