Origins (Mali) (engraving, 1890) The Senegalese Tirailleurs were formed in 1857 by
Louis Faidherbe,
Governor-General of French West Africa, because he lacked sufficient French troops to control the territory and meet other requirements of the first phase of colonization. The formal decree for the formation of this force was signed on 21 July 1857 in
Plombières-les-Bains by
Napoleon III. Recruitment was later extended to other French colonies in Africa. During its early years the corps included some former slaves bought from West African slave-owners as well as prisoners of war. By 1891, fugitive slaves from Liberty Villages, settlements established as part of France's effort to address the abolition of slavery, could receive official emancipation by enlistment with the . Subsequent recruitment was either by voluntary enlistment or on occasion by an arbitrary form of conscription. Men who voluntarily joined the corps often did so partly due to the special opportunities to accumulate wealth or social standing outside of traditional paths. Newly liberated slaves were incorporated into Tirailleur military units or worked as auxiliary laborers. In some cases Tirailleurs married emancipated former slave women, allowing the soldiers to circumvent the common regional practice of familial negotiation and payment of
bride-wealth.
1870–1914 killed in the
battle of the Somme In the aftermath of the
Franco-Prussian War, the Senegalese tirailleurs continued to provide the bulk of French garrisons in West and Central Africa. Their overall numbers remained limited. However, in anticipation of the First World War, Colonel
Charles Mangin described in his 1910 book
La force noire his conception of a greatly expanded French colonial army, whilst Jean Jaurès, in his , suggested that the
French Army should look elsewhere to recruit its armies due to the falling birthrate in mainland France. A company-sized detachment of took part in the conquest of Madagascar (1895), although the bulk of the non-European troops employed in this campaign were Algerian and Hausa tirailleurs. Regiments of
s were subsequently recruited in Madagascar, using the Senegalese units as a model. In 1896, a small expedition consisting mainly of 200 was assembled in Loango (French Congo) under Captain
Jean-Baptiste Marchand. This "Marchand Mission" took two years to cross hundreds of miles of unexplored bush until they reached
Fashoda on the Nile. Here they encountered British and Egyptian troops under Major-General
Kitchener, who had just defeated the
Mahdi's
Dervish army near Khartoum. While the
Fashoda Incident raised the possibility of war between France and Britain, tribute was paid to the courage and endurance of Marchand and his Senegalese tirailleurs by both sides. By a decree dated July 7, 1900 the , the
Tirailleurs indochinois,
Tirailleurs malgaches and the "marsouins" were no longer under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Navy and Colonies, but were reclassified as
Troupes coloniales, different from the mainland elements Metropolitan army and separate from the
Armée d’Afrique of the
Maghreb. The anchor badge of the was worn on the collar from 1914, and when the
Adrian helmet was adopted in WW1, an insignia with the anchor behind a flaming grenade was worn by the . During the early 1900s, the saw active service in the
French Congo and
Chad while continuing to provide garrisons for the French possessions in West and Central Africa. In 1908, two battalions of landed at Casablanca to begin nearly twenty years of active service in Morocco by Senegalese units. On 14 July 1913, the paraded their standard at Longchamp, the first occasion upon which Senegalese troops had been seen in metropolitan France. New flags were presented to the 2e, 3e and 4e RTS at the same parade. The originaires were a group of Tirailleurs specifically from the
Four Communes of Senegal who, beginning in the mid-19th century, were granted a unique legal status by the French government. Unlike other African subjects in French colonies, originaires had French citizenship while maintaining many of their religious and cultural practices. This dual status meant that they were not subject to the French Civil Code but instead operated under
statut personnel, a legal framework allowing them to adhere to
Islamic law in personal matters such as marriage, divorce, and inheritance. The
statut personnel created a parallel legal system where French and Islamic laws coexisted. A ministerial decree in on May 10, 1857 allowed West African residents of Saint-Louis to use Muslim tribunals for "matters related to personal status," even if they were French citizens. This accommodation recognized practices like polygyny, which were permissible under Islamic law but conflicted with the monogamy required by French civil law. The
statut personnel allowed Senegalese Tirailleurs to maintain Islamic marital practices, including polygyny, despite French laws mandating monogamy. This dual legal system often caused administrative challenges, such as distributing family allocations among multiple wives. After
Blaise Diagne's 1915 legislation made military service mandatory for originaires, tensions arose between French secular ideals and the cultural traditions of Muslim soldiers. Despite criticism of the
statut personnel as incompatible with French law, it remained intact due to the military’s reliance on Tirailleurs and the need to maintain their loyalty.
