According to some historians, the introduction of compulsory physical education in French schools was induced by military and patriotic concerns during the 1870s and the 1880s – e.g. with the Duruy decree in 1869, and the George law in 1880. It was only later, in 1887, when discussing “mental fatigue” at the Académie de Médecine (the French medical academy) that physicians came to contest the military bend of physical education as it was taught in schools. One may wonder how such an approach to physical education in schools could have evolved from a military urge to a medical concern and finally to a purely educational purpose. Indeed, such an interpretation tends to minimize the fact that physical education in high schools went back to the Bourbon Restoration. The first campaigns by the Public Hygiene Movement at the beginning of the nineteenth century encouraged young adults to practice physical exercises. At that time already, the relationship between physical activities and improved academic results appeared obvious among enlightened circles. This article outlines the social conditions which permitted the early introduction of physical education activities in schools in the absence of any institutional recommendation, during a period going from the end of the Restoration to the 1880s.