French Foreign Legion to Mexico! Really
I know there are those who think foreign troops SHOULD be sent to Mexico for one reason or another, and those who say Calderón is a little too eager to please foreigners, but this isn’t what it sounds like. The armed legionnaires — and their band — are coming to parade in Camarón de Tejada, Veracruz the 30th of April, in commemoration of the Battle of Camarón, 30 April 1863.
Steven Wilson, at Military.com has a fine, relatively even-handed review of the battle, which basically came down to a bunch of very irate local farmers armed with old shotguns and pitchforks and machetes squaring off against a bunch of Italians and Poles and Serbs and others, fighting to install an Austrian monarchy in Mexico for the greater glory of France. The Mexicans cornered the invaders in a barn, burned it down and slaughtering the survivors.
While it was sort of a French version of Custer’s Last Stand, with the Mexicans as the Sioux, the commemoration is taken quite seriously by the French, who give the event a quasi-religious feel, including the veneration of relics… specifically the prothestic hand of the Legionaires’ commanding officer, Adjunt Major Jean Danjou.
From the Mexican point of view these guys were hardly fighting for a noble cause, and they were, after all, just a bunch of cut-throats, ne-er-do-wells and international troublemakers, but the French worship them for dying bravely. It might be churlish to make a joke about the French penchant for putting style over substance, and celebrating a military loss… but I love a parade.
mexfiles.net 
Really, that is the history being taught now? A small force of legionaires were travelling when they were caught by the Mexican army.
The odds were ridiculous, must like Custers situation mentioned in the story above.
Yet they resisted and killed many enemies, down to the last 4, out of ammo and wounded lined up to face the Mexicans wth bayonettes. The Mexican General, (to his credit and it is beyond me why the media now dicides to change the story) offered them surrender conditions, they refused!, until the Mexican general allowed them to march out with their weapons! Can you imagine that? 4 guys all wounded, DEMANDING that much respect from an enemy, simply by refusing to give in!
Yes it was a DEMAND, 4 wounded men stood against an army and told them, “you will not take our pride”
Now, we submit to anything the masters desire, any question who the masters are?
I don’t think it’s so much that “the French love a parade” it’s more about the core legend of the Legion. This battle and the bravery of the four is what informs the whole fighting spirit of the Foreign Legion. Indeed, as history tells it, down to the last four they fixed bayonets and bursting through the doors of the farm dwelling they were hunkered down in, charged headlong into the volleys of 2,000 Mexican infantry waiting outside yelling in unison, “A moi, La Legion!” It’s the willingness to be courageous and to die that makes them formidable. It’s why in Bosnia they were no shenanigans in their zone of responsibility.