World War I in October 1916 in Greece, on 7 March 1918. There were 21 battalions of (BTS) in the French Army in August 1914, all serving in either West Africa or on active service in Morocco. With the outbreak of war 37 battalions of French, North African and Senegalese infantry were transferred from Morocco to France. Five Senegalese battalions were soon serving on the
Western Front, while others formed part of the reduced French garrison in Morocco. The 5th BTS formed part of a French column which was wiped out near
Khenifra, during the
Battle of El Herri on 13 November 1914, with 646 dead. The 10th, 13th, 16th and 21st BTS subsequently saw heavy
fighting in Morocco, reinforced by 9,000 additional Senegalese tirailleurs brought up from French West Africa. Morocco was the last place in the French empire where were permitted to travel with their West African wives, part of a broader French push for professionalism and the trend of national armies in Europe to discontinue their use of auxiliary services and provisions by civilians. On the Western Front the served with distinction at Ypres and Dixmude during the Battle of Flanders in late 1914, at the
Battle of Verdun in the recapture of Fort de Douaumont in October 1916, during the battle of Chemin des Dames in April 1917 and at the Battle of Reims in 1918. Losses were particularly heavy in Flanders (estimated from 3,200 to 4,800) and Chemin des Mains (7,000 out of 15,500 tirailleurs engaged). Total French casualties in this campaign reached 27,000 but the Senegalese and regular Colonial Infantry were noted for the high morale that they maintained in spite of losses that reached two out of three in some units. The Senegalese tirailleurs particularly distinguished themselves in the attack during the initial French landings on the southern shore of the Dardanelles. After the withdrawal from the Dardanelles and the redeployment to the
Macedonian front, further Senegalese battalions were deployed in this theatre of war.
New recruitment drive camp at
Fréjus in March 1916 , which was occupied during the
Kamerun campaign French military policy towards the use of African troops in Europe changed in 1915. The French high command realized that the war would last far longer than they had originally imagined. They therefore authorized a major recruitment drive in West Africa. As a result, a further 93 Senegalese battalions were raised between 1915 and 1918, of which 42 saw service in France itself. The usual practice was to bring together battalions of white Colonial Infantry () and African Tirailleurs into . (Four such regiments were formed from the seven tirailleurs and five battalions of
deployed at Gallipoli.)The harsh conditions of trench warfare were a particular source of suffering to the un-acclimatized African soldiers and, after 1914/15, the practice of
hivernage was adopted: withdrawing them to the south of France for training and re-equipping each winter. In spite of their heavy losses in almost every major battle of the Western Front, the discipline and morale of the "Colonial Corps" remained high throughout the war.
Fréjus in southeastern France became the main centre for
hivernage (wintering) for the Senegalese Tirailleurs. The town also contained
segregated hospitals with images of African village life painted on the walls. In November 1915, a large
anti-French uprising broke out among the tribes in the regions of present-day Mali and Burkina Faso. The reasons for the discontent came from the forced military recruitment of soldiers. These regions were subject to significant recruitment of colonial troops to serve on the front lines of the First World War. The last resistance was suppressed only in September 1916. During the suppression of the uprising, over 100 villages were destroyed by French colonial troops. At the 90th anniversary commemorations of the
battle of Verdun, then-president
Jacques Chirac made a speech evoking the 72,000 colonial combatants killed during the war, mentioning the 'Moroccan infantry, the tirailleurs from Senegal, Indochina (Annam and Cochinchina), and the of the
troupes de marine.'
Occupation of the Rhineland and
Jean Degoutte 8 April 1920 The
armistice of November 1918 had provision for the allied
Occupation of the Rhineland and France played a major part in this. Between 25,000 and 40,000 colonial soldiers were part of this force. German attempts were made to discredit the use of non-European soldiers by the French during this occupation, as had earlier been the case during World War I. Although no hard evidence was produced, many campaigners claimed that the colonial soldiers – and the Senegalese in particular – were responsible for a substantial number of rapes and sexual assaults. Children resulting from these unions were stigmatised as "
Rhineland Bastards" and subsequently suffered under the
Nazi race laws.
