French Foreign Legion

by Douglas Porch

70. Dangy, Moi, légionnire, 53. These exact words could not have been said in 1902, as the Spanish Legion was created only in 1920.

  71. Sylvère, Flutsch, 82.

  72. Des Ecorres, Au pays, 268.

  73. GM, La Légion étrangère et les troupes coloniales (Paris: Chapelot, 1903), 5.

  74. Abel Clément-Grandcourt, “Les Alsaciens-Lorrains et la légion étrangère,” Feuilles d'histoire, 1 June 1910: 556; SHAT, IH 1015, Desorthes report, December 1908.

  75. GM, La Légion, 9.

  76. Sylvère, Flutsch, 79.

  77. Randin, A la légion, 10.

  78. Sylvère, Flutsch, 70.

  79. SHAT, 3H 148, Trumelet-Faber report, March 1912.

  80. Dangy, Moi, légionnaire, 30-31.

  81. Sylvère, Flutsch, 73.

  82. Sylvère, Flutsch, 248.

  83. Sylvère, Flutsch, 73-5.

  84. Ehrhart, Mes treize années, Chapter I.

  85. Martyn, Life in the Legion, 95.

  86. Merolli, La grenade, 89.

  87. Sylvère, Flutsch, 109, 161.

  88. Raimund Anton Premschwitz, Mes aventures à la Légion étrangère, 62, manuscript preserved in SHAT, 1H 1015. The original German title is Meine Erlebnisse als Fremdenlégioner in Algerien (Metz: Muller, 1904). All numbers are from the manuscript.

  89. Roger de Beauvoir, La Légion étrangère, 8-9.

  90. Le Poer, A Modern Legionary, 24.

  91. Rosen, In the Foreign Legion, 78.

  92. Merolli, La grenade héroique, 99.

  93. Cabrol, L'adaptation à la légion étrangère, 96.

  94. Sylvère, Flutsch, 79-80.

  95. Rosen, In the Foreign Legion, 81-2.

  96. Rosen, In the Foreign Legion, 103.

  97. Sylvère, Flutsch, 143-4.

  98. Rosen, In the Foreign Légion, 277, 248.

  99. SHAT, 3H 1015, 20 November 1905.

  100. Rosen, In the Foreign Legion, 105.

  101. Rosen, In the Foreign Legion, 59-60

  102. Rosen, In the Foreign Legion, 108-9.

  103. M.M., Memoirs of the Foreign Legion (New York: Knopf, 1925), 187.

  104. Ehrhart, Mes treize années, Chapter I.

  105. M.M., Memoirs, 127.

  106. Rosen, In the Foreign Legion, 85.

  107. Ehrhart, Mes treize années, Chapter I.

  108. Sylvère, Flutsch, 78-9.

  109. Martyn, Life in the Legion, 112-13.

  110. Junger, Jeux africains, 173.

  111. Ehrhart, Mes treize années, Chapter I.

  112. Martyn, Life in the Legion, 113.

  113. Premschwitz, Mes aventures à la légion étrangère, 55.

  114. Martyn, Life in the Legion, 113.

  115. Rosen, In the Foreign Legion, 159.

  116. Dangy, Moi, légionnaire, 72.

  117. Premschwitz, Mes aventures, 124.

  118. Sylvère, Flutsch, 99-100.

  119. Pralon, Engagé-volontaire, 146-7.

  120. Premschwitz, Mes aventures, 144-5.

  121. Rosen, In the Foreign Legion, 166-9.

  122. Ehrhart, Mes treize années, Chapter IV.

  123. Rosen, In the Foreign Legion, 164-5.

  124. Sylvère, Flutsch, 101-2.

  125. Sylvère, Flutsch, 68.

  126. Sylvère, Flutsch, 68.

  127. Jean-Louis Armengaud, Le Sud oranais: Journal d'un légionnaire. Treize mois de colonne pendant l'insurrection des Ouled-sidi-cheik soulevés par le Marabout Bou-Amama, 1881-82 (Paris: Charles-Lavauzelle, 1893), 57.

