The Foreign Legion helped save France for the people in the Revolution. They shared in the glory and pomp of Napoleon’s dazzling career. They marched and suffered through the retreat from Moscow. Napoleon, on his return from Elba, created eight Regiments of the Foreign Legion, who shared the fate of the world’s greatest soldier at Waterloo.
After Napoleon’s downfall Louis XVIII created the Royal Foreign Legion which later became merged into the 86th Regiment of the Line.
May 9th, 1831, the French Chamber of Deputies decreed the Foreign Legion should not be employed on the soil of France, so the Regiment was sent to Africa, with headquarters at Sidi-bel-Abee’s, Algeria.
In 1842 Patrick MacMahon, a descendant of Irish kings, was lieutenant colonel of the Foreign Legion. Later, during the Crimean War, MacMahon’s troops were assigned the task of capturing the Malikoff. After hours of hand-to-hand, sanguinary fighting, to beat off the Russian counter-attacks, the French commander, Marshal Pellisser, believing the fortress was mined, sent MacMahon orders to retire. The old Legionnaire replied,—“I will hold my ground, dead or alive.” He held. The evacuation of Sebastopol followed. In 1859, he defeated the Austrians at Magenta. He was given the title of Duke of Magenta, and rewarded with the baton of a Marshal of France.
In 1854, Bazaine, who enlisted as a private soldier in the 37th Regiment of the Line, and died a Marshal of France, was Colonel of the Foreign Legion. He led them to Milianah, Kabylia and Morocco.
They participated in the Mexican War, in 1861, and in the Franco-German War of 1870, after the fall of Sedan, and the capture of Napoleon III, under the Republic; they served with General Garibaldi, “The Liberator of Italy.” Three brigades of the Foreign Legion, chiefly Irishmen, Spaniards, Italians and Franc-Tireurs, fought a bitter partisan warfare against overwhelming odds in eastern France and the Vosges, where, rather than surrender to the invader, many crossed the frontier into Switzerland.
At Casablanca, Africa, in 1908, a dispute about a German, enlisted in the Foreign Legion, almost precipitated war between Germany and France. The Kaiser rattled the saber, demanding an apology from France; but the response of M. Clemenceau, who stood firm, was so direct and spirited that Germany did not then insist. The day had not arrived. In the same town, seven years later, January 28, 1915, a German spy, Karl Fricke, after failing to provoke a holy war among the Mohammedans, relying on his personal friendship with his master, the Kaiser, laughed when the French commander told him he would be shot in an hour. “You French are good jokers,” he said, and asked for breakfast. Half an hour later, when told to get ready for execution, he protested. “You are carrying the thing too far, you forget who I am.” The officer responded,—“On the contrary, we know who you are; we remember quite well—only too well.”
In 1913 Lieut. Von Forstner of the 91st German Regiment used abusive language and insulted the French flag, while warning the Alsatian conscripts against listening to French agents, who the Germans claimed were inducing men to join the Foreign Legion.
On Nov. 29, 1913, at Severne near the Rhine-Marne Canal, the civilians assembled in protest. The soldiers charged the crowd, arrested the Mayor, two judges, and a dozen other prominent citizens; who in response to the universal demand of the population were later released,—while the officers responsible for the outrage were court-martialed and acquitted.
A short time afterward Lieut. Von Forstner had a dispute with a lame shoemaker and cut him down with his sword.