French Foreign Legion

by Douglas Porch

  The problem for French commanders was that these rigorous disciplinary methods possibly caused as many problems as they controlled. The difficulty is apparent in the inspection report of the 1er étranger in 1861. General Ulrich denounced a discipline that was “severe, often too rigorous, for coercive means forbidden by the regulations and by the sentiment of humanity” were inflicted upon the soldiers. For starters, “Major Aubry ordered a man who was merely suspected of theft tied up and exposed to the sun for nine days.” On the other hand, he conceded that “Misdemeanors, serious infractions are very frequent and denote an advanced state of demoralization.” The question, of course, was how one could expect this conglomeration of outlaws to perform: “A regiment which counts 648 deserters, in which one does not dare hand out the munitions which each soldier must carry, in which only one pair of shoes per man can be distributed lest they sell them, is far from being a disciplined regiment,” he believed. “It is unworthy of confidence, perhaps even dangerous.”20 It is possible that the personality of Colonel Antonio Martinez, a courageous soldier but a poor administrator, contributed to the unit's problems.

  The enigma of the Legion was that, despite its reputation for occasionally getting out of hand, those who served with it spoke very highly of its esprit de corps and combative qualities. Zédé may be accused of bias when he remembers of his regiment in the period between the Crimea and Mexico: “Perhaps there has never been a corps with more pride in itself than the 2e étranger. We showed with pride the flag covered with glorious inscriptions, we spoke with enthusiasm of the illustrious men who sprang from our ranks: Marshal Saint-Arnaud, Marshal de MacMahon, Marshal Bazaine ... and so many others of slightly less renown.... The curious thing was that the regiment, which formed a compact unit because of an esprit de corps which bordered upon fanaticism, was composed of the most diverse elements.”21 Diesbach de Torny wrote of the barracks square at Sidi-bel-Abbès decorated by the legionnaires in August 1863 with inscriptions of the regiment's past victories. When the colonel appeared and questioned why one of the signs had been left blank, he was told, “That's the place to inscribe the Mexican campaign. And everyone began to shout: ‘Let's go to Mexico!’ ”22

  SWORDS WERE NOT carried by legionnaires in North Africa, so even the dullest soldier realized that their distribution could mean only one thing— that the Legion was about to travel. The ritual of departure was fairly well established: The colonel assembled the regiment for a “short but vibrant speech.” Enthusiasm was instantaneous. Officers repaired to the mess to clamor for champagne, which most could not possibly afford, while the soldiers paraded through the streets beating on their mess tins with tent poles. Merchants immediately descended on the barracks in an attempt to collect their unpaid debts. Lieutenants were obliged to exchange their horses (strictly against regulations) against the two pack mules permitted on campaign, while the troops stuffed their kits into impossibly small, and impossibly heavy, knapsacks. When, at last, the preparations for departure were complete, the regiment was drawn up. The colonel cried “en avant,” the band struck the first chords of the popular song “Artilleur de Metz,” and the troops swung onto the road running north to Oran and adventure beyond.23 In the 1850s, that adventure was to be had in the Crimea and in Italy.

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  FRENCH PARTICIPATION IN the Crimean War of 1854-56 may be remembered by American and British readers, who usually associate that war with Florence Nightingale, the news dispatches of William Russell, and the Charge of the Light Brigade, as a remote event. But it was important both for France and the Legion. The origins of the Crimean intervention can be traced to Russia's continued pressure to expand into the Balkans and toward the Mediterranean at the expense of the decaying Ottoman Empire. In 1853, Russian Emperor Nicholas I moved his troops into the Danubian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia (later known as Rumania). Great Britain, who opposed Russian access to the Mediterranean because it would threaten her strategic route to India, had been a traditional supporter of Turkey. What France sought to gain from a war with Russia is less obvious. Because France was one of the protectors of the Holy Places in the Ottoman Empire, it is often assumed that Louis-Napoleon declared war to court French Catholic opinion. But the issue of the Holy Places had been settled before war was declared. And while in the short term the war did rally opinion on both left and right for a crusade against Russia, popular, especially Catholic, support for the war proved fickle. Louis-Napoleon's real motive appears to have been diplomatic—by joining in an alliance with Great Britain, he could split the entente of the conservative powers, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, and allow himself more scope to realize future diplomatic ambitions. As a consequence, France and Britain declared war on the tsar on March 27, 1854.

