The 'Old Legion' in Algeria, 1831–35
Formation of the first three battalions soaked up most of the German and Swiss ex-soldiers of the Régt de Hohenlohe and the Garde Royale. A second decree had forbidden the enlistment of Frenchmen, other Swiss, or married men, but these provisions were never strictly enforced. No papers were demanded nor any searching questions asked, and any apparently fit man who presented himself at the depots around the country was accepted. The 4th Bn would be largely Spanish, the 5th mostly Italian and Sardinian, and the 6th Dutch and Belgian. The 1st, 4th and 5th Bns were shipped from Toulon to Algiers late in August 1831, followed during the autumn by the 2nd and 3rd and the part-formed 6th Bn. They were short of experienced officers and NCOs, and only patchily trained. Consequently, they were inclined to get drunk, beat up their French cadres, desert, or fight amongst themselves (single nationality companies proved to be a bad mistake – particularly Dutch and Belgians, whose countries had fought over Belgian independence in 1830–31). The first commander, the Swiss Col Stoffel, had to bribe French NCOs to serve, and employed robust methods to achieve a basic level of discipline. By January 1832 the 1st–3rd, 5th, and half of a 7th (Polish) Bn were installed in camps around Algiers, the 4th at Oran and part of the 6th at Bône. The local commanders at first regarded them as good for nothing but to provide a labour corps, for building forts and roads and draining pestilential swamps. France's first years in Algeria (purely a geographical expression, for a country that did not then exist) were militarily chaotic. There was no accepted power structure among the Arab tribes with which the French could treat. Individual tribes raided outposts in the slowly spreading areas of nominal occupation, and ambushed the supply columns on which they depended. Leaders could be bribed into local peace treaties, but these were short-lived, as the caids played the French off against their own rivals in ruthless competition. Far stronger in cavalry, and masters of the terrain, the Arabs could strike static targets and withdraw at will, while French columns were delayed by their necessary wagon trains of supplies. Commanders-in-chief came and went, all of them lacking clear direction from Paris, and there was a rapid turnover of regimental colonels in this thankless posting. By October 1832 the Legion had recorded 5,538 enlistments, but were paying a high price to malaria, typhus and cholera, while their back-breaking labours were punctuated by a succession of usually small, ugly actions. The Legion's first recorded engagement took place outside Algiers on 27 April 1832, when 300 men took part in a successful raid on a tribal camp near Maison Carrée. However, on 23 May Lt Cham and all but one of his 27 men were wiped out nearby by Arab horsemen, after their own escorting cavalry fled.
The young Emir of Mascara, Abd el Kader, was ambitious to extend his influence, and began to play cat-and-mouse with the French, alternating attacks with negotiations. Operating with other units in mixed columns (typically of a battalion or two, a couple of squadrons and a few cannon), the légionnaires proved solid when under attack by horsemen, and also revealed an aptitude for mounting night raids. For instance, the 4th Bn proved themselves at Sidi Chabal on 11 November 1832 and at Karguenta on 27 May 1833, and the 6th Bn in a raid against tribal villages on 13/14 March 1833. When epidemic disease ravaged the camps, units were cross-posted to maintain local strengths; the Italian 5th Bn took part in the captures of Arzew and Mostaganem in June and July 1833, and several later raids. One to Tazerouna on 2 December was notable for the discipline of the column: during a march of 30 hours, and 13 hours under fire, not one man fell out. In difficult terrain and a punishing climate, the return march of such columns often had to be made in leap-frogging echelons under repeated Arab attacks. In February 1834 the 4th Bn, much reduced by the expiry of enlistments, was disbanded, and its Spanish personnel were sent home in April. It was replaced at Oran by the Polish 7th Bn, transferred from Bougie and renumbered as the 4th. The Poles had distinguished themselves on a raid up into the Kabylie hills in March, alongside the 67th Line (which was also Polish, composed of French-naturalized emigrés). On 1 July the 1st and 2nd Bns and the central services were based around Algiers, the 3rd at Bougie, the 4th and 5th at Oran, and the 6th at Bône – where the total garrison of 1,500 lost 1,100 men to disease that year.2 In June 1835 Gen Trézel, commanding at Oran, led a 2,500-strong column against the elusive Abd el Kader, who reportedly had gathered 10,000 warriors. The three-plus battalions of infantry were commanded by the Legion's LtCol Conrad, and included the 5th Bn and three companies from the 4th. On 26 June the column was ambushed among
2. Disease always accounted for the huge majority of French casualties in Algeria. Of 95,665 deaths recorded D between 1831 and 1851, 3,336 were due to combat and 92,329 (96 per cent) to disease.
the wooded hills of Muley Ismael, and only got clear at a cost of 52 killed and 180 wounded. On the 28th, retreating towards Arzew, the column reached the salt-marsh of Macta, where their route was flanked on the left by a wooded crest. The Arabs set the dry marshland reeds ablaze, and opened a heavy fire from the woods. On this left flank the 5th Bn counter-attacked uphill without success, and in the meantime other warriors reached the baggage wagons and began butchering the wounded. Conrad, who was on foot and vomiting with fever, rallied all the Legion companies to fight their way out of the defile. The convoy was left to its grisly fate while the troops made a disorderly retreat, led by Gen Trézel and the cavalry. The Arabs harassed them nearly all the way to Arzew, and the guns had to halt several times to fire grapeshot in support of the infantry flank-guards. Total losses at Macta were 62 known dead plus 218 missing, and 300 wounded.