In the Foreign Legion

by Erwin Rosen

The fact that the Foreign Legion's band is the best in the French army, and that it came back covered with glory every time it went to Paris to give concerts, is another proof of the many-sidedness of the Legion's talents. Many an artist who once played in the orchestra of one of the world's famous theatres afterwards carried the Legion's trumpets on his heavy-laden haversack.

I hardly need to emphasise the fact that these légionnaires, who, by virtue of their professions and social standing, belonged to a different class of society, always represented the exceptions, and that the majority of the men in the Legion were very simple fellows, whose past had nothing at all interesting about it. It is always the exceptions that one notices. An editor of the Temps, who visited Sidi-bel-Abbès and struck up a chance conversation with me, said in astonishment:

"I was speaking just now to a professor of Greek, and now you're a journalist. Is the Legion then a collection of ruined talents?"

In between the paintings in the Salle d'honneur there stand the Legion's memorial tablets, with the names of the battles in which the Legion took part written on them: forty-eight great battles, fought in all corners of the earth, from Indo-China in the East to Mexico in the Far West. The most disastrous fight in the annals of the regiment was that of Camaron, in Mexico, on April 30, 1863.

A creepy souvenir of this fight lies on a little table in the Salle d'honneur—an embalmed human hand. It is the hand of Captain Danjou, who was in command of a detachment of sixty men from the third company of the Legion who were killed to a man at Camaron. Over two thousand Mexican irregulars set upon the detachment in the neighbourhood of the village of Camaron. The detachment fought its way through the hostile cavalry to a farmhouse, entrenched itself there, and held out for a whole day against the overwhelming odds. Five times were they called upon to surrender, and five times was the answer—"Merde!"

When the Mexicans at last took the house by storm, they found heaped up before the door a pile of dead. The few survivors were badly wounded. A few hours later relief came. But the French troops only found a heap of dead. Beside the captain's body lay his severed hand.

Weapons from all countries adorned the walls of the Salle d'honneur. Straight Mexican swords and curved Arabian scimitars of pliant steel hung side by side; beside poisoned arrows from Madagascar there were old-fashioned bayonets which had done all sorts of bloody work in the Legion's service. In the Salle d'honneur there are souvenirs of almost a century of battles.

The Foreign Legion was founded in the year 1831 under the name of "The African Auxiliaries."

The continual fighting in Algeria used to decimate the French troops posted there. In the reign of King Louis Philippe the idea was started of reviving the mediæval institution of mercenaries, and of raising troops for service in Africa composed entirely of foreign adventurers. A Belgian adventurer who called himself Baron de Boëgard, with no particular authority, but still without active opposition on the part of the King's generals, collected around him a band composed of the doubtful characters of all nations. He assumed the title of lieutenant-general, and finally succeeded in persuading the military authorities that his fellows would make capital stuff for service in Algeria. About 4000 men took the oath of allegiance on the French colours in Marseilles and embarked for Africa. The French troops there turned up their noses at these tattered soldiers, and the hostile Arabs called them mockingly "the Bedouins from France,"[ [3] because they were so poor and ragged. The new-comers, however, plundered with such voracity as to astonish even the French troops, who were anything but scrupulous, and they were capital fighters into the bargain. A royal edict, dated March 10, 1831, sanctioned their incorporation in a Foreign Legion of their own under the name of the Legion Etrangère, on the pattern of the Légion d'Hohenlohe, which fought at the time of the Restoration. The regiment consisted of seven battalions, divided according to the different nationalities of the men:

1st, 2nd, and 3rd battalions		Swiss and Germans.
4th battalion		Spaniards.
5th battalion		Italians.
6th battalion		Belgians and Dutchmen.
7th battalion		Poles.