Recruitment in the French Foreign Legion - History and Evolution, 1831–2019

The recruitment of the Légion étrangère, over its 189 years of existence, has never ceased to evolve in response to numerous parameters that fiction does not glimpse or cannot reveal. The image of a charming and crafty adventurer, seeking redemption, wandering through sands and jungles at the whim of wars, is too fine a picture to withstand the filter of reality.

Beyond the personal reasons that lead a young man to cross the gates of the French Foreign Legion and be admitted into its ranks, there also exists an abundance of technical, administrative and legal conditions which, through periods of peace and war alike, have been paramount in ensuring the survival and continuity of this singular institution — unique on the globe — that is the Legion.

Let us therefore plunge into this mythical world, into this very particular microcosm… Why do men from every continent hear and answer the call of the bugle? How are they welcomed, vetted, selected? By virtue of what legislation do they become French combatants, deployed across the full spectrum of conflicts in which France has been, is, and will be engaged?

This book, following rigorous study and analysis, pragmatically restores the workings and rules that have governed recruitment within the French Foreign Legion since 1831, allowing us to understand how, through an atypical alchemy, an exemplary combat unit has been forged — one that the rest of the world has envied for almost two centuries.