A HUNDRED THOUSAND HEROES--A HUNDRED THOUSAND VICTIMS
The hall of honour : A collection of ruined talents : The battle of
Camaron : A skeleton outline of the Legion's history : A hundred
thousand victims : A psychological puzzle : True heroes : How they are
rewarded : The chances of promotion : The pension system of the Foreign
Legion
Close by the prison, parted from the little square of sand and gravel,
which formed the prisoners' exercise-ground, by a low brick wall, there
stands the Legion's hall of honour.
A tiny little door is built into the wall and bears the inscription
"Salle d'honneur." Day and night there stands a sentry with fixed
bayonet before the regiment's holy of holies. For the soldiers of the
Legion it is forbidden ground, and the officers only gather there on
festive occasions.
Late one evening I stole through the little gate. The sentry on duty
was a man of my own company, whom I bribed with a packet of cigarettes
to let me through.
I found myself in a tiny garden. Fantastic figures in mosaic work
covered the ground; everywhere were dense groups of palms and laurels,
and a broad flight of steps led up to the vestibule in Moorish style.
As I entered the hall a flood of colour met my gaze. The walls of the
enormous room were covered with pictures. Flanking the entrance were
the life-size portraits of two légionnaires, the one in modern African
campaigning kit, and the other in the uniform of 1815, of the "Légion
d'Hohenlohe." On the walls were the portraits of all the regiment's
commanders and of the officers killed in battle. The names of the dead
were inscribed on a marble slab in golden letters.
I noticed with astonishment that the Foreign Legion's list of
commanding officers contained many names unmistakably German. There
were the Colonels Stoffel, de Mollenbeck, Conrad, de Hülsen, and Meyer.
And in very good company were these German soldiers of fortune: the
list showed the names of some of France's most famous soldiers and
generals. Each of them had at some time or other commanded the Foreign
Legion, each had won his first military laurels leading the regiment of
strangers: men famous indeed, the Legion's pride: MacMahon, Canrobert,
Bazain, de Négrier, Saussier....
Numerous pictures of battles represented episodes in the fights in
which the Legion had taken part, and now and again among these
paintings were real works of art. A number of these pictures come from
the brush of Captain Cousin, while the allegorical frescoes on the
ceiling are the work of an artist who wore the red breeches and blue
coat of a common soldier. The légionnaire Hablutzel--the artist who
decorated the Salle d'honneur--was a humble ranker.
In the French Army the Legion's varied talents are famous, and there
are several stories besides that of this humble artist. The history of
the Legion can tell of many such as he.
Five years ago the officers determined to build a new mess. There was
only one objection to the fulfilment of this wish: the regimental
coffers were wellnigh empty. It was the colonel's idea to seek help in
the regiment itself. In spite of the fact that the garrison at that
time consisted of only one battalion, it was found on inquiry to
contain no less than seven architects. These seven soldiers became once
more seven artists, and executed the plans for the new officers' mess.
They agreed on the style of a Tonquin pagoda. Among the Norwegians of
the regiment were several carpenters who were experts in artistic
woodwork; there were more than enough builders and masons to be found,
and the bankrupt owner of a brickfield was glad enough to return for a
time to his old profession and assume the direction of a section told
off to make bricks. In a few weeks the mess was ready--its cost was
solely that of the raw material.
The seven architects then once more shouldered their rifles.
There is another famous instance. In one of the countless fights in
Southern Algeria, a company got cut off from the main column and
suffered heavy losses in a scrap with the Arabs. The number of wounded
was very great, and nothing could be done for them, as the doctors and
bearers were with the main column. At last the captain in the thick of
the firing called out to his men:
"Are there any doctors among you?"
Three légionnaires at once stepped forward. One was a graduate of the
Sorbonne, another had gained the diploma of the University of Zurich,
and the third had attained to the rank of M.D. at a German University.