  The decision to send the Legion to participate in the Crimean campaign of 1854-56 was a controversial one. Many generals, including Saint-Arnaud, were opposed to it, believing it imprudent to strip Algeria of white troops while the conquest of that land was still so recent. However, despite the best efforts of Saint-Arnaud's aide-de-camp, Colonel Louis Trochu, Napoleon III took the decision to dispatch the Legion to the Crimea on May 10,1854. “The two regiments of the Foreign Legion have joined us in Gallipoli,” Major Renson, a staff officer in the Armée d'Orient, wrote on July 9, 1854. “It's a mistake. They should have stayed in Africa where they were very useful.” Renson attributed the presence of the Legion to a “coup de Corse” of General Jean-Luc Carbuccia, who had recovered nicely from his “disgrace” at Zaatcha, thanks to his confirmed Bonapartist opinions and his Corsican origins. Renson believed that Carbuccia had used his contacts with the royal family to persuade the Emperor to send his old corps, arguing among other things that the presence of the Legion might stimulate desertion among Poles serving in Russian ranks.24

  On May 10, 1854, both regiments of the Legion received orders to furnish two battalions each for a Legion infantry brigade, while a third battalion provided by the 1er étranger stationed at Gallipoli would act as the brigade depot. The charm that Gallipoli appeared to possess when approached from the sea after a long voyage quickly vanished upon disembarkation. What seemed to be an attractive collection of gray houses that followed the curve of the hillside on the European shore of the Dardanelles proved upon closer inspection to be a labyrinth of narrow streets running between shabby wooden buildings, all of which were filthy enough to disgust even soldiers accustomed to Algeria. The filth no doubt contributed to the cholera epidemic that broke out in the town, one that killed Carbuccia and over two hundred legionnaires.

  Because the Legion had not been included in the original war plans, it was kept for a time at Gallipoli. Eventually, a bataillon de marche made up of eight elite companies was organized to strengthen the division of General Canrobert, which had been severely weakened by cholera. On August 25, General Canrobert, ex-colonel of the 2e étianger, inspected the battalion personally. On September 14, this battalion disembarked with much of the rest of the expeditionary force at Calamita Bay in the Crimea. On the 19th, the combined Anglo-French army began to march in the direction of Sebastopol over a slightly undulating plateau. By the end of the day, the Russian positions on the heights above the Alma were visible in the distance.

  By seven o'clock on the morning of September 20, the French army was drawn up in two lines facing west, the sea and the Allied fleet to their left, the English army on their right. The legionnaires brewed coffee while they waited for the English to move into line. At eleven-thirty in the morning the two Allied armies moved forward, across the Alma River and toward the heights occupied by the Russians. Canrobert ordered the troops to shed their backpacks and sent the Legion forward with two artillery batteries to occupy the heights. In skirmishing formation, the legionnaires began exchanging shots with the Russians barely three hundred yards away, a fight that lasted for three hours until, at five-thirty in the evening, the Russians retired. The Legion was ordered back to the banks of the Alma, where they collected their packs
and made camp. The battalion counted sixty casualties, including five officers wounded.

