25 The Reffye mitrailleuse was one of the great French disappointments of 1870, due to a lack of trained personnel and a misunderstanding of its tactical potential; in street-fighting, however, it could be devastating. Mounted on horse-drawn artillery carriages, mitrailleuses were bronze jacketed ‘Gatling’-type guns with 16 to 30 clustered barrels in 11mm or 13mm calibre. Cartridges were pre-loaded into a pierced metal plate that slid into grooves in the opened breechblock. Turning a left-hand crank handle closed and cocked the breech, and turning another on the right fired the barrels, at a rate depending on the speed of cranking. The practical rate of fire was about 125rpm, the practical range against area targets about 1,400 – 1,800 yards
26 Today, Avenue Charles de Gaulle
27 Patry, p.233
28 During the Prussian siege the National Guard had manned 9 artillery batteries. It seems unlikely that the Paris garrison had ever received stocks of the new percussion-fuzed shells, available only from Oct 1870. The Federal gunners in 1871 were probably limited to the older time-fuzed shells, which required more skill to use effectively, and had no fuze-settings for targets closer than 1,350 yds. Fuze-settings for shrapnel air-bursts were more flexible, so the Porte des Ternes battery 1,000yds from the Legion positions was also dangerous; but shrapnel was in short supply – 80 per cent of ammunition was common shell. (Stephen Shann and Louis Delperier, French Army 1870 – 71 (2): Republican Troops, Men-at-Arms 237; Oxford, Osprey, 1991)
29 Horne, pp.320 – 21
30 Grisot and Colomb, p.360
31 Horne, pp.325 – 6; Tombs, p.162
32 Horne pp.329 – 30, 334 – 9, 343 – 6
33 Tombs, p.129
34 ibid, pp.149 – 50
35 ibid, p.151
36 Montaudon, p.377 – 9
37 Horne pp.378 – 98; Montaudon, p.377; Grisot and Colomb, p.361
38 Montaudon, pp.389 – 90
39 Today, Place de Stalingrad
40 Montaudon, pp.397 – 8; Grisot and Colomb, p.362; 1871 street map, Éditions du Cadratin. The Rotunda rond-point (today’s Place de Stalingrad) should not be confused with the more southerly rond-point (today’s Place du Colonel Fabien, at the junction of Rue Louis Blanc and Boulevard de la Villette).
41 Porch, Foreign Legion, p.168
42 Montaudon, p.399; the ends of Faubourg Saint Martin, Boulevard de La Villette and Rue Puebla.
43 Tombs, p.159; Horne, pp.409 – 10
44 Montaudon, p.447
45 ibid, p.405. Today, the northern part of the old Rue de Puebla is Boulevard de La Villette, the southern part Avenue Simon Bolivar.
46 Tombs, p.165 – 7
47 Montaudon, p.406
48 ibid, p.408. Grisot (p.363) claims that his V/RE reached the summit first; and that Legion losses for the whole day were only 4 killed and 12 wounded, of whom 2 died later at the barricade in Place des Fêtes. Rumour would later claim that as many as 600 – 800 Federals were either killed in action or were executed on the Buttes, but such claims are beyond confirmation.
49 Montaudon, p.409; Grisot and Colomb, pp.363 – 4; Tombs, p.167
50 Tombs, p.161
51 Montaudon, p.411; Tombs, pp.159 – 61
52 Serman and Bertau, p.496. Total RE casualties for April – May are not listed by Montaudon, Grisot and Colomb, or any of the main secondary sources such as Garros; the Livre d‘Or de la Légion Étrangère of 1931 chose to ‘pass over this so-sad episode in silence’ (p.130). To judge by those of other regiments, we might guess that during Bloody Week itself Legion casualties amounted to a dozen or two killed and 50 to 60 wounded, in addition to the many more suffered earlier in Neuilly.
53 Porch, Foreign Legion, p.168; Horne, p.418. The number killed has been hotly disputed, between unconvincing extremes, but a widely accepted estimate is around 20,000.
54 Morel, p.51; Grisot and Colomb, p.365. It seems doubtful that all the French and Breton conscripts or the foreign duration-only volunteers were discharged before the regiment sailed; there was still a war going on in Algeria – see Ch 2. Grisot and Colomb mention Frenchmen and duration-only volunteers being discharged only in Dec 1871, when the Legion was reduced by a total of 1,200 men.