Less strange, perhaps, but just as interesting, is the fact that for
the building of a fort in the Legion three fortification experts
reported themselves from a single company: two quondam Austrian pioneer
officers, and a lieutenant from the British Royal Engineers.
General de Négrier, who loved the Legion, used to say that les
étrangers had three inestimable advantages: they were brilliant
fighters, they marched till they dropped, and--there was nothing that
they could not do. He would undertake to build an engine with his
légionnaires; from their ranks he could assemble the faculties of a
university; there were men among them who could not only fight through
a war, but they could also write its history.
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.
[3] The Arabs who had established themselves in the towns
used to despise the vagabond Bedouins.
After a short time the authorities left off separating the various
nationalities from each other and contented themselves with teaching
the foreigners the French words of command as quickly as possible.
A period of fighting now began for the Legion such as no regiment in
the world has ever experienced.
Even in its first fights in Algeria the regiment suffered heavy losses.
Then the King of France lent the Foreign Legion to the Queen Regent
Christina of Spain to fight against the Carlists. For their services in
Spain the Legion was to have been given 800,000 francs, but this sum
was never paid. On the other hand, 3500 of the 4000 légionnaires fell
in action. A bare 500 returned to Africa half starved and in rags.
New recruits joined--there has never been a lack of men ready to serve
in the Foreign Legion. Algeria was conquered after ceaseless fighting,
in which the battles of Condiat-Ati, M'Shomesh, Constantine, and
Zaatcha were only the more important fights in an endless campaign.
Even at this period of its existence the Legion grasped the fact that
its mission was not only to furnish soldiers, but also pioneers,
labourers, and city-builders. They worked hard, building town after
town, and there is to-day no city in French Northern Africa in which
the first European building was not built by légionnaires. In the
Crimean War the Legion was ordered to Russia, where, in the Battle of
the Alma, it was the first regiment to come under fire and fought with
great bravery. In General Canrobert's despatches 29 officers and men of
the Legion were mentioned for bravery in the Battles of the Alma and
Inkerman. In the siege of Sebastopol the Foreign Legion was very much
to the fore and was cordially hated by the Russians. The besieged
called them "the leather-bellies," from the great African
cartridge-pouches which they wore in front. In the Crimea their losses
were enormous, and Napoleon III. rewarded their services by
naturalising a number of the Legion's officers and men.
At that time the Legion never experienced years of peace, only months
of peace at the most, and even these were few and far between. Les
étrangers were hardly home from the Crimea when a rebellion among the
Algerian Arabs broke out, which led to the famous Arab expedition. The
mighty battle of Ischeriden brought the tribes of Beni Jenni, Beni
Raten, and the Beni Amer into subjection. The regiment had a few
hundred more to add to its list of dead and had won new honours, only,
as a real regiment of mercenaries, to be transferred to a new field of
battle. Real wandering Ahasvers were these African mercenaries. This
time it was to Italy, to Magenta, that they were ordered. Again they
came back, their numbers diminished by a thousand or more, and had to
start once more from Sidi-bel-Abbès on an expedition against the
natives in Morocco.
Thus passed the year 1860. During the next two years the Legion was
engaged in desultory fighting against the Arabs and Bedouins without,
to their great disgust, bringing off any grande affaire.
In February the Legion embarked for Mexico and witnessed the disastrous
events of the short imperial period. They made roads, working hard, and
occasionally brought off some mad exploit with the greatest bravery,
adding that day at Camaron to the Legion's roll of honours. The result
of the Mexican campaign, as far as the Legion is concerned, is best
shown by their losses: 1918 men dead and missing; 328 died of their
wounds; and 1859 met their deaths from various illnesses.
On coming back to Algeria the Legion filled up its ranks once more and
was scattered in little detachments over the province of Oran to play,
for the sake of variety, the part of settlers, digging wells, building
villages, and laying roads--till the year 1870. In the Franco-German
War the Legion first came into action at Orleans. All the German
légionnaires had, however, been left in Africa. After the conclusion of
peace the Legion helped in the putting down of the Commune, where so
much blood was shed, and made itself thoroughly hated in Paris.
