The French Foreign Legion is created by…
March 1831 CE
Recruits include soldiers from the recently disbanded Swiss and German foreign regiments of the Bourbon monarchy.
The Royal Ordinance for the establishment of the new regiment specifies that the foreigners recruited can only serve outside France.
The French expeditionary force that had occupied Algiers in 1830 is in need of reinforcements and the Legion is accordingly transferred by sea in detachments from Toulon to Algeria.
The Foreign Legion will be primarily used, as part of the Armée d'Afrique, to protect and expand the French colonial empire during the nineteenth century, but it will also fight in almost all French wars including the Franco-Prussian War and the First and Second World Wars.
The Foreign Legion will remain an important part of the French Army and sea transport protected by the French Navy, surviving three Republics, the Second French Empire, two World Wars, the rise and fall of mass conscript armies, the dismantling of the French colonial empire, and the loss of the Foreign Legion's base, Algeria.
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North Africa
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