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Brigade of Marines [Fusiliers Marins) - History

During the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, the French had no Marines. The word "Marin" is translated as seamen, while matelot is the French word for sailor. Marine is the French word for Navy. The function of marines during the period was performed by 'garrisons' of regular infantry put aboard the ships and being detached from their parent regiments. For example, the troops assigned to Jones' Bon Homme Richard during the War of the American Revolution to serve as marines were from the Regiment Walsh, a redcoated regiment of Irish origin.

The French had a naval artillery organization (during the Empire the Corps Imperial d'Artillerie de la Marine) that was well-trained and very professional that served both aboard ship and on land. They were artillerymen. In 1813 they provided four large regiments that were the backbone of Marmont's VI Corps in Germany. They also served as Guard artilleryman when that arm was built back up after Russia.

From time to time there were also regiments of Infanterie de Marine, but they were not Marines (in the sense of a Marine Corps as the US and British had), they were sailors.

In the Great War, the French marines saw fighting that was almost superhuman in its intensity and persistence. A quaint, old-fashioned place, all bricks and tiles, dotted with cafes and nunneries, Dixmude is the center of an essentially agricultural district. Surrounded by flat meadows and beetroot fields, intersected by canals and marshes, the district has been reconquered from the sea by centuries of effort. The sea is kept under control by a formidable array of sluices, locks, chambers, water-gates and cranks at Nieuport, eight miles away.

In the European War Dixmude witnessed stirring scenes during October 1914. After the fall of Antwerp on the 9th a brigade of French marines, numbering 6.000 and commanded by Rear-Admiral Ronarc'h, was thrown into the town to assist the retreating Belgians in holding the Yser line against the German rush to the sea. Outnumbered by six to one the marines held Dixmude for nearly four weeks, fighting desperately in rags under incessant rain, barring the road to Dunkirk, ensuring the safety of the Belgian army and enabling the French armies of the North to concentrate behind the Yser.

In the Great War, the Battle of the Ypres included the fighting from 16 October 1914 onward between the sea at Nieuport Baths and Dixmude, which is also known as the battle of the Yser, and the struggle which commenced on 19 October from Dixmude through Ypres. Belgian and French marines, under Rear Admiral Ronarc'h, defended the lower course of the Yser and the canal for a week from October 16th. From Nieuport and Dixmude the line was held by the British, aided by 6,000 French marines, who occupied Dixmude and the neighborhood with outposts thrown well out in front. From this town it ran past Zorelebe to Warneton on the Lys. This portion of the line was held by French marines, the British under General Rawlinson, two French Territorial Divisions and a part of the French cavalry.

The sea is a perpetual battlefield, and a trench is hardly more of a prison than a ship. Community of danger soon creates community of hearts; how otherwise can we account for the fact that the most turbulent and individualist of men become the most perfectly disciplined on board ship? This is the case with the Bretons. At Dixmude under the command of their own officers, retaining not only the costume, but the soul and the language of their profession, they were still sailors. Grouped with them were seamen from all naval stations, Bayonne,Toulon, Dunkirk, etc., and the battalion of Commander de SainteMarie, formed at Cherbourg, even contained a fair sprinkling of natives of Les Batignolles.

The French marines held their position. The loss of Dixmude before 01 November 1914 would have been disastrous to the Belgian right. As many as 15 attacks were repelled in one night. The Germans continued their assaults on Dixmude, now a heap of ruins, and on November 10 they captured it, together with a number of the gallant French marines who had so stubbornly defended it. But by this time the capture of the town meant little. The Belgians were now safe behind their flooded countryside; and everywhere the German fury was beginning to exhaust itself.