The French Foreign Legion before World War I
The “classical” mercenary Legionnaires fought alongside wartime volunteers who desired to fight for France, but often were rather unhappy to have to do so in the ranks of the infamous Foreign Legion.
After its foundation in 1831, the Foreign Legion fought in both European and colonial wars. The Legion’s main task was to serve French imperialism with deployment in colonial conquests and counter-insurgency in Africa, Mexico, Indochina, and the Middle East. In the late 19th century, the Legion became part of France’s North African “Armée d’Afrique”. It included men from all over Europe who had signed renewable five-year contracts. The overwhelming majority of applicants were motivated by poverty and unemployment. Douglas Porch has correctly argued that the history of the Legion is “also a history of a portion of the European working class in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, one which a Marxist historian might claim had slipped through the fingers of the ‘capitalist revolution’.” The second largest group of Legionnaires were political refugees. Perceptions of the Legion have always been ambivalent. Its image as an alleged reservoir of criminals and runaways has been countered by notions of the romantic legionnaire.