The Tirailleur S Senegalese are a body of soldiers made up within the colonial Empire French in 1857, principal element of the “black Force”.

In 1914-1918, they are approximately 200  000 " Sénégalais" AOF which fights in the French rows, of which more 135  000 in Europe. 30  000 of them found death there, and many are those which returned wounded or invalid.

The troops raised to North Africa, theoretically nonblack, included/understood in fact also black Africans (15  000 blacks in Morocco, for 30  000 soldiers approximately), who are used under the order as Mangin.

Origins of the riflemen

In 1857, Louis Faidherbe, general governor of the French Western Africa, in lack of manpower come from the Metropolis on the new territories of Africa, to face the needs generated by the phase for colonization, creates the body of the Senegalese riflemen. The decree was signed on July 21st, 1857 with Plombières-the-Baths by Napoleon III. Until 1905, this body integrates slaves repurchased into their local Masters, then volunteer and prisoners of war even having a great diversity of origins. The warrant officers generally come from the local aristocracy.

The Senegalese riflemen are not necessarily Senegalese, they are recruited in all Africa.

Some Senegalese, born French in the four Common S Frenchwomen of full exercise of the Senegal, are not considered as riflemen but the equality with the white was not yet the rule.

At the time of the First World War

Many Africans died on the French battle fields of the First World War. Jacques Chirac, as a president of the French Republic, in his speech for the 90e birthday of the Battle of Verdun, evoked 72  000 combatants of the French ex-Empire died between 1914 and 1918, “Moroccan infantrymen, riflemen, of Indo-China (Cochinchine, riflemen Annam ites), porpoises of marines”

After the free German war of 1870, in full preparation of the war 1914-1918, in 1910, colonel Mangin in his book “the black force” describes its design of the colonial army, while at the same time Jean Jaurès publishes on his side “the new army” where the need is expressed to seek soldiers elsewhere which the French could not provide in sufficiency because of a fall of the birthrate.

Difficulties of recruitment

If the proconsuls representing France in Africa quickly proposed several thousands of men voluntary or recruited with methods close to those of the previous centuries, revolts against enrôlement burst more far from big cities of Africa, whose first of average importance at the Bambara S of the Mali, close to Bamako, lasted approximately 6 months, of spring 1915 in November 1915, announcing other tougher revolts of which some repressed very hard in June 1916 by France which made draw its artillery on ten strengthened villages, killing several thousands of civilians, of which women and children who refused to return. Like many later mutinies, these resistances were hidden not to bring additional elements to the German propaganda which denounced the behavior of France in Africa, of which the fact that it made come from the “cruel ” of Africa to make them fight on the European faces.

Certain French administrators, and the colonists actors colonial commercial also slowed down the call under the flags of young Africans, estimating that one thus deprived them of a young labor which was not at the time abundant in Africa.

During the Second world war

As at the time of the preceding conflict, France uses during the Second world war the colonies like tank of men for his army. And just like at the time of the First World War, they are shown exactions by the Germans. In France is a military cemetery the Tata Senegalese, with Chasselay department of the the Rhone, where was perpetrated by the armies Nazis the massacre of the one of these units.

Eveline Berruezo and Patrice Robin made of it a film in 1992, entitled Touched It . The few African territories rejoined with the free France will provide him the riflemen who will constitute the Battalions of Walk of the 1 {{free Re}} French division as well as the Régiment of Senegalese riflemen of Chad of the Colonne Leclerc. The Senegalese Riflemen of the BM 2 will illustrate themselves in particular with Bir Hakeim.

December 2nd, 1944, a few tens of Senegalese riflemen are massacred by the French Army with the camp of Thiaroye in Senegal. Ousmane Sembène made of it a film in 1988, entitled Camp of Thiaroye .

After the second world war: the crystallization of the pensions

In 1959, then in 1960, the French Parliament adopted a device known as of “crystallization” , i.e. gel of the debt contracted by the French Empire and which falls to the only metropolis, by blocking of the value of the points of pension to the value reached at the time of the accession to the independence of the countries, to which the former riflemen were amenable. After almost 50 years of dispute, and after the exit of the Indigenous film evoking the role of the North-African troops in Europe in 1943-1945, the French Parliament finally voted on November 15th 2006 the revalorization of the pensions of the soldiers of the ex-colonies within the framework of the budget 2007 of the war veterans. " 84 000 colonial war veterans of 23 nationalities would have in bénéficier" , if they appear, knowing that the majority of the soldiers of the First World War already died.

See too

It should be noted that the Senegalese rifleman symbolized a long time for the subways, the French Empire. Thus the cocoa mark Banania used a long time like logo, a more or less stylized Senegalese rifleman.

Related articles

• Liste of the units of Senegalese riflemen
• Général Mangin
• Charles Tchorere
• Touched, military Nécropole Senegalese riflemen with Chasselay (the Rhone)
• Tirailleur

External bonds

• emission of France-Culture, of December 2nd, 2006, titrated “14 - 18: Africans in the trenches”, with the historian Marc Michel.
• Homage to the Senegalese rifleman, illustrated by a poem of Léopold Sédar Senghor

Random links:

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