We have now come to the time when the French soldier began to wear the red trousers which later became so distinctive a part of his attire: an outcome, we are told, of the necessity for finding a commercial use for the red madder dye then being produced extensively in the French territories in North Africa.

The French conquest of-Algeria grew out of a long-standing quarrel with the Dey of Algiers over corn supplied to France during the Directorate. French troops landed at Sidi-Ferruch on June 14, 1830, capturing Algiers on July 5. It was not until December 23. 1847 that the legendary Arab leader Abd-el-Kader finally surrendered to General Lamoriciére.

The French infantry of the line – still sub-divided into grenadiers, battalion companies and voltigeurs-had retained a style of dress much resembling the Napoleonic, with its bell-topped shako and long-tailed coat.

By the 1840s, however, a new branch of light infantry had come into existence: the Chasseurs d’Orléans, clothed in dark blue with blue-gray trousers. They eventually replaced the existing Infanterie légére and, under the new denomination of Chasseurs à Pied, continued to wear basically the same uniform until 1914.

The Foreign Legion needs no introduction. This remarkable corps owed its origin to the eight foreign regiments which, after Waterloo, were formed into the Légion de Hohenlohe. In 1830, however, the corps was disbanded, but many of its former members rejoined in 1831, when the Légion Etrangere was raised.

Several new bodies of French troops, apart from the native regiments, came into being as a result of the conquest of Algeria, in particular the mounted Chasseurs d’Afriqu e, and the Zouaves, originally Arab infantry, but eventually entirely European in composition.