Late in the Napoleonic Wars, Empress Marie Louise (pictured) issued decrees conscripting tens of thousands of French teenagers, who became known as Marie-Louises.

The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a global series of conflicts fought by a fluctuating array of European coalitions against the French First Republic (1803–1804) under the First Consul followed by the First French Empire (1804–1815) under the Emperor of the French, Napoleon Bonaparte. The wars originated in political forces arising from the French Revolution (1789–1799) and from the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802) and produced a period of French domination over Continental Europe. The wars are categorised as seven conflicts, five named after the coalitions that fought Napoleon, plus two named for their respective theatres: the War of the Third Coalition, War of the Fourth Coalition, War of the Fifth Coalition, War of the Sixth Coalition, War of the Seventh Coalition, the Peninsular War, and the French invasion of Russia.

Marie Louise was Duchess of Parma from 11 April 1814 until her death in 1847. She was Napoleon's second wife and as such Empress of the French and Queen of Italy from their marriage on 2 April 1810 until his abdication on 6 April 1814.

Conscription, also known as the draft in American English, is the practice in which the compulsory enlistment in a national service, mainly a military service, is enforced by law. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it continues in some countries to the present day under various names. The modern system of near-universal national conscription for young men dates to the French Revolution in the 1790s, where it became the basis of a very large and powerful military. Most European nations later copied the system in peacetime, so that men at a certain age would serve 1 to 8 years on active duty and then transfer to the reserve force.

The "Marie-Louises" were the conscripts, mostly teenage French boys, who were conscripted into Napoleon's French Imperial Army between October 1813 and 1815. On 9 October 1813, Empress of the French Marie Louise issued a decree ordering the conscription of 200,000 men into the army; as there was a shortage of military-age males in France, recruiting regulations were changed to allow for those as young as 14 and as short as 5 feet 1 inch (1.55 m) to be conscripted. The majority of Marie-Louises served in the campaign in north-east France from January to March 1814, defending against an invasion by the Sixth Coalition. Though they received as little as two weeks of training and would be soundly defeated in the War, French historians lionized the Marie-Louises as courageous youths motivated by patriotic ideals instead of being forced into military service.