Concept
French Foreign Legion
Related concepts (29)
French Resistance
The French Resistance (La Résistance) was a collection of organizations that fought the Nazi occupation of France and the collaborationist Vichy régime in France during the Second World War. Resistance cells were small groups of armed men and women (called the Maquis in rural areas) who conducted guerrilla warfare and published underground newspapers. They also provided first-hand intelligence information, and escape networks that helped Allied soldiers and airmen trapped behind Axis enemy lines.
Infantry
Infantry is a military specialization of military personnel who engage in ground combat on foot. Infantry generally consists of light infantry, irregular infantry, heavy infantry, mountain infantry, motorized infantry, mechanized infantry, airborne infantry, air assault infantry, and naval infantry. In English, use of the term infantry began about the 1570s, describing soldiers who march and fight on foot.
Zouave
The Zouaves were a class of light infantry regiments of the French Army serving between 1830 and 1962 and linked to French North Africa; as well as some units of other countries modelled upon them. The zouaves were among the most decorated units of the French Army. It was initially intended that the zouaves would be a regiment of Berber volunteers from the Zwawa group of tribes in Algeria ("Zwawa" being the origin of the French term zouave) who had gained a martial reputation fighting for local rulers under the Ottoman Empire.
Military police
Military police (MP) are law enforcement agencies connected with, or part of, the military of a state. In wartime operations, the military police may support the main fighting force with force protection, convoy security, screening, rear reconnaissance, logistic traffic management, counterinsurgency, and detainee handling. In different countries it may refer to: A section of military forces assigned to police, or garrison, occupied territories, usually during a war. A section of military forces assigned to policing Prisoners of war detentions.
Tercio
A Tercio (ˈteɾθjo), Spanish for "[a] third") was a military unit of the Spanish Army during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs and the Spanish Habsburgs in the early modern period. The Tercios were renowned as the finest professional infantry in Europe for over a century and a half due to their effectiveness of their battlefield formations. They were the elite military units of the Spanish Monarchy and the essential pieces of the powerful land forces of the Spanish Empire, sometimes also fighting with the navy.
Spanish Legion
For centuries, Spain recruited foreign soldiers to its army, forming the foreign regiments (Infantería de línea extranjera) such as the Regiment of Hibernia (formed in 1709 from Irishmen who fled their own country in the wake of the Flight of the Earls and the penal laws). However, the specific unit of the Spanish Army and Spain's Rapid Reaction Force, now known as the Spanish Legion (Legión Española, La Legión), and informally known as the Tercio or the Tercios, is a 20th-century creation.
Airborne forces
Airborne forces are ground combat units carried by aircraft and airdropped into battle zones, typically by parachute drop or air assault. Parachute-qualified infantry and support personnel serving in airborne units are also known as paratroopers. The main advantage of airborne forces is their ability to be deployed into combat zones without land passage, as long as the airspace is accessible.
Rif War
The Rif War (Guerra del Rif) was an armed conflict fought from 1921 to 1926 between the occupying colonialists of Spain (joined by France in 1924) and the Berber tribes of the mountainous Rif region of northern Morocco. Led by Abd el-Krim, the Riffians at first inflicted several defeats on the Spanish forces by using guerrilla tactics and captured European weapons. After France's military intervention against Abd el-Krim's forces and the major landing of Spanish troops at Al Hoceima, considered the first amphibious landing in history to involve the use of tanks and aircraft, Abd el-Krim surrendered to the French and was taken into exile.
Mounted infantry
Mounted infantry were infantry who rode horses instead of marching. The original dragoons were essentially mounted infantry. According to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, "Mounted rifles are half cavalry, mounted infantry merely specially mobile infantry." Today, with motor vehicles having replaced horses for military transport, the motorized infantry are in some respects successors to mounted infantry. The origins of mounted infantry go back to at least the beginnings of organised warfare.
Army of the Levant
The Army of the Levant (Armée du Levant) identifies the armed forces of France and then Vichy France which occupied, and were in part recruited from, the French Mandated territories in the Levant during the interwar period and early World War II. The locally recruited Syrian and Lebanese units of this force were designated as the Special Troops of the Levant (Troupes Spéciales du Levant). In September 1919, Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau entered an agreement to replace the British troops occupying Cilicia with French soldiers.