From 1905 onward, France, alone among the major colonial powers, adopted military doctrine calling for the use of colonial troops in every corner of its empire. Thus regiments of Tirailleurs Senegalais served in French armies from the conquest of Morocco (1907-19 12) through the siege of Dienbienphu (1953-1954). In World War I I, the forces that fought under General Leclerc in North Africa and Italy were made up largely of Africans, including Moroccans. Africans accounted for more than half the French troops who landed in southern France in August 1944. But the largest contribution of the Tirailleurs Senegalais came during the First World War, when more than 200,000 were mobilized for service, mainly on the Western Front.

The Tirailleurs (commonly translated as riflemen) were founded in 1857 by Louis Faidherbe, governor general of French West Africa. Faidherbe believed that Africans could be trained to become effective combat soldiers. To this end, he promised his men new uniforms, higher pay and the opportunity to loot, all proven as powerful incentives. Looking at the situation from another angle, it is clear that Faidherbe had little alternative but to turn to African manpower. Metropolitan French troops did not perform well in tropical Africa. They succumbed by the hundreds to malaria, black water fever and other tropical diseases to which Africans had a natural tolerance.

From 1857 to 1905, Tirailleur regiments consisted mainly of slaves and others from the lowest social strata. Under the rachat system [1] the French bought slaves from their African masters and turned them into soldiers led by French officers. By 1882, the rachat system was modified. While payments to slave owners continued, the French came more and more to depend upon the incorporation of prisoners of war and porters, as well as upon volunteer mercenaries. Toward the end of the 19th century, members of the traditional ruling class increasingly began to volunteer for service as NCOs and junior officers. As the conquest of West Africa progressed, defeated African soldiers became an important source of recruits. For soldiers on the losing side, volunteering to serve with the victors was often a matter of survival. Notably, the sons of the influential African merchant class never volunteered in any numbers.

Colors of a TIrailleurs Regiment

Also beginning in the last decade of the 19th century, the French came to rely heavily on certain ethnic groups, principally the Bambara of present-day Mali (formerly French Soudan), the Tucolor and the Mande-speaking ethnic groups related to these savannah tribes. After its pacification in 1906, the heavily-populated Mossi Plateau of Upper Volta became an important source of recruits. Forest peoples became a modest minority in Tirailleur regiments only after 1919, when peace-time conscription was widened. Reflecting Bambara dominance among the various ethnic groups enrolled in France's African army, Bambara along with pidgin French became the language of command in Tirailleur regiments.

After 1905, the Tirailleur force grew rapidly as a result of evolving political and military conditions in French Africa and Europe, as well as a major change in French military doctrine. Five key factors were at work:

—Occupation troops were needed to police and administer a vast African territory several times the size of metropolitan France.

—The conquest of West Africa was not complete; many pockets of resistance remained. Indeed, France did not consider Mauritania to have been pacified until the mid-1930s. Fighting continued in Morocco through the I 920s.

—Garrison troops were needed to man permanent strong points throughout Africa.

—A decision was made to use Tirailleur regiments outside of West Africa, initially in the conquest of Morocco, where Tirailleurs made up from 9 percent to 15 percent of French forces.

Finally, and most importantly, France was desperate for manpower to meet the threat of a larger and faster-growing German pool of military conscripts.

Many prominent French general officers of the World War I era served junior and field-grade officers with Tirailleur regiments, and they came to admire the prowess of these light infantrymen. [2]Among these officers were Marshal Joffre; Gallieni, hero of the Marne, and Charles Mangin, commander of the Sixth Army in the disastrous 1917 Neville offensive

Monument to Gen. Charles Mangin, Paris
Destroyed by German Army, 1940

In 1910, Mangin wrote a book entitled La Force Noire arguing that black Africa was an almost inexhaustible source of manpower and that Africans were ideally suited for military service. Culturally, Mangin asserted, Africans had not been "spoiled" by hard farm or factory labor. Racially, he claimed, Africans had a less highly developed nervous system and were, therefore, less sensitive to pain. France, desperate for manpower to face the larger German army, embraced Mangin' s theories uncritically.

