Many of them, of course, have no tale worth telling, and among these
are the deserters from other armies. If we include the Alsatians and
Lorrainers who join to avoid service under the hated German flag, they
form a very big class indeed. Nearly every year more than a thousand
men of the annexed provinces and more than a thousand Germans flocked
to the French standard, with the result that the Legion has always
been disliked and slandered by Germans. We have before us seven
closely-printed pages forming a list of books and pamphlets written
by German writers, who, filled with Pan-Germanist hatred and inspired
by the virulent libels of anonymous scribes, have endeavoured for the
past twenty years to throw mud at a military organization into which so
many of their countrymen escaped. This prompts new thought. If German
soldiers are so glad to join a body in which life is "a veritable hell
upon earth," where men "never taste meat, but only bread and rice,"
where they "sleep on the bare ground," where "noses, ears, and fingers
are cut off for the slightest fault," where they are "buried in the
sand to the waist with an iron cage over them filled with hungry
rats"--the last idea was stolen by the German slanderers from Octave
Mirbeau's "Jardin des Supplices"--what must their life in their own
army be like?
As a matter of fact, many Germans who have served in the Legion have
had, on their return home, nothing but good to say about it, and have
become voluntary recruiting agents for France, hence an increased
bitterness on the part of the Huns. A few years ago deserters from the
German army became so numerous that a society was formed at Munich,
bearing the name "The German Protection Society Against the Foreign
Legion." Several times men were arrested for trying to persuade their
comrades to join the Legion, but they had to be released, as it was
found that they were pure-born Teutons.
And now let us apply the supreme test and look into the fighting
record of the legionaries. As military experts are agreed that they
are among the finest fighters in the world. Innumerable instances of
their stubbornness can be given, and it is the quality which has made
them, time after time, invaluable as a "stiffening" whenever it has
been considered necessary to draft a number of soldiers of the Legion
into a regiment of less experienced troops. "The most pusillanimous of
them," said an old French officer, who had seen much service in Africa,
to us, "will hold out to the death when side by side with a legionary
and inspired by his superb courage."
One of the feats of the Foreign Legion was the taking of Son-Tay on
December 16th, 1883, a square brick _citadelle_ protected by a hundred
cannon, a moat five yards wide, and hedges of bamboo, and defended
by twenty-five thousand men--ten thousand Chinese regulars, ten
thousand Black Flags, and five thousand Annamites. As an example of
pure bravery, look at the thirty-six days' siege of Tuyen-Quan, which
in 1885 was held by six hundred legionaries against twenty thousand
Chinese. Few celebrated sieges have attained and none surpassed in
horror what took place there. On the occasion of the Camerone affair,
in Mexico, sixty-five legionaries, without food or shelter, in an open
court and under a tropical sun, held in check for more than ten hours
two thousand enemies, three hundred of whom they killed. The word
"Camerone" is embroidered on the flag of the Foreign Legion, and if
you go to the Invalides you will see on one of the walls, in letters
of gold, the names of the three officers who directed that handful of
heroes, with the date of the fight: "Lieutenant Vilain, Sub-Lieutenant
Mandet, and Captain Danjou; April 30th, 1863."