French Foreign Legion: Arms Contexts

[Jim McDougall]

For those of you reading this soliloquy, I wanted to thank you for your interest.
It is a wildly esoteric topic, and as known here, I often write on such topics which have piqued my interest through the years. Often I am simply revisiting questions and interests generated by old adventure novels and the films they inspired.

In a concurrent thread, the subject of the historical context associated with weapons as one area of collecting enjoyed by many, while others collect for many reasons which are of course important as well. Often these variable elements can enhance each other, such as highly embellished and historic examples which have been preserved as associated with important figures.

For me, this entire adventure in the Saharan deserts of North Africa came from boyhood fascination with the movie "Beau Geste", the adventurous intrigue with the French Foreign Legion, and when it comes down to it.......a simple, inherently mundane bayonet, which took center stage in the dramatic scene central to the story.

I am still fascinated by the Foreign Legion as my interests expanded through the years to the kinds of weapons which these forces would have encountered in their contacts and conflicts with the widely varied tribal groups in over a century of French interests there.

How many types of ethnographic edged weapons used blades from French sabers and bayonets? with the varied factions of their colonial forces, which included in large proportion, the Foreign Legion?

I think of the research over the years on the curious sword of the Kabyle tribes of the Berber Confederation in northwest Algeria, Kabylia. These distinctly unique and indiginous character has brought more questions than answers as far as just how old the form really was, how did it develop, how was it used?
It seems the form in the familiar character typically recognized had largely waned by the later years of the 19th century, and one example I found still in that distinct form was in the French Foreign Legion museum in Paris.....apparently collected about 1857. There was no mention of being taken in combat.

The Foreign Legion was simply another element in the context of the arms of North Africa I wanted to study.

So the idea is to add more on these various arms, aligned with the presence of the Foreign Legion through the many occupations and conflicts through the years.
I will certainly be adding more, and I would be grateful if others out there would contribute in kind. There is far more dimension to these tribal arms than simply examples of varied forms.

Thank you everyone
Jim