1. The Tools of Empire
1 Attributed to Gen de Négrier by the Tonkin veteran Frederic Martyn (p.286)
2 Porch, Sahara, pp.181 – 97
3 Reforms of 1889 – 90 gave the Inf de Marine 12 conventional 12-coy rgts; the 1st-4th in the French ports were termed ‘transit rgts’ or ‘amphi-garnisons ’, and were called upon first to provide men for temporary expeditionary forces. (Clayton, pp.312 – 13)
4 In 1900, provision was made for 18 white 3-bn rgts (RICs), of which 12 were to be stationed at any one time in France, and 6 plus some extras in the colonies, by rotation. At that date 26,000 of the 41,000 marsouins were stationed overseas. Additionally the non-European Colonial units, totalling c.30,000 men, were reorganized as the 1st – 3rd Rgts of Senegalese, 1st-4th Tonkinese and 1st Annamese, and 1st and 2nd Malagasy Skirmishers. (Clayton, pp.313 – 17)
5 Clayton, pp.211 – 12. For the sake of brevity the Bats d’Af are usually described as penal units. In fact their purpose was not punishment, as in the Army’s compagnies disciplinaires, but segregation; the BILAs were a ‘corps d’épreuve’ – ‘redemptive’ combat units. Most of the rank and file were civilian petty criminals (often pimps) who had served prison sentences of not more than three months, or soldiers who had done time in military prisons and still had a period of service to fulfil. Others were new military offenders transferred from their original regiments to the BILAs – e.g. in the 1870s, men suspected of Communard sympathies, or in the early 1900s ringleaders in the several mutinies that broke out on French soil (though surprisingly, the Bats d’Af did include a few genuine volunteers). The term ‘penal’ does, however, correctly convey their character; a posting to these units was not the first choice of an officer, and the calibre of the NCOs selected for them may be imagined.
6 Richard Brzezinski, ‘British Mercenaries in the Baltic 1560 – 1683’, in Military Illustrated Past & Present, No.4, Dec 1986/Jan 1987.
7 René Chartrand, Emigré and Foreign Troops in British Service (1) 1793 – 1802 and (2) 1803 – 1815; Men-at-Arms 328 and 335 (Oxford; Osprey, 1999 and 2000)
8 Terry Hooker and Ron Poulter, The Armies of Bolivar and San Martin, Men-at-Arms 232 (Oxford; Osprey, 1991)
9 The most thorough English-language study of the Legion’s Mexican campaign, and of the evolution of the ‘Camerone legend’, is that by the Canadian historian Colin Rickards – see Bibliography.
10 Rickards, passim; Sergent, RHdA, 1981/1, pp.73 – 89. The names of Danjou, Vilain and Maudet were only added to the rolls of honour on the walls of Les Invalides – in the Galerie de l’Orient – on 6 Aug 1949.
2. ‘France Overseas’
1 Epigraphs from Ageron, p.45, and Crealock/ Villot, p.1168
2 Silbermann, p.19
3 At Bône in 1834, 1,100 out of a French garrison of 1,500 died of malaria (or typhus, or cholera, or all three – misdiagnosis was commonplace). During a siege of Miliana in 1841, 676 soldiers died out of 1,200, including 542 of the 750 men of the Foreign Legion’s 4th Bn. (Cohen, JAH, Vol 24, 1983)
4 Ageron, pp.28 – 9
5 ibid, p.35
6 ibid, p.45. Lucien Anatole Prévost-Paradol (1829 – 70), author of La France Nouvelle (1868) and editor of Journal des Debats.
7 Ageron, p.41
8 The 1845 Treaty of Lalla-Marnia with the Sultan of Morocco had dismissed the south as an uninhabitable wilderness where ‘delimitation would be superfluous’. (Dunn, Resistance, p.139)
9 Bernard, p.145
10 Dunn, Resistance, p.139; Ageron, pp.36 – 7; Bernard, p.147 – 9; Livre d‘Or, p.89
11 Grisot and Colomb, p.367. The continued willingness of Germans to enlist is a reminder of the unpopularity of Prussia in many south German states.
12 Grisot and Colomb, p.367
13 Serman and Berta
ud, pp.499 – 500
14 Clayton, p.273
15 Marabout or murabit – an inspirational Muslim holy man, in Western terms roughly a ‘living saint’.
16 Ageron, pp.50 – 52; the figure of 1,000 dead is from Serman and Bertaud, pp.501 – 2. Montagnon (L’Age d’Or, p.29) puts total French military and civilian dead as high as 2,700.
17 Grisot and Colomb, pp.368 – 70
18 The cacolet was an iron chair frame with uprights on one side curving up to hook over a pack-saddle. Two were slung on each mule; since the cacolet weighed 15lb and the pack-saddle 70lb, the total load with two men was close to the limit for a mule.