  The failure of the Allied commanders to take advantage of the Russian defeat to seize Sebastopol condemned them to a lengthy siege. In October, the elite battalion that had fought at the Alma was disbanded and integrated into the remainder of the Legion, which arrived from Gallipoli to form a brigade commanded by newly promoted Brigadier General Achille Bazaine. The new arrivals could not have been reassured by the scene that greeted them in the Crimea. The Legion camp was sited on a bleak plateau overlooking the Strelitzka Bay, a land of abandoned farms squared and cut by dry stone walls, once the protection for fruit orchards and vineyards that were soon enough sacrificed to the army's need for firewood. From their camp, the legionnaires, whom the Russians soon nicknamed “leather bellies” because of the cartridge pouches they wore suspended from around their necks in the “African” manner, could make their way to the siege works that now encircled Sebastopol. The winter would be a calvary for the Legion, as it was for all Allied troops. Working in deplorable conditions, dodging mortar and artillery shells lobbed at the trenches, the legionnaires pushed the earthworks toward the Russian walls, fighting mud, cold, snipers, dysentery and cholera. The fatigue of the day was redoubled at night, when half the men remained on alert while the other half tried to sleep in the relative safety of scrapes hollowed out in the sides of the trenches. On November 5, a surprise Russian sortie left three Legion officers and forty-three legionnaires dead and wounded a large number of others before a counterattack drove them back to their walls. This was followed on November 14 by a violent storm, which flooded the trenches and destroyed the shelters behind the lines. After that, the legionnaires took greater care to anchor their tents. But the rigors of the winter that a thin layer of canvas did little to diminish, the siege operations that kept men continually outside and the shortage of firewood led to many cases of frostbite, despite the arrival of more suitable winter clothing in December.

  The Russians were not content to conduct a passive defense, but skillfully harassed the Allies with raids, ambushes, countermines and frequent bombardments. 1855 opened with a determined Russian assault on the siege lines held by the 2nd Battalion of the 2e étranger, which was vigorously repulsed on the night of January 19—20, in the words of one Spanish sergeant, “like a hammer smashing butter on an anvil.”25 This was followed by other large-scale raids in February and March, the result of which was to leave a large number of unclaimed cadavers between the lines. So highly valued were the warm Russian boots that legionnaires were more than willing to run the risks and endure the discomfort of a night excursion into no man's land to strip a body, especially as the Russian soldiers were in the habit of tying their purses around their legs.

  The Legion celebrated the arrival of spring with a night attack on a central fortification of the Russian defensive lines whose mortars rained down serious harassing fire on the French trenches. At eight-thirty on the evening of May 1, six elite companies taken from the 1er and 2e étrangers jumped off and seized the bastion with a bayonet attack. Colonel Viénot arrived with the remainder of the 1er étranger and fought off repeated Russian counterattacks, while other legionnaires working under the direction of French military engineers worked to link the captured bastion to the French lines. Dawn found the Legion firmly in possession of the Russian redoubt and eight mortars. Among nearly one hundred Legion casualties was fifty-one-year-old Colonel Viénot—the Legion barracks at Sidi-bel-Abbès and subsequently Aubagne were baptized with his name. The following day the Russians again attempted to retake their lost bastion, to no effect. On May 3, a truce was declared so that the two sides could collect their dead. French and Russian officers exchanged courtesies and cigars in no-man's land until bugle calls announced the resumption of hostilities.

  Not content to accept the loss of their battery, the Russians began to push forward a counterfortification along a ridge line between a cemetery and the sea designed to dominate the French trenches. On May 22, the Legion participated in a two-pronged attack to seize the Russian position. At nine o'clock in the evening, the two battalions of the 2e étranger and one of the 98th Infantry Regiment left their trenches, flopped on their stomachs to allow the Russians to shoot off their muskets and then moved by the right flank to take an outer line of defenses. They then held on for dear life as three Russian battalions counterattacked until well into the night. Their losses were five Legion officers and thirty-four legionnaires killed, eight officers and 174 men hors de combat.