As had been the case since the foundation of the Legion, fights in
Algeria began once more. The rebellion of the Kaid Si Hamze, in the
year 1871 and the years following, brought them fresh campaigns. While
de Négrier was colonel of the regiment he mounted a part of the Legion
on mules, to be able to cover greater stretches of country, a system
which has been kept up to this day, and which formed one of the first
examples of mounted infantry. Till the year 1883 the légionnaires
remained in Africa, and enjoyed a period of comparative quietude, which
only brought a few Arab rebellions and a few dozen skirmishes. Then,
however, they started off once more on their travels. The Far East,
Tonquin, was the scene of a colonial war against a brave enemy and a
murderous climate. The victories of Bac-Ninh, Hong-Hoa, Soc-Nam, and
Chu are so many days of fame for these foreign mercenaries, whose
regimental history during these fifty years will never meet its equal.
In the year 1892 we find the Legion in Dahomey fighting against King
Behanzin, in the year 1895 in Madagascar. At the present date we hear
of the regiment chiefly in Morocco.
This is merely a short sketch, a skeleton outline of the Legion's
history--one of the most notable histories that any soldiers'
chronicler can point to, the story of a band of homeless adventurers.
Their pay was always ridiculously small, their punishments barbarous,
and the discipline that they were subject to more than hard. And yet
there were always thousands of recruits willing to shed their life's
blood, who did not serve under the Legion's flag merely to earn their
living, but formed one of the best bodies of troops in the world. What
misery and misfortune must there be in Europe to bring thousands and
thousands of poor and desperate men flocking to the Legion's standard,
whose total in the eighty years of the regiment's existence must add up
to an overwhelming figure. I have been through all the French books on
the Legion to try and find the exact figure, but without success. The
exact strength of the Legion has always been kept well to the
background. The two regiments have now and then reached an enormous
strength. Beauvoir, for instance, mentions that in the year 1895 a
single company in Sidi-bel-Abbès was 4864 men strong.
He gives the nationalities of the Legion in that year as follows:
Alsatians 45 per cent.
Germans 12 "
Swiss 8 "
Belgians 7 "
Frenchmen 5 "
Spaniards 5 "
Italians 5 "
Austrians 4 "
Dutchmen 4 "
From various countries 5 "
The average strength of the two battalions varies between 8000 and
12,000 men. The percentage of deaths from illness, above all fever, is
extraordinarily high, and when to this we add the many thousands killed
in battle, and consider that desertions are very frequent, we come to
the astounding conclusion that in eighty years a good deal over a
hundred thousand men have served under the Legion's flag.
In giving this figure I make no claim to accuracy. It may be far below
the mark or again it may be a few thousands too high.
Be that as it may, a mighty army of men of all nations has served in
the Foreign Legion, working hard and suffering the most awful hardships
under an iron discipline that punishes even the most trivial offences
with the hardest of punishments. The pay has never been higher than it
is now; not enough to purchase even the trifles which a soldier needs
to clean his uniform and equipment, to say nothing about his personal
needs, be they ever so small. The assertion that these hundred thousand
men have made the French Government a present of their work and
strength during all these years, and all too often of their lives, is
no exaggeration. Even though the history of the Foreign Legion, the
history of that ever-fighting band of men, reads like a romance of
mediæval times, one is easily led to look at the matter from the French
standpoint and to make the pharisaical assertion so commonly believed
in France, that the Foreign Legion is the scum of humanity, useless
human rubbish which has been turned into useful dung for colonisation,
if one may use the expression, in the service of improvement.
The modern thinker is much more inclined to ask himself in wonderment
how it came that year after year so many men were willing to sell their
lives for a country that was not their own. These thousands have not
even had the inducement of high wages.
