Russian Expeditionary Force in France

Russian Expeditionary Force In France

The Russian Expeditionary Force was a World War I military force sent to France by the Russian Empire. In 1915 the French requested that Russian troops be sent to fight alongside their own army on the Western Front. Initially they asked for 300,000 men, an absurdly high figure, probably based on their assumptions about Russia's 'unlimited' reserves. General Mikhail Alekseev, the Imperial Chief of Staff, was opposed to sending any, though Nicholas II finally agreed to send a unit of brigade strength. The First Russian Special Brigade finally landed at Marseille in April 1916. A Second Special Brigade was also sent to serve alongside other Allied formations on the Salonika Front in northern Greece. In France, the First Brigade served with distinction until the outbreak of the Russian Revolution of 1917. With Brigade morale being sapped by political agitation, it was finally disbanded before the end of the year. However, some of the more determined formed the Légion Russe (French for Russian Legion), and continued to preserve a Russian presence in the west and, indeed, in the Great War itself, right up until the Armistice in November, 1918.

Read more about Russian Expeditionary Force In France:  Before March 1917, Mutiny, Russian Legion

Famous quotes containing the words russian, force and/or france:

    Annie: Dances like Pavaliver, that child.
    George Grainger: Dances like who?
    Annie: Pavaliver—the Russian dancer. Don’t be so ignorant.
    Reginald Berkeley (1890–1935)

    Mine ear is much enamoured of thy note;
    So is mine eye enthrallèd to thy shape;
    And thy fair virtue’s force perforce doth move me
    On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    It is not enough that France should be regarded as a country which enjoys the remains of a freedom acquired long ago. If she is still to count in the world—and if she does not intend to, she may as well perish—she must be seen by her own citizens and by all men as an ever-flowing source of liberty. There must not be a single genuine lover of freedom in the whole world who can have a valid reason for hating France.
    Simone Weil (1909–1943)