Not only were Mangin's racial theories pure claptrap, he got his demographics wrong as well. The reality was that West Africa was thinly populated and actually suffered from labor shortages resulting from colonial administrators' efforts to build infrastructure such as roads, ports and railways. In fact, by 1912 French West Africa was having difficulty in supplying even 5000 recruits per year, only half of Mangin's promised harvest of soldiers. The result of this recruiting drought was the imposition in 1912 of conscription in French West African territories. While this was a setback for Mangin's scheme, it did form the basis for the huge wartime levies that soon followed.

On the eve of the Great War, the wars of conquest in Africa were petering out, although "pacification" operations continued and would continue for another two decades at least. In a region still suffering from exhaustion after 30 years of more or less continuous warfare, the exactions of the colonizers were becoming ever more burdensome. Poll tax rates were rising rapidly, French colonial administrators demanded corvee labor on roads and railways, and the practice of compulsory crop cultivation was spreading. In 1911 through 1913 cash crop prices for rubber and other commodities collapsed. Drought and famine in 1913 and 1914 forced Sahalian tribes southward, where they clashed with the forest peoples. At the same time, France neglected to finance health care and education.

In 1914, there were 14,000 Tirailleurs Senegalais in French West Africa. An additional 15,000 were stationed outside the region, mainly in Morocco. Six battalions were immediately shipped to France upon mobilization. The Tirailleurs were engaged on the front lines from the beginning. In the opening weeks of the war, four Tirailleur battalions suffered heavy casualties on the Yser River at Dixmude, but held their part of the line while three out of four were wounded or killed

By October 1915, 30,000 new conscripts and volunteers were recruited for the Western Front. A decree of 9 October 1915 ordered the mobilization of Africans over 18 years of age and authorized a 200-franc bonus for volunteers. An additional 51,000 Africans were recruited under this decree in 1916. In 1917, seventeen Tirailleur battalions were engaged on the Somme. By then 120,000 Africans were serving in French forces. In 1918, Tirailleur battalions served with the U.S. First Army at St. Mihiel and in the Meuse-Argonne campaign.

A Swirl of Senegalese
Sketch by John Thomason, Jr., USMC

In 1917, France, desperate for manpower in the wake of widespread army mutiny, risked the largest mass levy of the war in West Africa: 50,000 men. The French governor general in Dakar resigned in disgust. He and many resident French businessmen predicted that the Africans would revolt. Others, however, saw this as an opportunity to advance the interests of France's African subjects.

Blaise Daigne, an elected deputy in the French National Assembly from Senegal, stepped in as Commissioner General for Recruitment and used his prestige to raise 60,000 men with virtually no resistance. [3] In this he was aided by a January 1918 French decree offering inducements including tax exemptions, family allowances, reserved jobs for returning veterans and citizenship under certain conditions.

Daigne's success in recruiting Africans for France's army prompted Premier Clemenceau to extend conscription into peacetime. The force of Tirailleurs Senegalais emerged from the Great War slightly larger than it had been in 1912.

More importantly, it changed from an essentially mercenary army to an army of conscripts. And, unlike metropolitan troops, many Tirailleur conscripts were not demobilized in 1919, but stayed on for occupation duty in Germany and in garrisons in an enlarged French colonial empire.

While the French press was enthusiastic about African bravery, German propagandists accused Tirailleurs of atrocities. Some French elements also cultivated this image and it is widely reflected in post-war literature. France's British allies tended to disparage the French African Army. Field Marshal Haig was particularly vociferous in this regard. Britain's own experience with Indian Army troops on the Western Front was not a good one. Indian troops were employed there only briefly and had a high rate of self-inflicted wounds. Some Indian units mutinied when they learned they were to be sent outside the subcontinent. Unlike French colonial troops, they had not been told to expect worldwide service. They were not trained or equipped for service outside India and it was never intended that they would serve in Europe. And in the Second War they didn't while French African troops again served on the Western Front.

Given these conflicting images, the historian is best advised to assess the Tirailleurs' performance on the basis of such criteria as morale, how they behaved in battle and how they viewed the enemy.

There are instances in which Tirailleurs allegedly performed badly. Green African conscripts on the flank of a Canadian battalion panicked and ran during the first German gas attack of the war on 15 April 1915. Alistair Home's study of Verdun finds troops of the 27th Colonial Infantry Division deficient in performance. In fact, this division was sent into line at Verdun without its usual complement of officers and into a section of the line with no prepared trenches. And, at the Chemin des Dames (Second Battle of the Aisne), there were allegations of panic among elements of the II Colonial Corps. But there is no evidence that Tirailleur units participated in the widespread mutinies caused by the failed Neville Offensive of 1917. Indeed, several sources indicate that African troops were used extensively in sectors where mutinous metropolitan troops refused to serve.