  A SECOND GROUP on the right composed of three battalions of legionnaires and Chasseurs à Pied were assigned the more difficult mission of taking the main Russian position. They succeeded, but lost it to a strong Russian counterattack. The artillery on both sides then got into the act. Over the next two days, the position changed hands five times before the French finally claimed it, but at the cost of over two hundred casualties for the Legion. When on May 23 a truce was declared to collect the dead, it required five hours to complete this grisly task, the bodies already swollen and blackened by the heat. This was the final substantial Legion participation in the war. When on September 8, 1855, the main Russian battery at Malakoff fell to a French assault, thus opening Sebastopol to the Allies, the Legion's contribution was one hundred volunteers who carried ladders. The remainder of the war was spent building trenches until, on March 2, 1856, the firing of cannon announced that peace had been signed. On April 13, a large review was held in the presence of French commander-in-chief Pelisser and the Russian General Luders to honor the cemetery of Legion dead and to announce that, to compensate the Legion, Louis-Napoleon offered French nationality and a transfer to French regiments to all who desired it. This was done in great part as a budgetary measure. However, this did not mean the abolition of the Legion. In response to the call by war minister Marshal Jean-Baptiste Vaillant for “the requirement to conserve a corps able to receive those who come from foreign countries,” the organization of the 1er and 2e régiments étrangers was confirmed by decree.26 By July, the Legion had been united at Sidi-bel-Abbès. In all, the legion lost 12 officers killed and 66 wounded in the war, while 1,625 legionnaires were killed or wounded.

  The Crimean campaign was important for the Legion in at least two respects. First, it was the first time that the two foreign “legions” fought as a unit, which was an important beginning in the formation of a communal unit mentality. This coincided with the end of the first quarter-century of the Legion's history, when the old generation who had been with the unit from its earliest days disappeared definitively, to be replaced by a new crop of leaders. Second, the Crimean campaign gave the Legion, as well as the entire Armée d'Afrique, a double vocation, that of fighting in France's European wars as well as in her colonial ones. Over time, the sentiment that France's greatness rested primarily upon her colonial achievements would take hold in her soldiers overseas, and cause them increasingly to see themselves as an important element in the defense of France, even an essential one. That sense of constituting a vital component in France's defense was only increased in 1859, when the Legion was recalled to Europe to fight with the French army against the Austrians in Italy.

  IN MANY RESPECTS the Crimean War prepared the way for French intervention in Italy by weakening Russia and creating mistrust between Saint Petersburg and Vienna, the two powers that had most seriously attempted to uphold the status quo that emerged from the 1815 Congress of Vienna. Each now distrusted the ambitions of the other in the Balkans, the flourishing of a rivalry that would eventually provide a pretext for World War I. Louis-Napoleon's desire to challenge Austrian control of Lombardy and Venetia was curiously hastened by an attempt on his life by an Italian nationalist, Felice Orsini, on the evening of January 14, 1858, as the emperor was making his way to the Opera. For a variety of reasons, which included an emotional attachment to the cause of Italian unity, the desire for Imperial glory to reinforce the popularity of his regime, a bid to appear as the champion of
the “modern” cause of the consolidation of nations and the more concrete prospect of acquiring Nice and Savoy for France, in July 1858 Louis-Napoleon concluded a secret pact with the prime minister of Piedmont, Camillo di Cavour. In April 1859, the cunning Cavour tricked Austria into a declaration of war, and French troops rushed to his aid.

  The first regiment of the Legion was poorly prepared to undertake this campaign. Understrength, the government had shifted it to Corsica in April 1859 in the hope that it would attract enlistments from Italians eager to fight for the unity of their nation. When, in the following month, it was shifted to Genoa, the 1er étranger counted barely six hundred men and was brigaded with the 2e étranger, which arrived directly from Oran. On June 4, 1859, after a series of marches and reconnaissances, the two armies met before the town of Magenta.

  The countryside that stretched away before the small town of Magenta was typical of that of the Lombard plain—a level carpet of orchards and vineyards segmented by walls, lanes and hedgerows. However, the legionnaires who stood gazing upon it in the gentle heat of June 1859 were not seduced by its pastoral beauty. If the broken nature of the terrain removed the threat of a cavalry attack, it offered a perfect series of strong points and lines of resistance for a determined infantry. For most of the morning, the legionnaires had advanced, seeing nothing of the Austrians but straining beneath the weight of their heavy blue overcoats and knapsacks surmounted by a tent half, pole and cooking equipment. At midday they halted to await the arrival of the rest of the corps. The red tile roofs and warm ocher walls of Magenta were visible a mile and a half away through the foliage.