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The main reason the Legion exists was simple, to get rid of them. Or rather, put them to work outside France so they would not mess things up again. But to do so in a way that both served Paris’ global goals, and provided a route, albeit a very dangerous one, for them to become French citizens.
It was a political solution.
This, of course, needs some context.
In 1830, Louis-Philippe replaced King Charles X, marking the end of the Bourbon monarchy (this end is better known as the July Revolution). That was the simple part because the revolution by Parisian radicals did that thing that revolutions tend to do: draw other like-minded, or lost, or seeking, people to the cause.
During and after the July revolution, many radicals moved into France. There were also many Napoleon-era military men now without work, and there was that common problem of ruling a society after a revolution, the need for control over the uncontrollable.
French Foreign Legion, an elite military force originally consisting of foreign volunteers in the pay of France but now comprising volunteer soldiers from any nation, including France, for service in France and abroad.
-Britannica
That presented Louis-Philippe with a unique problem for which he found a rather brilliant solution. He had come to the throne by their work, but now he would have to deal with them-a great many leaders would have gone on a genocidal purge, he chose something much slower, less obvious, but also balanced in a diabolical way.
What held him back (for less than a year) was the fact that foreigners were no longer allowed to join the French military, but this was a guy for his time, who knew laws and policies are made by humans and can be circumvented. What’s more, he had the perfect far-off war for the military, the conquest of Algeria-I am trying to answer this as a historian, not an African still living in a world destroyed by such conquests and the resultant colonialism and exploitation.
The conquest had begun under his predecessor, but it was unpopular in France. Which gave his main problem the perfect solution.
So here’s what he did.
On March 9, 1831, he created the légion étrangère. He did it in 8 articles, defining everything about this legion (and even cleverly contradicting itself), “from its terms of service to the color of the Legionnaire uniform.
The contradiction suggested in the paragraph above is about articles six and seven. While six said potential Legionnaires had to have several documents, including “a certificate from a military authority attesting to a soldiers ability to deliver good service”, seven allowed the Legion’s recruiting officers to decide who joined and who didn’t.
That meant, if you were hanging around Paris in 1831 with no home, no job, or on the run for your life, or even just lost, all you needed to do was convince the recruiting officers. If you were French, all you might need to do is fake an accent. If you were a foreigner, half the work was already done.
…and then they sent you to Algeria.
Well, not immediately after those 8 articles, because there were many things to deal with first, although some battalions of the Legion were deployed almost immediately.
The French Foreign Legion was originally designed as a single regiment of seven battalions. To keep things simple, each battalion’s members were of the same nationality, linguistic group, or the closest to your identity they could find
Also by law, they could not fight in mainland France (still can’t) unless in the event of a national invasion. Once they completed a set number of years of service, or immediately upon being wounded, they became fully fledged French citizens.
From a simple complication, Louis-Philipe and his policymakers had both found a new way to mint loyal Frenchmen, but also created a form of employment, albeit brutal, a lethal global fighting force more driven than most on the battlefield, and a distance between its citizens and the brutal nature of colonial ambitions.
So yes, the French Foreign Legion was a political solution to a great many problems in France at that time. The conquest of Algeria just happened to be happening at the same time (the Legion was also sent to Spain just 4 short years later, to help Queen Isabella II), and be unpopular among the French themselves, which made it the perfect place to place all these…what’s the word…undesirables…to just run wild.
To prove this point, the Legion was HQ’d in Algeria (from 1831* to 1962, when Algerian revolutionaries decided, rightly, to boot them out). By this time, they had fought in many wars, actually become recognized as a reputable fighting force (thanks to World War I), and had several charismatic, visionary leaders.
But the main reason the French Legion was created was simple and direct: to remove them from France.
Now, to be clear, Louis-Philippe’s solution was not new at all, but it worked better than it ever has anywhere else. In the Napoleonic Wars just a decade and a half prior, the British had King’s German Legion (or British German Legion), which is self-explanatory. Just Germans fighting for the (King of) Britain; and the Portuguese Legion. That these last two examples happened in the early 19th Century, when Louis-Philippe (later though) decided to make them a fully-fledged fighting force, tells you a lot about Europe at that time.
Last modified: December 21, 2024