  128. Sylvère, Flutsch, 93.

  129. Premschwitz, Mes aventures, 107; Merolli, La grenade, 88-9.

  130. Richard Holmes, Acts of War. The Behavior of Men in Battle (New York: Free Press, 1986), 45-6.

  131. Pfirmann, Sergent Pfirmann, 7.

  132. Premschwitz, Mes aventures, 62-3.

  133. Merolli, La grenade, 99-100.

  134. Le comte de Villebois Mareuil, “La légion étrangère,” Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 April 1896: 886-7.

  135. Pralon, Engagé-volontaire, 156.

  136. Pfirmann, Sergent Pfirmann, 56, 73.

  137. Pfirmann, Sergent Pfirmann, 56.

  138. Hubert-Jacques, L'Allemagne et la légion étrangère, 146-7.

  139. Villebois Mareuil, “La Légion étrangère,” 887.

  140. Sylvère, Flutsch, 66.

  141. GM, La légion étrangère et les troupes coloniales, 16-17.

  142. Villebois Mareuil, “La légion étrangère,” 886.

  143. SHAT, 7N 106.

  144. Martyn, Life in the Legion, 281.

  145. Clément-Grandcourt, “Les Alsaciens-Lorrains et la légion étrangère,” 561.

  146. Sylvère, Flutsch, 69-70. The discipline companies were established in 1875. They were distinct from the Bats d'Af the penal units into which young men who had civilian criminal records were sent to do their military service.

  147. SHAT, 1H 1015, 10 March 1906.

  148. Dangy, Moi, légionnaire, 47.

  149. Rosen, In the Foreign Legion, 93-4.

  150. Premschwitz, Mes aventures, 113.

  151. Richard Holmes Acts of War, 40-3.

  152. Sylvère, Flutsch, 115.

  153. Martin, Je suis légionnaire, 113.

  154. Dangy, Moi, légionnaire, 127-45.

  155. Rosen, In the Foreign Legion, 96.

  156. Rosen, In the Foreign Legion, 93-4.

  157. Sylvère, Flutsch, 85-6

  158. Dangy, Moi, légionnaire, 49-50.

  159. Le Poer, A la légion, 65.

  160. Rosen, In the Foreign Legion, 61.

  161. Sylvère, Flutsch, 145.

  162. Jean Martin, Je suis un légionnaire, 114.

  163. Sylvère, Flutsch, 67. Dangy believed that fighting was the way in which men who were unable to confide in anyone protected their privacy: “This demonstration of their physical vigor allows them to remain alone with their conscience and their soul.” Dangy, Moi, légionnaire, 49-50.

  164. Sylvère, Flutsch, 206.

  165. Le Poer, A la légion, 196.

  166. Le Poer, A Modern Legionary, 23.

  167. Sylvère, Flutsch, 158-9.

  168. Le Poer, A la légion, 106-12.

  169. Martin, Je suis un légionnaire, 115.

  170. Raoul Béric, Les Routiers. La légion étrangère: Source d'admiration et de pitié (Paris: L'édition moderne, 1907), 65.

  171. Le Poer, A Modern Legionary, 23.

  172. Dangy, Moi, légionnaire, 45.

  173. Rosen, In the Foreign Legion, 124.

  174. Merolli, La grenade, 92, 119.

  175. Des Ecorres, Au pays, 335-6.

  176. Le Poer, A la légion, 54.

  177. Dangy, Moi, légionnaire, 51.

  178. Béric, Les routiers, 158.

  CHAPTER 10

  1. Charles Meyer, La vie quotidienne des français en Indochine, 1860-1910 (Paris: Hachette, 1985), 153.

  2. Henry McAleavy, Black Flags in Vietnam: The Story of a Chinese Intervention. The Tonkin War of 1884-85 (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 242; A. Thomazi, La conquête de l'Indochine (Paris: Payot, 1934), 196, lists twenty-one dead, seventy-one killed and two missing.

  3. McAleavy, Black Flags, 256; Thomazi, La conquête de l'Indochine, 214.

  4. McAleavy, Black Flags, 257-8.

  5. Pralan, Lionel Hart, 189.

  6. For a discussion of the Formosa campaign, see Captain Garnot, L'expédition française de Formose, 1884-1885 (Paris: Delagrave, 1894).