After the Armistice, the German press quailed at the prospect of African troops making up part of the force occupying the Rhineland: "The Black Shame." Obviously, the French government felt under pressure to demobilize as many metropolitan Frenchmen as possible. Africans had no constituency and could be maintained under arms. Of course, there was also the strong desire to humiliate the Boche.

Some French officers opposed Mangin's efforts to elevate African soldiers to a leading place among empire troops. They argued that Moroccans were superior. One of them, General de Torcy, noted that Tirailleurs were of doubtful value in cold climates, such as that of northwestern France. Indeed the practice of hivernage that of pulling African troops out of the line and sending them to southern France during the winter months -- would seem to justify this charge. There was also some criticism of the performance of mixed African-French metropolitan regiments (one French and two Tirailleur battalions) in the Gallipoli campaign. Yet the French sustained this practice in 1939 and 1940.

Resting in a Church Yard [postcard]

In any event, the myth of African savagery did succeed in impressing German soldiers. "Are there any Africans opposite?" was a familiar question posed by German soldiers relieving comrades in the trenches. U.S. Marine Captain John W. Thomason Jr. makes much of Senegalese prowess and savagery in his celebrated Fix Bayonets! Thomason should know, since his unit served with the First Moroccan Division at the Battle of Soissons in 1918.

On balance, however, French African troops were no better or no worse than any other soldiers on the Western Front. Their performance in battle depended upon such variables as leadership, training and motivation, not ethnicity or race. But, then, that was (and is) true of all soldiers.

Of 212,000 French Africans recruited during World War I, 163,000 served on the Western Front. Of these some 30,000 died for France. In 1918 alone 60,000 Africans joined the colors. Only Mauritania and Niger failed to contribute. Fatalities among Tirailleur units were at the rate of 185 per thousand. Mortality rates for metropolitan French troops were slightly higher: 200 per thousand of the 1.3 million dead among five million Frenchmen in uniform. [4]

By and large, the French kept their promise to reserve jobs for returning African veterans. Special salons were set up where veterans could meet and socialize. French colonial administrators sought to use veterans as a buffer group to support colonial administration. Unfortunately, expanded war-time recruitment in the forest zone often destroyed traditional social relationships as returning veterans with their pensions and reserved employment often rose to the level of their traditional leaders and even above. Yet the First World War did not result in the upsurge of African nationalism caused by World War II. France, after all, emerged victorious in 1918, and moved quickly to improve public services in its African colonies and mandates. It was only after World War II, which saw the defeat of France and the acceptance of Woodrow Wilson's ideal of self-determination, that African nationalism rose to the surface as an articulate political movement.

Notes:

1. Repurchase, from the French verb acheter, to buy.

2. Service in the colonial army was popular among middle-class officers with little or no private means. The health threat was real, but promotion was faster and living costs lower than at home.

3. Between 1872 and 1887 France granted citizenship to the inhabitants of four Senegalese communes: Dakar, Goree, Rufisque and St. Louis. Blaise Daigne was the principal political leader of these African citizens of France.

4. French army corps commonly contained a mixture of metropolitan and colonial troops. For example, the II Colonial Infantry Corps was routinely assigned to command French metropolitan divisions. Likewise, the First Moroccan Division had Tirailleur battalions under command from time to time.

Sources:

Echenberg, Myron. Colonial Conscripts The Tirailleurs Senegalais in French West Africa, 185 7-1960. Portsmouth, N.H: Heinemann, 1991.

White, Dorothy Shipley. De Gaulle and Black Africa: From the French Empire to Independence. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1979

Suret-Canale, Jean French Colonization in Tropical Africa (translated by Till Gottheimer). New York: Pica Press, 1971.

Thomason, John W. Jr. Fix Bayonets! Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1994. First published in 1926, this is a fictionalized account of the author's First Marine Brigade experiences in World War I.

Greenhut, Jeffery. The Indian Army in France, a paper presented at the 26 March 1993 meeting of the East Coast Branch of the Western Front Association-U.S.A.