Here we stand before a riddle, before some mysterious force which
convinced these thousands of desperate men that the African Foreign
Legion was their last refuge. The mighty deeds of the Legion are still
more of a riddle. All these men have been clever enough to discover
sooner or later what a very poor sort of bargain they made when they
enlisted, and the Legion has always been a hotbed of seething
discontent. As it is to-day, so has it always been; the only subject of
conversation in the Legion is an endless discussion of that
all-important question: how and when to desert. The légionnaire has
enriched the French language with a variety of strange curses to give
expression to his rage at the tyranny and infamous treatment of which
he is the victim. It is really a marvel that these discontented
fellows, soldiers who were always on the eve of deserting, always
forgot their grievances when they came under fire.
One or two were perhaps men of the type which frequently occurs in the
Legion of to-day, who only enlist to meet death in a form which appeals
to their fancy, and who volunteer for one dangerous expedition after
another till they meet the bullet for which they are so eager. But
these have always been the exceptions. To the others fighting has
always been a delight.
... A detachment of men are stationed in an isolated fort. The heat of
the sun is merciless, the hard work unbearable and the monotony of duty
gets on their nerves: the whole garrison becomes restless and can only
be kept in order with the greatest difficulty. Then comes the command
to turn out: there is a prospect of soldiering in earnest: the men are
beside themselves with joy--when they have to fight they are relieved
from slavery.
This enthusiasm and passion to get at the enemy is the redeeming
feature of many a ruined life. It acts as a safety-valve: otherwise the
men could never stand the deadly monotony of their lives.
The soldiers of the Legion have never yet fought just because they had
to fight, or because their officers urged them on to it or because they
had to defend their own wretched lives. The history of the regiment can
only tell of glorious attacks, of furious charges made with a bravery
that absolutely disregards danger and death. These poor adventurers
have their own individual ideas of honour for which they are proud to
give their lives and which the only French general who ever understood
the Legion expressed in a few enthusiastic words. It was General de
Négrier who said:
Some soldiers can fight--the légionnaire can die.
That is the légionnaire's idea of honour: his own individual idea. He
will never hear the signal for retreat. I have so often heard the
murmur of discontent which runs through the ranks when the hated call
is heard at a manoeuvre. Eleven times in its history has the Legion
refused to obey when the signal for retreat was blown.
In France the performances of the Foreign Legion have always been
recognised. It is true that the recognition has taken no substantial
form. Its officers have always reaped the reward of quick promotion,
but the légionnaire himself has always remained a poor devil without
pay and without the slightest hope for the future.
* * * * *
Five centimes daily wages!
On paper the légionnaire is paid seven centimes a day. That's what
stands in the French army list. Two centimes daily are, however,
deducted for messing, so that the real wages are five centimes per
diem. After the "second congé," when he has five years' service behind
him, his wages are raised to ten centimes daily; a corporal gets twenty
centimes--a scale of pay which has perhaps a parallel in the Chinese
army, certainly nowhere else in the world.
As a set-off against this miserable payment the French books on the
subject draw attention to the chance of quick advancement. This,
however, is a trifle contradictory to the actual facts of the case. In
the Foreign Legion at present among a round three hundred officers
there is only one who is not a Frenchman, a quondam officer in the
Austrian army, who worked his way up from the ranks. Even among the
non-commissioned officers the percentage of foreigners is very small.
It can easily be understood that the colonel lays some stress on the
fact that the non-coms shall be Frenchmen: this, however, renders the
prospect of promotion for a foreigner proportionately small.
It is only now and again that a foreigner rises further than the rank
of corporal. When he is specially talented he may become a sergeant but
hardly ever reaches the rank of colour-sergeant. An exception to this
rule is made in the case of officers who have been turned out of other
armies. For these, the Foreign Legion has special regulations. They are
not asked to show any papers nor are inquiries made into the reasons
why they were originally dismissed: all that is required is a
photograph showing him in uniform. They are then let off all recruits'
work and are sent to the "peloton des élèves caporaux," the
non-commissioned officers' school, are in eight weeks corporal, and in
four months sergeant. It is, however, a great rarity when one of these
men rises any further.