  7. Bôn-Mat, Souvenirs d'un légionnaire (Paris: Albert Messein, 1914), 23.

  8. L. Huguet, En colonne. Souvenirs d'extrême-Orient (Paris: Flammarion, nd), 26-7.

  9. Martyn, Life in the Legion, 148.

  10. L. Huguet, En colonne, 25-27, 73.

  11. Dick de Lonlay, Au Tonkin, 1883-1885. Récits anecdotiques (Paris: Gamier, 1886), 499.

  12. Le Poer, A Modern Legionary, 118.

  13. Bernard Savelli, La Légion étrangère au Tonkin: des origines a 1914 (Aix-en-Provence: mémoire de mâ
itrise, 1971), 38.

  14. A.-P. Maury, Mes campagnes au Tonkin (Lyon: Vitte et Perrussel, 1888), 77, 211-12.

  15. Bôn-Mat, Souvenirs, 173-4.

  16. Pralan, Lionel Hart, 214.

  17. Le Poer, A Modern Legionary, 133-4.

  18. Maury, Mes campagnes, 95.

  19. Maury, Mes campagnes, 228.

  20. Pralan, Lionel Hart, 128.

  21. Charles Des Ecorres, Au pays des étapes, 261.

  22. Le Poer, A la Légion, 158.

  23. Captain G. Prokos, Opérations coloniales. Tactique des petits detachements. Vol. II. Chine et Indochine (Paris: Charles-Lavauzelle, nd), 35.

  24. Le Poer, A Modern Legionary, 173.

  25. Le Poer, A Modern Legionary, 113-14, 138, 166.

  26. Louis Carpeaux, La chasse aux pirates (Paris: Grasset, 1913), 165.

  27. Le Poer, A Modern Legionary, 134-5.

  28. Le Poer, A Modern Legionary, 143.

  29. Martyn, Life in the Legion, 167.

  30. Huguet, En colonne, 35-43.

  31. Bôn-Mat, Souvenirs, 142.

  32. Bôn-Mat, Souvenirs, 147-8.

  33. Notes sur la campagne du 3e bataillon de la Légion étrangère au Tonkin (Paris and Limoges: Charles-Lavauzelle, 1888), 13-15.

  34. Bôn-Mat, Souvenirs, 149.

  35. Notes ...du3e bataillon, 20.

  36. Hubert Lyautey, Lettres du Tonkin et de Madagascar, 1894-1899 (Paris: Ar-mand Colin, 1942), 90.

  37. Grisot and Coulombon, La Légion étrangère de 1831 à 1887, 447.

  38. Captain Champs, Le siège de Tuyen-Quan. Récit anecdotique par un témoin oculaire (Verdun: Freschard, 1902), 5.

  39. Theophile Boisset, Tuyen-Quan pendant le siège (Paris: Fischbacher, 1885), 7.

  40. Boisset, Tuyen-Quan, 23.

  41. Grisot, Légion étrangère, 449; Edmond Marc Dominé, Journal du siège. Place de Tuyen-Quan (manuscript, ALE, 22-23 February 1885. The published edition was printed by Charles-Lavauzelle, Paris, 1885.).

  42. Dominé, Journal, 28 February.

  43. Dominé, Journal du siège de Tuyen-Quan. See also Théophile Boisset, Tuyen-Quan pendant la guerre (Paris: Fischbacher, 1885), 23. Boisset was the Protestant pastor attached to the Legion at Tuyen Quang.

  44. Huguet, En colonne, 97.

  45. Boisset, Tuyen-Quan, 28-9.

  CHAPTER 11

  1. Louis Carpeaux, La chasse aux pirates, 5. Carpeaux's souvenirs were based upon his experiences in 1894-1895 when he was serving as a Legion sergeant in the Lao Kay region of Tonkin. They were first published under the pseudonym Henri Niellé, “La chasse aux pirates. Souvenirs d'une expédition au Tonkin,” Le journal des voyages, numbers of 5 August-26 September 1906.

  2. L. Huguet, En colonne, 48-9.

  3. Huguet, En colonne, 109.

  4. Frederic Martyn, Life in the Legion, 122-3.

  5. Sergeant Ernest Bolis, Mémoires d'un sous-officier. Mes campagnes en Afrique et en Asie de 1889-1899 (Châlon-sur-Saône: Imprimerie du Courrier de Saône-et-Loire, 1905), 61.