19 Crealock/Villot, passim
20 Grisot and Colomb, p.373; Crealock/Villot, passim
21 From the French bouche-de-feu, ‘fire-mouth’, or possibly bouche-de-fer, ‘iron-mouth’.
22 Grisot and Colomb, pp.372 – 5
23 Ageron, pp.40, 56
24 Ralston, pp.67 – 81
25 ibid, pp.32 – 3; Serman and Bertaud pp.507, 521 – 2. The Marseillaise was restored as the national anthem only in Feb 1879, just a month after the Republic got its capital ‘R’ back. Bastille Day, 14 July, only became the national holiday in July 1880 – the same month that an amnesty was declared for imprisoned Communards, many of whom had been sent to the penal colony on New Caledonia in the Pacific. (Serman and Bertaud, pp.527 – 30)
26 Serman and Bertaud, p.506. Serving officers could sit as deputies until Nov 1875, and could stand for 30 reserved seats in the Senate until Dec 1884; thereafter only a few of the most distinguished were retained, for their valued technical advice. (Ralston, p.66)
27 Choisel, RHdA, 1981/2
28 A lottery still decided if men were called up immediately for five years or for only one year. The size of each annual age group was still too expensive for the Army to digest at once, and budgetary constraints would sometimes reduce the actual term of service even of the ‘first portion’ to less than four years, broken by long periods of leave. (Choisel, RHdA, 1981/2; Serman and Bertaud, p.509 – 10)
29 Ralston, p.81
30 ibid, pp.63 – 4; Serman and Bertaud, pp.523 – 4. Regimental chaplains were introduced from May 1874, but their activities would be steadily restricted after 1880.
31 Serman and Bertaud, p.512; Morel, p.52; Grisot and Colomb, p.379. Metropolitan Line coys were to have 125 men in peacetime and 250 in wartime, giving a rgt a mobilized strength of 4,000. Importantly, however, for lack of funding it would take the Line until 1891 to actually achieve the fourth bns (Serman and Bertaud, p.563), while the Legion started from that strength. In 1875 the Legion had just over 3,000 men, giving its 4 bns around 750, so a rifle coy an average of 180 men.
32 The other categories of Africa Army troops were dispersed, one regiment of each to each of the three provinces; the other main garrisons in the Oranais were 2e Zouaves and 1er Bat d’Af (Oran), 2e Tirailleurs Algériens (Mostaganem), 2e Spahis (Sidi bel Abbès) and 2e Chasseurs d’Afrique (Tlemcen).
33 Porch, Foreign Legion, p.171. Young men who stayed in the occupied provinces were liable for conscription into the German Army.
34 Morel, p.52; Grisot and Colomb, p.376. By Jan 1872 the bns were stationed at Géryville, Sfissifa & Khreneg Azir (I/RE); Sidi bel Abbès, Boukhanefis and Magenta (II/RE); Mascara (III/RE and rgt HQ); and Saida and Frenda (IV/RE).
35 Grisot and Colomb, p.383
36 Charles Milassin of 4e REI recalled that even in the 1930s men who could not contribute water to the evening cook-pot were handed a raw onion with two red matches stuck in it, and invited to make their own arrangements. (Correspondence with author – see Epilogue)
37 Silberrnann, pp.18, 24 – 5; Manington, pp.40 – 42; Martyn, pp.250 – 51
38 A penal Bat d’Af – uniformed almost identically – might replace the Legion bn; but after the mid-1870s the Zouaves, once an elite of volunteers, were seldom employed in the South. Now composed of very short-term colon conscripts, they were no more valuable than Metropolitan infantry. After 1875 the Chasseurs d’Afrique also ceased to be all-volunteer units recruited partly in France and partly among French colons, and were conscripted from settlers of all backgrounds; however, these Africa Light Horse rgts preserved both the old practice of including a minority of Arab volunteers, and something of their pre-1870 high style. (Clayton, pp.218 – 19)
39 To underline the importance of sticking together, the French made much of the threat of death by torture, and there are anecdotal accounts of the grim confirmation provided by charred limbs in the ashes of a fire. However, while French casualties were routinely mutilated with knives, it often took more skill than soldiers possessed to tell whether the shocking injuries to a corpse had been inflicted before or after death.
40 Crealock/Villot, passim
41 The withdrawal of 60 per cent of the Tunisian expeditionary corps proved highly premature. In July – Oct 1881 successive French reinforcements had to be sent, causing the fall of the Ferry government. Although the campaign was declared over when the Convention of Marsa formalized a French protectorate in June 1883, counter-insurgency operations continued in the south until 1887. (Serman and Bertaud, pp.634 – 7)
42 A zaouia might loosely be compared to an abbey – simultaneously a centre of pilgrimage, and the college and headquarters of a sufi religious brotherhood.
43 Silbermann, p.19
44 A ‘large guard’ was a detached company, placed by day about 1,000yds out from each face of the square camp, providing four-man sentry outposts 100yds further out; at nightfall the grands-gardes were called in to 200yds, with their sentries 30yds beyond.
