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The sparse studies on intelligence services are inclined to privilege either the activities of military organizations during crises, or to only analyze the institutions. In the case of France, this trend makes one forget that the intelligence service was in fact built during the nineteenth century on an essentially police-oriented background and causes historians to neglect the necessary in-depth study of the relationship between army and police information and intelligence networks. A study focused on these relationships would modify the prospect of the field and would allow one to consider the research on intelligence from a global point of view, that is to say, the organization (or non-organization) by the State of its information and intelligence services. Confronting the activities of both structures, the historical analysis of their respective and mutual roles within a legal and statutory context, which did not precisely demarcate their specific field of interventions, also commands a detailed study of both professional corps, i.e., intelligence officers and specialized police officers. The aim of this paper is to emphasize the necessity of confronting the history of institutions, of professional corps, and of individuals so to build a global image of the subject in its full historical dimension.