Item: ONJR25MAMD056
Original French Mid- 19th Century 1st Battalion Foreign Legion Kepi - C. 1840 - Extremely Scarce
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Original Item. Only One Available. The French had a history of employing regiments of foreign soldiers from an early date: such as Louis XI's creation of the Scottish Guards in the 15th century. Later kings, from Francois I to Louis XVI made use of both German and Swiss Regiments. Even after the Revolution, the National Assembly in June 1792 created a Foreign Volunteer Legion and in the Revolutionary Wars Dutch, Italian, and Polish soldiers were employed. Napoleon employed Hanoverian, Portuguese, and Spanish Legions, and Poles from the Vistula region. Following the fall of Napoleon in 1815, surviving units amalgamated under the title of the "Royal Foreign Legion", renamed in 1821 as the "Regiment of Hohenlohe" which was disbanded in 1831 at the instigation of the Foreign Legion.This is an extraordinarily scarce example of a French Foreign Legion “Kepi”, dating to the 1840s. This model of Foreign Legion headgear is what would eventually become the standard design for the French Kepi. The kepi is of blue & red wool construction with a very tall crown, with white piping. A brass 1 device is attached to the front, for the 1st Battalion, Foreign Legion. The kepi retains its original leather chinstrap, held in place by two rounded brass buttons. The original visor is well-retained as well.The interior of the kepi is very well-preserved, with the original moroccan leather sweatband still mostly attached, with some areas of stitching loss. The black-lined interior originally had a maker’s marking on the crown, which has now mostly faded away. The cap is roughly size 6¾.This is one of the scarcest kepis we have ever offered, for the French Foreign Legion in its infancy! Comes ready for further research and display.On March 9, 1831, the Foreign Legion was created by a royal ordinance issued by King Louis Philippe, at the suggestion of Minister of War Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult. Nine days later, on March 18, 1831, an additional directive was issued restricting membership in the newly formed Legion of foreigners. The latter directive reflected the initial purpose of the Foreign Legion as a mechanism to lessen the potential disruption to the provisional French government and the newly enthroned House of Orléans posed by the large influx of foreigners following the collapse of the Bourbon Restoration in the previous year's July Revolution. Some of these foreigners in France were the remnants of regiments formed during the campaigns of Napoleon of Germans, Swedes, Poles, Hungarians, and others. These foreign veterans had been left with little means and professional military training which proved to be of concern to the French government. Many had flocked to France following the July Revolution or came to France following failures of the revolutionary or independence movements throughout Europe; in addition to an influx of idealistic revolutionaries and nationalists, France also became home to large numbers of immigrants who had removed from their countries of origin for economic or personal reasons. This influx of foreigners had become a significant burden for the newly established French government's administrative capabilities; for example during March 1831 a depot established in Langres, France to accommodate these recent immigrants had been inundated to the point of overstretch. Furthermore, French military operations in Algeria, which had commenced under Charles X, had proven unpopular with portions of the French populace as the campaign, despite its initial success, had become bogged down in the occupation of that country. The formation of the Foreign Legion would help address the domestic threat of dissidents fomenting political instability while contributing to government's colonial endeavors in Algeria.As part of the Provisional Government's policy of removing potential dissidents from France, upon enlistment recruits were guaranteed anonymity as a condition of their service; information provided to the legion was accepted on face value. This was the beginning of what would become the tradition of enlisting volunteers under the anonymat. Officially enlistment of French nationals in the Legion was forbidden, so many French criminals who enlisted during this time claimed that they were French-speaking Swiss or Walloons. Such enlistments were not within the proposed scope of the Foreign Legion, however the Provisional Government proved not terribly distressed by the voluntary removal of members of a troublesome social element at a time when its control of the nation was less than concrete.
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