History of The French Foreign Legion - Rif War

Rif War

While at the close of the First World War, the Foreign Legion's prestige was at a high; however the Foreign Legion itself had suffered greatly in the trenches of the First World War. In 1919, the government of Spain raised the Spanish Foreign Legion and modeled it after the French Foreign Legion. General Henri Mordacq intended to rebuild the Foreign Legion as a larger military formation, doing away with the Legion's traditional role as a solely infantry formation. General Mordacq envisioned a Foreign Legion consisting not of regiments, but of divisions with cavalry, engineer, and artillery regiments in addition to the Legion's infantry mainstay. In 1920, decrees ordained the establishment of regiments of cavalry and artillery regiments. Immediately following the armistice, the Foreign Legion experienced increased enlistment which continued for the next few years. Many of the new volunteers for the Foreign Legion were of German and Russian extraction: the former being mostly veterans of World War I and the latter consisting of veterans of the failed White Russian movement. The Foreign Legion began the process of reorganizing and redeploying to Algeria.