French Foreign Legion - Military Documentary HD

The French Foreign Legion (French: Légion étrangère (French pronunciation: ​[leʒjɔ̃ etʀɑ̃ʒɛʁ]), L.E.) is a military service wing of the French Army established in 1831, unique because it was exclusively created for foreign nationals willing to serve in the French Armed Forces. Commanded by French officers, it is also open to French citizens, who amounted to 24% of the recruits as of 2007.[1]

The Foreign Legion is today known as a unit whose training focuses not only on traditional military skills but also on its strong esprit de corps. As its men come from different countries with different cultures, this is a way to strengthen them enough to work as a team. Consequently, training is often described as not only physically challenging, but also very stressful psychologically.

The French Foreign Legion was created by Louis Philippe, the King of the French, on 10 March 1831. The purpose of the Foreign Legion was to remove disruptive elements from society and put them to use fighting the enemies of France. Recruits included failed revolutionaries from the rest of Europe, soldiers from the disbanded Swiss and German mercenary regiments of the Bourbon monarchy, and troublemakers in general, both foreign and French. The Royal Ordinance for the establishment of the new regiment specified that the foreigners recruited could only serve outside France.[2] The French expeditionary force that had occupied Algiers in 1830 was in need of reinforcements and the Legion was accordingly transferred in detachments from Toulon to Algeria.[3][4]

The Foreign Legion was primarily used, as part of the Armée d'Afrique, to protect and expand the French colonial empire during the 19th century, but it also fought in almost all French wars including the Franco-Prussian War, World War I and World War II. The Foreign Legion has remained an important part of the French Army, 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.