On March 10, 1831, French King Louis-Philippe signed an ordinance authorizing the enlistment of foreign soldiers both overseas and inside France itself for service in a regiment led by regular French army officers. Nearly 200-years later this group, known in French as the Legion etrangere, is renowned around the world as the French Foreign Legion
The French Foreign Legion
With its mottos including Legio Irus Actica (The Legion is our Strength) and Legio Patria Nostra (The Legion is our Fatherland) the French Foreign Legion has been home to lost souls and adventurers across three centuries. These men included a Danish Prince who walked away from his country for a shot at commanding a platoon of legionaries, a British soldier turned author, American composer Cole Porter and the infamous poet Alan Seeger who found his ‘Rendezvous with Death at some disputed barricade’. These men fought for honor and duty to themselves if not for France across five continents. On a few occasions, they even had to take sides against their own brother units.
The Author
Dutch based author, historian and illustrator Jean-Denis Gilbert Georges Lepage has spent several years producing well-researched volumes of military history. He is the previous author of Castles and Fortified Cities of Medieval Europe, Medieval Armies and Weapons in Western Europe and The Fortifications of Paris; all of which have been well received in military circles.
A Review of The French Foreign Legion: An Illustrated History
When reviewing JGG Lepage’s volume about the French Foreign Legion one is struck by how simply correct the title of the book is. The work is 245 pages with more than 200 illustrations filling its pages. The illustrations, with the exception of only two photographs, were produced expertly by Lepage and show the dozens of period Legion uniforms, scores of weapons systems, flags, heroic figures and maps of battles and wars that have been a part of the unit’s history over the centuries. If you want to know what the fashionable legionnaire was wearing in Dahomey in 1892, or a picture of the standard rifle used at Kabylia in 1857, or a map of the positions at Bir Hakeim, then this this is your book.
Complementing the illustrations is a detail of each phase of legion history campaign by campaign. It is refreshing to find in an English language volume details of little known colonial wars and battles. For instance company sized actions of the 1REC in Syria during the 1925 Druze uprising are covered with the same attention to detail as large regimental engagements in Indochina in 1954.
Over all Mr. Lepage has developed an extensive volume of reference in a single work that ably details the famous organization as whole, white kepis and all.
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