French colonial forces

[Patrice]

What about French sailors, would they have made the same contributions to colonial campaigns that the Royal Navy made ie: the naval brigades

Groups of sailors could be sent ashore from the warships, but I don't think there was organised operational units.

Casablanca 1907, again:

- if the date is correct, that's some of the sailors defending the French consulate while there are riots in town and the pic was taken in the garden of the consulate:


– the "caid" on board croiseur Galilée. These sailors seem to be wearing straw hats:


- defense near the town. I don't know who the officer is, perhaps general Drude.

[former user]

I am trying to decide on whether or not to get a gatling gun etc

Gatling gun is definitely french! I can't reference it right now, but I recall that the french navy used many different calibres of gatling gun

[Arthur]

As far as I know, Gatlings weren't used by the French army to any significant extent after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871, when some were imported from the US to be fielded along the Montigny mitrailleuses. Because they had misused the weapon during the war of 1870, the French were notoriously slow and reluctant to adopt machine guns, only embracing them in the early 20th century with the adoption of the St Etienne, Puteaux and Hotchkiss machine guns between 1900 and 1914.

The Gatlings purchased in 1870 were put in storage and only a handful were put back in service before WW1, primarily as fortress guns in casemate emplacements it would seem. I may be wrong here, but I don't think I have seen any reference to the Navy using them aboard ships. Instead, the French Navy used Hotchkiss revolving cannons mounted on naval pedestal or cone mounts like the one below :

 

This was pretty heavy metal incidentally as it fired 47mm rounds (just look at the size of the shell casings at the base of the mount).

The French army wasn't oblivious to the development of MG's, however, and it did experiment with Nordenfelds, Maxims and Gardners during the 1880's, but it would be another decade and a half before the machine gun became a permanent addition to the French arsenal. Interestingly, colonial units don't seem to have manifested the slightest interest in them and the units experimenting with machine guns were almost exclusively metropolitan cavalry regiments.  

Unlike the British, French colonial land forces don't seem to have used machines guns in Africa until the Moroccan campaign of 1908. Then again, unlike the British in South Africa and the Sudan, the French weren't facing hordes of foot warriors charging across open terrain : lack of machine guns wasn't a major problem when fighting across jungles in Dahomey or Madagascar. There's always the possibility that naval revolving cannons were mounted on field carriages and landed ashore, but I have yet to come across any documented evidence that this ever happened in Sub-Saharan Africa.  

Back to the subject of sailors, yes there are many documented cases of fusiliers-marins being seconded from the fleet and formed into ad hoc landing parties (known in French as bataillons de marche) for as long as they were needed. This happened in the Crimea in the 1850's and once again in Mexico in 1862 during the march on Mexico city, while the French fleet also supplied naval brigades to assist in the defense of Shanghai in 1862-63 during the Taiping rebellion in China and once again in Peking during the 55-day siege of the international compound in 1900. As one of the illustrations posted on the previous page shows, fusilier-marins also participated in the conquest of the Tonkin in the 1880's. However, their presence ashore would only last as long as the ships who detailed them remained anchored in the nearest harbour. They were also used as emergency reinforcements when regular troops weren't immediately available, hence their presence in Casablanca in 1907 to defend the French consulate. Fusiliers-marins would never be used to garrison remote African outposts once the main military operations were over, however : that was the job native African tirailleurs were intended for.    

[Bryanbowdell]

Arthur, once again you have provided an awesome reply. 
Would the native troops have used artillery or would these be the preserve of the white/metropolitan units?

[Arthur]

The native tirailleurs (be they Senegalese, Annamite or otherwise) didn't have any field guns since artillery support was provided by the Artillerie de Marine (Artillerie Coloniale after 1900). The artillerymen were originally white but some natives were later recruited, primarily as limber drivers and personnels du train. I don't know if they actually got to serve the guns besides handling the limbers and their teams in action. A law passed on July 7 1900 set the official strength of the colonial artillery at 10,600 men, 1,300 of whom were African or Vietnamese natives. In 1904, the 6th Colonial Artillery Rgt stationed in French Western Africa (AOF) boasted ten batteries (four of them made up of mountain guns) and one company of Senegalese drovers. The latter are probably the boys in the photo below taken in Dakar in 1912 :



In French Equatorial Africa (AEF), the 7th Colonial Artillery Rgt fielded eight batteries with a mix of foot and horse troops and some mountain guns as well.

