The French Foreign Legion (French: Légion étrangère, 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.
The Foreign Legion is today known as an elite military 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 widely accepted solution to strengthen them enough to work as a team. Consequently, training is often described as not only physically challenging, but due to a number of reasons, extremely stressful psychologically.
The French Foreign Legion was created by Louis Philippe, the King of the French, on 10 March 1831. The direct reason was that foreigners were forbidden to serve in the French Army after the 1830 July Revolution, so the Foreign Legion was created to allow the government a way around this restriction. 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 foreign regiments, and troublemakers in general, both foreign and French. Algeria was designated as the Foreign Legion's home. The army was formed so the government could enforce its rule in Algeria.
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 and both World Wars. 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.
Historically, the American film industry portrayed the Foreign Legion as, in the words of Neil Tweedie of The Daily Telegraph, having "a reputation as a haven for cut-throats, crooks and sundry fugitives from justice" and also having many men escaping failed romances. Tweedie said that since the legion had asked few questions of its new recruits, it became "an ideal repository for the scum of the earth." As of 2008, according to Tweedie, the "image as a haven for ne’er-do-wells is largely out of date" since the legion now conducts extensive background checks via Interpol.
