Résumé
Our point of departure is a sentence found in the French Military Programming Law for the years 2019-2025: "As regards pay, the programming law plans the launching of an ambitious renovation of the pay policy through the « New military pay policy ». This sentence means, of course, that there is already an "ancient" wage policy for the servicemen. And it is this ancient policy which is our subject, because the new one ought to be effective only in 2021. The title page shows the French Defence Ministers, from 1989 to 2019, that is a period of exactly 30 years. In fact, our study will begin in 1990 and end in 2016, simply because we have data only for this shorter period.