  6. Charles Meyer, La vie quotidienne, 179.

  7. Colonel Tournyol du Clos, “La Légion étrangère au Tonkin (1883-1932). Le siège de Tuyen-Quan (20 janvier-3 mars 1885),” La revue d'infanterie, no. 525, vol. 89 (1 May 1936): 859.

  8. Le Poer, A la Légion étrangère, 44-5.

  9. John Le Poer, A Modern Legionary (New York: Dutton, 1905), 91.

  10. “Notes d'un sergent de la vieille légion,” Vert et rouge, no. 83 (1952): 31.

  11. Leon Randin, A la Légion étrangère, 214-16.

  12. SHAT, 7N 100.

  13. SHAT, 7N 106, 1909 report.

  14. Joseph Erhart, Mes treize années, Chapters IV & V.

  15. Ehrhart, Mes treize années, Chapter V.

  16. Ehrhart, Mes treize années, Chapter V.

  17. Ernest Junger, Jeux africains, 126.

  18. Meyer, La vie quotidienne, 265, 267.

  19. Ehrhart, Mes treize années, Chapter V.

  20. Bôn-Mat, Souvenirs d'un légionnaire, 130.

  21. Meyer, Vie quotidienne, 259.

  22. Junger, Jeux africains, 128.

  23. Silbermann, Cinq ans à la Légion, 132.

  24. Bôn-Mat, Souvenirs, 93, 101, 169.

  25. Ehrhart, Mes treize années, Chapter V.

  26. Meyer, Vie quotidienne, 262-3.

  27. Martyn, Life in the Legion, 120.

  28. Bolis, Mémoires, 14.

  29. Correspondence of Lucien Jacqueline, 1902-1907, papers in the possession of Richard Mahaud, letter of 15 October 1906.

  30. Bolis, Mémoires, 14.

  31. Martyn, Life in the Legion, 122-3.

  32. Pralan, Lionel Hart, 174-5.

  33. Bolis, Mémoires, 17.

  34. Martyn, Life in the Legion, 124.

  35. Notes sur la campagne du 3e bataillon, 5-7.

  36. Pralan, Lionel Hart, 178-80.

  37. Silbermann, Cinq ans à la Légion, 85.

  38. Lieutenant Colonel A. Ditte, Observations sur la guerre dans les colonies. Organisation—exécution. Conferences faites à l'école supérieure de la guerre (Paris: Charles-Lavauzelle, 1905), 355.

  39. Junger, Jeux africains, 125.

  40. Evelyn Waugh, When the Going Was Good (London: Penguin, 1975), 74.

  41. Silbermann, Cinq ans à la Légion, 85.

  42. Pralan, Lionel Hart, 174-5.

  43. Le Poer, A Modern Legionary, 101-2.

  44. Le Poer, A Modern Legionary, 104-5.

  45. Notes, ...du3e bataillon, 10.

  46. Martyn, Life in the Legion, 126-8.

  47. Pfirmann, Le sergent Pfirmann, 181.

  48. Le Poer, A Modern Legionary, 107-10. As stated previously Le Poer's work contains inaccuracies, and the sequence of events is sometimes confused. This has caused one Legion scholar to express doubts to this author upon its authenticity as a source. The confusions are probably due to the fact that Le Poer enlisted at age sixteen and compiled his memoirs some twenty years after the events described. It is also possible that it was ghostwritten, as Le Poer had little formal schooling, and given a dramatic conclusion to make it more marketable. However, Le Poer obviously served in Tonkin in this period. The sentiments and attitudes of Le Poer appear perfectly plausible ones to this author, even if the detail of events recounted is sometimes muddled.

