Tag Archives: Spahis

Spahis & Stuarts

Posted on by Leave a comment

80 years ago this month. December 10-27, 1944 – Alsace. General de Lattre de Tassigny, at the head of the 1st (Free French) Army, and General Béthouart, commanding its 1st Army Corps, inspect the recently mechanized 1st Algerian Spahi Regiment (1er régiment de spahis algériens, 1er RSA) on the Alsace front. 

ECPAD Ref.: TERRE 10038-L63

Note the American-supplied Stuart light tanks– the Free French operated a mix of 615 M3A3s and M5A1s during the war– and uniforms, particularly the famed 16-button “32-ounce” roll-collared Melton wool overcoats, beloved by Joes for their ability to remain warm even when soaking wet.

The 1er RSA– not to be confused with the later 1er régiment de marche de spahis marocains (1er RMSM)– was the first of the Spahi regiments in French colonial service, organized at Algiers in 1834 around a cadre of 214 horsemen seconded from the 1er régiment de chasseurs d’Afrique (1er RCA), which had been established two years prior.

It rapidly covered itself in glory in North Africa, earning six honors in 15 years (Taguin 1843, Isly 1844, Tedjenna 1845, Temda 1845, and Zaatcha 1849) across hard campaigning.

Detachments fought in the Crimea and against the Germans in 1870.

Shipping out to Indochina in 1884, it fought in the jungles of Southeast Asia for a generation– with one squadron sent for service in Dahomey– before earning further honors in Morocco fighting in 1907-13.

Rushed to the Continent in the Great War, the wild cavalrymen from Algeria were bled white at Artois in 1914 and the Aisne in 1915 before being sent back to the deserts, this time to the Palestine Front, to fight alongside the Australian Light Horse against the Ottomans.

Officers of 1er régiment de spahis algériens in 1920, with lots of Great War-era service medals via Spahis.fr

Disbanded in 1939 to form two infantry division reconnaissance groups (the 81st and 85th GRDI) which in turn were lost in the 1940 campaign, the regiment was reformed in Algiers in late 1942 around three squadrons of horse cavalry then got in some licks in the Tunisian campaign including the battles at Kranguet Ouchtatia and Ousseltia.

February 1943 – Tunisia. Patrol of spahis from the 1st Algerian spahi regiment advancing in the desert during the Tunisian campaign. Ref.: TERRE 22-221

Official caption: “Algiers, North Africa – The Famous French Arabian Cavalry- The Spahis- On Review During Presentation Of Curtiss P-40’S To The Free French By America.” (U.S. Air Force Number K87. Color)

Trading their horseshoes from tracks, the 1er RSA– technically now the 1er Régiment de Spahis Algériens de Reconnaissance (RSAR)– landed in Marseilles in Southern France as part of the Dragoon Landings in late 1944, they fought in Alsace at the Battle of Frédéric-Fontaine, breached the Belfort Gap, and stormed the Saint-Louis barracks. In early April 1945, they spearheaded the division’s crossing of the Rhine at Maxau and ended the war in German territory, fighting a die-hard SS unit at Merckelfingen in the last days of the war.

After returning to Northern Africa post-war, they fought against the AFN insurgency and, zeroed out after 1962, was formally disbanded in 1964, its banners cased and badges retired.

One of the unit’s spectacular service uniforms is preserved in the Musée de l’Armée.

Combat Gallery Sunday: Le porte-drapeau de l’Armée

Posted on by One comment

Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, photographers and the like that produced them.

Combat Gallery Sunday: Le porte-drapeau de l’Armée

Jean-Baptiste Édouard Detaille was born in Paris in 1848, notably while Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte was President and before the aforementioned leader seized power and proclaimed himself Napoleon III, the sole emperor of the Second French Empire.

Detaille, using family connections that dated back to the original Napoleon, studied with noted military painter Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier in the 1860s and traveled abroad to North Africa and the Mediterranean in his late teens, which helped influence his later work.

Detalille himself had served during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, as a young man, in the 8e Bataillon d’Infanterie Mobile, later attached to the staff of Gen, Auguste-Alexandre Ducrot, commander of the 2e Armee in defense of Paris. So you could say that the artist knew something of what he painted.

A mounted officer, 1877, via the Art Institute of Chicago

His two-volume/150 plate “L’Armee Francaise. Types et Uniformes,” published in 1885 (Paris, Boussod, Valson et Cie,) on Japanese paper, is an epic work of 19th Century uniforms. Many of these images come from that volume.

L’armée française – 1.er volume by Édouard Detaille vol 1 title page showing the old Napoleanic Army meeting the 1880s modern French infantry Credit line: (c) Royal Academy of Arts

Officier Indigene de Tirailleurs Algeriens

Sapeurs du Génie Tenue de Campagne

Grenadier de la Garde Impériale Rezonville, 1870

Hussards (Hussars)

French Carabiniers, 1806

French Ecole Spéciale Militaire, 1885

French Chasseur a Cheval

French cavalry

French campement de Zouaves, 1886

Etat-major d’un général de division

French hussards de l’Armée du Rhine, 1790s

Fantasia de Spahis

‘Officier de dragons.’; Édouard Detaille, Types et uniformes : l’armée française, https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/work-of-art/O27687
Credit line: (c) Royal Academy of Arts

French Tirailleurs Indigènes Grande Tenue

The Defense of Champigny during the Battle of Villiers, 1870. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. MET DT259753

click to bigup

Le rêve (The Dream), above, by Edouard Detaille, painted in 1888, depicts French soldiers asleep in their camp with the first rays of dawn on the horizon. These young conscripts of the Third Republic are seen during summer maneuvers, probably Champagne, at the time it painted. They dream of the glory of the Grand Armee of Napoleon, then of taking revenge for the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. This was one of the most popular propaganda pieces of the interwar period between 1871-1914 in France and indirectly helped stir the pot on WWI. It is currently at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

After the Russo-French Rapprochement in 1891, he took to covering the uniforms of the Republic’s newfound allies.

Carabiniers à Cheval en Russie, 1893

The Cossacks of the Imperial Russian Guard

He was busy working on uniform images right up until his last days.

Test uniforms created in 1912 by Édouard Detaille for the French line infantry. From left to right : trumpet in parade uniform, private in service uniform and kepi, private 1st class in parade uniform, private in service uniform and leather helmet, officer in parade uniform, officer in service uniform and bonnet de police (side cap), private in field uniform and leather helmet, private in field uniform and kepi. Via Musée de l’Armée/Wiki.

The artist died in 1912 in Paris, aged 64, only months before The Guns of August forever removed all of the romantic notions of beautiful uniforms with red trousers and shiny cuirasses from warfare.

Thank you for your work, sir.