Hope this helps.  

    

[former user]

here is a picture of drawn mountain guns, but I don't know if it's legion or marsouins.
Edit: I just realised the gun is too modern for what You want....

[former user]

here maybe somethin better

[Patrice]

It would take time to read again some old books that can be downloaded on Gallica (the BNF - French National Library website)

Galliéni in his book "Deux campagnes au Soudan français 1886-1888" (Paris 1891) gives lots of interesting details. He mentions
(page 5) : 600 Kropatscheck rifles, two 80mm mountain guns, one 37mm "canon-revolver" Hotchkiss;
(page 20) : one section of 80mm mountain guns, one section of 65mm (one section = 2 guns) and he writes that "it was the first time our artillery had such guns in the Haut-Sénégal, before that there only was 4 R. de montagne". These guns were necessary to fire effectively against "tatas" (traditional  fortresses with earthen walls). etc.

BTW I don't think I've ever seen a "tata" on a wargame table, that would be nice to make and display.

[Bryanbowdell]

Great photos, loving the cannon carrying camel, great.

[Arthur]

here is a picture of drawn mountain guns, but I don't know if it's legion or marsouins.
Edit: I just realised the gun is too modern for what You want....

Given the date and the caption, they're definitely colonial artillery : these bigors (marsouins was for the infantry, colonial artillerymen being nicknamed bigors) almost certainly belonged to the Groupe d'Artillerie Coloniale du Maroc which would later become the Régiment d'Artillerie Coloniale du Maroc. They were part of Mangin's column during the advance on Marrakech in 1912

[Arthur]

It would take time to read again some old books that can be downloaded on Gallica (the BNF - French National Library website)

Galliéni in his book "Deux campagnes au Soudan français 1886-1888" (Paris 1891) gives lots of interesting details. He mentions
(page 5) : 600 Kropatscheck rifles, two 80mm mountain guns, one 37mm "canon-revolver" Hotchkiss;
(page 20) : one section of 80mm mountain guns, one section of 65mm (one section = 2 guns) and he writes that "it was the first time our artillery had such guns in the Haut-Sénégal, before that there only was 4 R. de montagne". These guns were necessary to fire effectively against "tatas" (traditional  fortresses with earthen walls). etc.

Those who read French reasonably well may find the following link useful, especially the appendix listing the various types of ordnance used by the colonial artillery between 1880 and WW1 (scroll down to appendix 4) :

http://www.troupesdemarine-ancredor.org/Archives/archives-autres-docs/Pages2012/Fichiers/Historique-2RAMa.pdf

[former user]

especially annexes °3 and °4 page 111ff, to cut it a bit shorter 

THX for the excellent link @Arthur

Iwould be interested to know more about theses "tata", my research has stalled when sources could not agree whether they are fortresses or sacred burial grounds...

some pictures would be useful, since the drawings I found looked more like fortified dwellings

[Arthur]

While we're on the subject of the Moroccan campaigns, I came across a series of postcards dealing with Mangin's campaigns there. They're all available as free downloads from Gallica and they are too numerous to reproduce here, so I'll simply provide the link below :

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8447161c

Some pictures are more interesting than others, but the set provides very good insight as to the environment the French fought in. And a couple of these images are also sobering reminders of the fact that national mythmaking notwithstanding, there was nothing romantic about campaigning in North Africa (see the prisoners waiting to be executed by their guards or the corpses on the battlefield).

[Bryanbowdell]

Would there have been any joint operations between France and the other colonial powers, eg. quelling restless natives or punishing slavers etc etc.

Or for that matter were there any clashes with other powers?

[former user]

this article seems to be a good entry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_colonial_empire#Second_French_colonial_empire_.281830.E2.80.931960.29
there are also a lot of links at the bottom