45 Dunn, Resistance, pp.140 – 43; Grisot and Colomb, pp.384 – 6; Livre d‘Or, p.90; Porch, Foreign Legion, pp.315 – 16. The elusive Bou Amama would become something of a fixation for the French; although he never made another significant attack he would remain a shadowy presence on the border for 20 years, his whereabouts and intentions the subject of lively rumour.
46 Porch, Foreign Legion, p.316 – 17; Grisot and Colomb, p.392
47 Livre d‘Or, p.315. Since the mid-1870s French infantry had been issued with the 11mm M1874 Gras, and a pair of semi-rigid ‘coffin’ belt pouches for its new ammunition. The Gras was a development of the Chassepot that took a brass cartridge instead of the ‘self-consuming’ type. (Vuillemin, pp.31 – 42)
48 Clayton, p.247; Livre d‘Or, p.93; Gugliotta and Jauffret, RHdA, 1981/1 and /2
49 Mules are the offspring of donkey sires and horse dams. They can be of any size from a pony to a sizeable horse – 13 or 14 hands was usual for general pack-work, 14 – 15hh for mountain artillery pack-guns, and 15 – 16hh for riding and wagon-teams. Although sterile, the jacks are not impotent, and are usually gelded.
50 Gugliotta and Jauffet, RHdA, 1981/1
51 Porch, Foreign Legion, pp.312 – 17; Gandini, pp.25 – 6
52 His bride, in 1880, had been Mlle Marie-Isabelle de Juchault de la Moricière.
53 The French term peloton is a ‘false friend’ to English readers. In a cavalry context it means a troop – one-quarter of a squadron – with 30 – 40 men. However, in an infantry and mounted infantry context it means a half-company of c.100 men, in two large platoons (sections) of 50, each divided into two large squads (groupes) of 25. These English equivalent terms are used throughout this book.
54 Bernard, p.37; Képi Blanc, No.83
55 The Beni Gil Arabs were a nomadic tribe of 15,000 – 20,000 souls living almost entirely from their sheep, which they moved over great distances on the Moroccan and Algerian high plains following the seasonal grazing. A rough proportion of one armed man for every five members of a tribe – a ‘tent’ – is plausible. (Dunn, Resistance, p.38)
56 The great Napoleonic surgeon Baron Larrey recalled of the Egyptian campaign that Arab musket balls were loaded without clipping off the casting stalk, and sometimes with two balls still linked by this into a miniature bar-shot. (Crumplin, pp.43, 52) Mr Crumplin’s important study of Napol
eonic military surgery also gives examples of wounds inflicted by bladed weapons.
57 KB, No.83; Livre d‘Or, p.93; Turnbull, pp.72 – 3; Gugliotta and Jauffret, RHdA, 1981/1
3. La Mission Civilisatrice and the Straw Hat Trade
1 The first epigraph is from Prof Jacques Marseille in L’Age d’Or, pp.96 – 102. The quotation from Galliéni’s letter is recorded in a number of French and English sources.
2 What follows is based partly upon an anonymous essay published as ‘The Colonial Policy of France’ in The Edinburgh Review, Apr 1893 (Pallas Armata r/p); this is a digest of various French sources, particularly Léon Deschamps, Histoire de la Question Coloniale en France (Paris, 1891), and Jules Ferry, Le Tonkin et la Mère Patrie (Paris, 1890). I also owe a debt to Robert and Isabelle Tombs, That Sweet Enemy (London; Heinemann, 2006), an invaluable and hugely entertaining examination of Franco-British relations over 300 years.
3 As late as 1788 France had twice Britain’s gross national product, and its royal revenues were perhaps 20 per cent higher (the 80 per cent disparity being due to France’s inefficient and inequitable taxation); but during the eighteenth century British governments were willing to invest a far higher proportion in wars against France – on occasion, as much as five times higher. Their ability to do so was a direct result of the constitutional settlement that had largely maintained domestic stability and commercial freedom since 1689. Britain’s public finances were relatively efficient and honest, had no difficulty in raising almost limitless foreign credit; France’s, conspicuously, were not. (Tombs and Tombs, Ch 3 passim)
4 In 1851 France retained possession of Martinique and Guadeloupe in the Caribbean; the convict settlement of Guyane on the NE coast of South America; trading posts in Senegal, W. Africa; and the islands of Réunion, Mayotte and Nossi Bé in the Indian Ocean.
5 Raoul Girardet, in L’Age d’Or, pp.106 – 34
6 Girardet, op cit; Ageron, p.41
7 Prof Jean Martin, in L’Age d’Or, pp.18 – 27
8 Tombs and Tombs, p.407
Our Friends Beneath the Sands Page 88