Between the World Wars of the
Great Mosque of Djenné (Mali), built in the French town of
Fréjus for the use of colonial soldiers During the War the much reduced French garrison in Morocco had consisted largely of battalions of , who were not affected by the divided loyalties of locally recruited troops and who could be more readily spared from service on the Western Front than French troops. On 13 April 1925 the
Rif War spilled over into
French Morocco when eight thousand
Berber fighters attacked a line of French outposts recently established in disputed territory north of the Ouerghala River. The majority of these posts were held by Senegalese and North African tirailleurs. By 27 April 1925 39 out of 66 posts had fallen and their garrisons massacred, or had been abandoned. Faced with what had become a major war the French increased their forces in Morocco to approximately 100,000 men. West African tirailleurs continued to play a major part in subsequent operations in both the Spanish Protectorate (until 1926) and Southern Morocco (until 1934). In one of many engagements, the 2nd Battalion of the 1st Regiment of won 91 citations for bravery during fighting around Ain-Gatar on 22 June 1926.
World War II On the eve of the Second World War, five regiments of were stationed in France in addition to a brigade based in Algeria. The was permanently deployed in the south of France due to the potential threat from Italy. It was also reasoned the climate was more suitable for African soldiers. This deployment of Tirailleurs, outside of their regions of recruitment and traditional peacetime service, arose because of the heavy casualties of the First World War. This had affected the number of metropolitan Frenchmen in the military service age group of twenty to twenty-five by more than half. Up to 200,000 tirailleurs were active during the war, which constituted about nine percent of the French forces. More massacres followed the
German crossing of the Somme from 5 June onward. On June 5, at
Hangest-sur-Somme, a number of tirailleurs were executed after surrendering. One French officer recounted: “The enemy then appears, furious, beside himself, ready to finish us off all together. An extremely engaged intervention by a German officer prevents the troops from executing the European officers, but there was no indigenous man alive anymore after a few moments.” Between 7 and 10 June the
16e and
24e Régiments de Tirailleurs Sénégalais, part of the ''
4e Division d'Infanterie Coloniale,'' fought a series of battles along the Somme at
Angivillers,
Lieuvillers and
Erquinvillers. A large portion of the division became encircled during the course of the action. On the night of 9 June near Erquinvillers the Germans repeated the practice of separating white and black prisoners: “The Europeans . . . had to sit in front of a ravine under the barrels of machine guns while about fifty surviving Tirailleurs were led to a nearby place and shot with a machine gun. We, the officers, were able to confirm this later when we were led onto trucks that drove us toward captivity.” On taking each of the towns, German troops executed captured black soldiers, killing between 150 and 500. One of the best-recorded incidents, photographed by the German perpetrators, was the
Chasselay massacre which took place on 19 June 1940 near
Lyon. Soldiers of the 25e
Régiment de Tirailleurs Sénégalais surrendered to the German troops in this area after exhausting their ammunition. Following the surrender, some fifty tirailleurs were separated from their white officers and ordered to stand in an open field, where they were machinegunned by German tanks. The tanks then drove back and forth over the bodies of the dead tirailleurs to ensure there would be no survivors. On the same day, a further 14 tirailleurs were executed at
Sillé-le-Guillaume. The Senegalese Tirailleurs saw extensive service in
West Africa, Italy, and Corsica. During 1944, they assisted in the
liberation of southern France. The 9th DIC (Colonial Infantry Division) included the 4th, 6th, and 13th Regiments of Senegalese Tirailleurs, and fought from Toulon to the Swiss border between August and November 1944. After the
Liberation of France, the Tirailleurs concluded their service in Europe. When it came time for French forces to lead the victory parade in Paris Allied High Command stipulated that they could not contain any black soldiers. They were replaced by newly recruited French volunteers, on the order of
Charles de Gaulle. This process became known as . Faced with U.S. restrictions on the size of the French forces, de Gaulle chose to incorporate the various partisan groups within the structure of the official army. The complicated process of discharge and repatriation of the Tirailleurs, coupled with the refusal of France to pay wage arrears due to released prisoners of war, led to several incidents of violence. The most notable of these was the
Thiaroye massacre, in 1944, during which the French killed between 35 and 300 (sources vary) Tirailleurs. The comprised up to 16 percent of the French forces during the Indochina War. Despite these prejudices, the French government sought to manage the situation by promoting alternative, more positive stereotypes of the Tirailleurs Sénégalais. The government capitalized on the concept of the "
noble savage" and emphasized the soldiers’ loyalty to France, their bravery, and their “childlike” innocence. These portrayals were intended to ease public fears and promote the idea that the African soldiers, while culturally different, were loyal and self-sacrificing in their service to the French cause. The paternalistic rhetoric of "
La force noire", promoted by figures like General
Charles Mangin, played a central role in reshaping the narrative about the soldiers. == Uniforms ==