  49. Lyautey, Lettres du Tonkin, 73.

  50. Lyautey, Lettres du Tonkin, 78.

  51. Lyautey, Lettres de Tonkin, 74.

  52. Bôn-Mat, Souvenirs, 91.

  53. A.-P. Maury, Mes campagnes au Tonkin, 73.

  54. Martyn, Life in the Legion, 131-2.

  55. J. Pannier, Trois ans en Indochine, 131.

  56. McAleavy, Black Flags, 271-2.

  57. SHAT, 10H 3, 18 March 1885 report.

  58. Dick de Lonlay, Au Tonkin, 514-15.

  59. Bôn-Mat, Souvenirs, 168, 171-2.

  60. Bôn-Mat, Souvenirs, 165-6, 171.

  61. Le Poer, A Modern Legionary, 143-4.

  62. McAleavy, Black Flags, 274.

  63. Philippe Franchini, Les guerres d'indochine (Paris: Pygmalion, 1988), Vol. 1, 104.

  64. McAleavy, Black Flags, 273.

  65. SHAT, 3H 10, 22 April 1885 Négrier report.

  66. SHAT, 3H 10, Négrier report.

  67. Maury, Mes campagnes, 193—4.

  68. Maury, Mes campagnes, 194—6.

  69. Bôn-Mat, Souvenirs, 177, 179.

  70. Le Poer, A Modern Legionary 145.

  71. See SHAT, 10H 19 for an account of the battle.

  72. Bôn-Mat, Souvenirs, 181.

  73. ALE A4, 1er régiment étranger d'infanterie, “Historique des faits,” 24 March 1885.

  74. Notes, 44.

  75. Bôn-Mat, Souvenirs, 188-9.

  76. SHAT, 10H 16, “Rapport sur l'évacuation et la retraite de Lang-son à Chu,” 14 April 1885.

  77. SHAT, 10H 16, Diguet's report.

  78. Maury, Mes campagnes, 215-17.

  79. Le Poer, A Modern Legionary, 160.

&nbs
p; 80. McAleavy, Black Flags, 264-277.

  81. The case against Herbinger's decision to retreat rested essentially upon two arguments. The first is that the Chinese had been so badly defeated before Lang Son that, according to Négrier, “... the enemy no longer wants to attack and it is useless to evacuate” (SHAT, 3H 10). As proof, Négrier cited the fact that the French retreat was not pressed by the Chinese. However, Major Schaeffer, commander of the 3rd Battalion of the Legion, reported that, although driven back, “[the enemy] had shown his great numbers and had demonstrated a great energy in the attack of the fort. It was obvious that he would begin again the next day and with fresh troops taken from his reserves.” As proof of this, the Chinese had left their flags planted on the crests of the hills (SHAT, 3H 10, Schaeffer report, 4 April 1885). And in Hanoi, General Brière de l'Isle sent a telegram of panic to Paris insisting that the Chinese were on the offensive and had a strategic plan to invest the delta (McAleavy, Black Flags, 272).

  The second argument concentrates on the ability of the garrison to withstand a second attack and/or a siege. Captain R. Carteron insisted that there was plenty of food and munitions at Lang Son (Souvenirs de la campagne du Tonkin, Paris: L. Baudoin, 1891, note 219, 293). However, the garrison had been on half-rations for some days, the artillery shells were virtually exhausted, and, according to Dick de Lonlay, the soldiers were down to seventeen bullets per man (Au Tonkin, 531). If this were true, then a second determined Chinese attack against the 3,700-man garrison would have succeeded. The least that can be said is that there was utter confusion over the state of supplies and munitions at Lang Son, that the French had encountered immense logistical problems in the campaign, and that they might have experienced extreme difficulty in extricating a besieged garrison before it succumbed.

  Herbinger's real problem appears to have been his unpopularity among colonial officers in Tonkin, for whom he was a “metropolitan” outsider and a professor to boot, men whom they contemptuously dismissed as “mandarins.” This view seems to have been typified by General Gustave Borgnis-Desbordes, who described the retreat from Lang Son as “the unorganized flight of a brigade left in the hands of a very knowledgeable man, an ex-professor of the école de guerre, certainly intelligent, with a laudable theoretical knowledge of his profession, but absolutely losing his head on the spot in practical war conditions which are not books.... When General Brière [de l'Isle] told me on the evening of the 28th that the brigade was retreating under the command of Colonel Herbinger ... an ex-professor at the école de guerre, I told him: Then we're buggered,’ and I was right.” (Marcel Blanchard, “La correspondance de Félix Faure touchant les affaires coloniales, 1882-98.” Revue d'histoire des colonies françaises, vol. 42, no. 147 [1955], 159.)