Often enough one hears that the Legion's pension is a liberal one. The
Legion has a right to a pension after fifteen years of service, and
then he gets 500 francs a year. That sounds very fine. The fact,
however, remains that a man who spends fifteen years in all sorts of
climates, and who works for fifteen years with the energy required of a
légionnaire, can easily amass a small fortune. Another interesting fact
is that very few légionnaires are capable of serving fifteen years.
They die long before the time is up: either from fever, overwork, or an
enemy's bullet.... No, the Legion's pension system is a mockery.
The only sort of compensation that remains is the Cross of the Legion
of Honour and the Médaille militaire, with both of which goes a sum of
money; in the case of the Cross of the Legion of Honour a very
considerable one. These distinctions, however, are so seldom conferred
that they can hardly be taken into the question as representing a
complement to the miserable pay, or as a possibility of earning
anything other than coppers in the Legion.
The only tangible reward that those heroes, to whose deeds of honour
the Hall of Honour bears witness, have earned has been:
Five centimes a day--those glorious days included.
And what is the end of it all? The légionnaire's life in the Legion
begins with the motto, "Work without pay," and at the end of it he
stands in the street like a beggar, and does not know what in the world
to do for a living. Even in the rare cases in which the climate and the
hardships he has undergone have not ruined his constitution, and his
health is still good, he is quite helpless.
I have spoken with hundreds and thousands of these légionnaires who
have served their time as they lounged about the courtyard of the
barracks in Sidi-bel-Abbès, rejoicing that they had done with the
Foreign Legion for ever. They were dressed in a dark blue suit, which
is served out from the quartermaster's office to those who have served
their time, being made of an ugly blue stuff, which looks like blue
sacking. Of course their clothes did not fit them in the least, the
trousers being either too long or too short, and the coat looked like a
sack, for how could one expect them to take any trouble about a good
fit in the quartermaster's office. As head-gear they wore an enormous
flat cap, such as the sailors in the ports on the Mediterranean wear.
This suit, together with boots, a single pair of socks and a shirt, was
all that they possessed after five years of service.
They had also the right of travelling free of charge to any town in
France, and were given a franc a day as long as their journey lasted.
No légionnaire, however, is transported to his real home, which is
generally outside France. The majority, with grim humour, chose some
town in the far north, generally Dunkirk, in order that the journey
might be as long as possible. As a result of this the Mayor of Dunkirk
wrote and begged the French Minister of War not to send any more
légionnaires there. The authorities had not the faintest idea what to
do with them; in Dunkirk there was not even enough work for the
townsmen themselves.
A légionnaire who has served his time is thus absolutely helpless,
being stranded penniless in a totally strange town. His clothes are
such as to prevent him applying for any work but that of a labourer,
and the only papers he has to show are his certificates of dismissal
from the Foreign Legion, which are worth very little in France. There
are plenty of fine speeches made about the glorious Foreign Legion in
the French Republic, but there is a prejudice against having anything
to do with a légionnaire in the flesh there. Everywhere he is shown the
door, and the poor devil begins a terrible course of starvation.
How often have I seen these men come back again with a batch of
recruits to Sidi-bel-Abbès, and their old comrades mockingly asking
them why they were in Africa once more. It was always the same old
story: for days and weeks and even months starving and half perished
with cold they had struggled against their fate, and gone from house to
house seeking work until their clothes were mere rags and their boots
were worn out. Finally, they had despaired of ever finding work, and
had begun to coquet with the thought that in the Legion they had at
least had enough to eat, with the result that in a few days they had
sought out the nearest recruiting-office, and had bound themselves for
a further five years of slavery.
This after five long years of work--the gratitude of France.