I

On 24 October 1916, in the comfort of the French Embassy in London, Boghos Nubar Pasha, the founder and first president of the Armenian General Benevolent Union (1906–28), and the head of the Armenian National Delegation in Paris from December 1912, was shown the Sykes–Picot Agreement. The British and French diplomats present at the meeting, Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot respectively, the co-authors of the Sykes–Picot Agreement, led Nubar to understand that the Armenian-populated areas of the Ottoman Empire would be divided into two parts after the war: one composing the eastern vilayets of Van, Erzerum, Bitlis, Dersim, and Trabzon, under Russian control, and the other including Cilicia and the three western vilayets of Sivas, Kharput, and Diayarbekir, under French control. Thus, the Armenian-populated areas of the Ottoman Empire would come under the protection of two of the Allied powers of the Great War. Nubar recalled that Georges-Picot had asserted that the French would be willing to grant the Armenians an autonomous state under their control, but ‘the Armenians should earn the right to the liberation of their fatherland, by providing volunteers for a planned expedition in Asia Minor’.Footnote ¹ Accordingly, they agreed to form the Légion d'Orient, with the following particulars:

1. 1. The constitution of the Légion d'Orient aimed to have Armenians contribute to the liberation of their fatherland in exchange for granting them new entitlements in line with their national aspirations.

2. 2. The Armenian Légionnaires would only fight against the Ottoman Empire and only on the soil of their fatherland.

3. 3. The Armenian Légion would constitute the future nucleus of the Armenian army in the future Armenian state.Footnote ²

This agreement planned for the establishment of a French protectorate over the Armenian-populated areas of western Armenia in exchange for creating an Armenian Légion in the French army and thus contributing to an Allied victory against the Ottoman Empire.

This article does not deal with the operational history of the Armenian Légion, yet it is important to understand its wider military and geo-strategic significance once operational. Six battalions with roughly 800 men were formed and trained on Cyprus, and those that served in the Palestine Campaign, specifically at the battle of Arara, exhibited ‘good fighting qualities’ according to General Edmund Allenby, who was in charge of the campaign.Footnote ³ The Légion d'Orient, which also contained 550 Syrian Arabs (initially trained on Cyprus, but later moved to Syria),Footnote ⁴ was renamed Armenian Légion after the armistice when it formed a part of the French Army of Occupation of Cilicia and its surrounding areas.Footnote ⁵ Its role in this capacity has been the subject of some controversy, both in relation to the Franco-Turkish War and the subsequent exodus of Armenians.Footnote ⁶ Albeit in a limited way, the Légion has also been discussed in relation to the Armenian Genocide (see below). Yet, despite some works on its role in these events, nothing definitive has been published in the English language on its formation (particularly of the Armenian component) in October 1916, let alone the rather long build-up that included numerous rejections.

This article uses British, French, Armenian, and Cypriot archival sources as well as British, French, and Turkish language historiography to reconstruct the story of the formation of the Légion d'Orient in October 1916. It attempts to show that the Légion's formation transpired after many rejections – first from the British, then the French, and then from Armenian political elites – during a transition period for British and French policy-makers in relation to their approach to the war in the Near and Middle East and their post-war role there, as well as for Armenians during the implementation of the Genocide. This argument will contradict the claims of Armenian Genocide ‘denialists’ that the Légion was established because of French and British support for ‘Armenian aspirations’ in a conspiracy to topple the Ottoman government, or as an Allied humanitarian response to the Armenian Genocide. The Légion d'Orient was formed to serve the British and French (in particular) strategic-military agenda against the Ottoman Empire and post-war French imperial ambitions as these had evolved in spring 1916 in the Sykes–Picot Agreement. The hope of Armenian political elites for a secure autonomous homeland was merely a corollary of these broader French and British agendas.

There is little English-language historiography on the Légion d'Orient and what there is betrays a deep politicization: Turkish authors primarily use its existence to justify the Ottoman government's ‘deportation’ policy;Footnote ⁷ while Armenian authors portray it as a celebration of Armenian national awakening.Footnote ⁸ Most publications lack a comprehensive archival research base. More recently, Yucel Guclu, an employee of the Turkish embassy in Washington, published a potted account of the first proposals for the establishment of an Armenian Légion and the implications on the proposal to land forces at Alexandretta. As part of justifying his denial of an Ottoman Genocide of Armenians, he claimed that the British and Armenians (i.e. all of them en masse) colluded to topple the Ottoman Empire, thus justifying the ‘relocation’ of the Armenians. His account fails to explore let alone identify the reasons the British, French, and even Armenian elites rejected a Légion during various periods in 1915 and early 1916, nor does he explore the circumstances that led to the creation of the Légion in October 1916.Footnote ⁹ The exceptions are Akaby Nassibian's book from 1984, which provides much narrative and not as much analysis and context as the less detailed account in Donald Bloxham's 2005 study.Footnote ¹⁰

The Turkish-language historiography on the Légion d'Orient is no better, centring on the work of Armenian Genocide denialists Ulvi Keser and Halil Aytekin. The former produced two monographs on the subject, using the Turkish Military Archives, yet no French archives, while the latter accessed archives from Turkey, Britain, and France, but was far more schematic and patchy. Both were fundamentally flawed because they use the existence of the Légion, not formed until October 1916, to justify the Ottoman ‘deportation’ policy of spring 1915, confusing the chronology of events and the context of French and British decisions.Footnote ¹¹

There is a broader historiography than that of the Légion d'Orient and Armenian Genocide, and that is the British recruitment of Ottoman subjects into the ‘grand coalition’ against the Central Powers, particularly the Ottoman Empire. Here, the interconnected and sometimes contradictory themes of rival imperialisms and nationalisms, the entanglement of humanitarianism and imperialism, and subaltern agency are most important. There is a significant historiography on the formation of Arabs into fighting units and the Jewish Legion later in 1917 for the purposes of defeating the Ottoman Empire.Footnote ¹²

The Armenian case differs because it was under French command, but also because there was a greater level of humanitarianism involved. So, whereas the British justified encouraging the Arab revolt and the formation of the Jewish Legion by propagating against the oppression of Ottoman rule, with the Armenians both the British and the French had used the Armenian Genocide to create a public humanitarian response against Ottoman savagery. In his recent study, Davide Rodogno has argued that European humanitarian interventions in the Ottoman Empire date back to the 1820s, but the ‘humanitarianism’ usually hid behind the real motivations (and sometimes was an ex post facto justification), which were usually political, imperial, economic, and/or strategic, and intervention could only be made if more than one European power was involved.Footnote ¹³ In the case presented here, the incentive to win the war was linked to post-war imperial expansion, thus motivating both the French and the British to form the Légion d'Orient. This explains why the determination to form it materialized only after the Sykes–Picot Agreement was signed.

European humanitarianism and imperialism and their links with the ‘Armenian Question’ must be understood within the broader ‘Eastern Question’, and specifically on how the three Allied powers in the First World War all had a traditional claim to ‘protecting’ the Christians in the Ottoman Empire and a ‘special’ relationship with the Armenians. This, of course, did not automatically result in a decision to form the Légion, since intervention, as Rodogno showed, needed more than humanitarianism to propel it and was often an ex post facto justification for intervention.Footnote ¹⁴

During the nineteenth century, a corollary of the ‘Eastern Question’ was how the Ottoman state recognized the European Powers, particularly the French and the Russians, as the protectors of the Catholic (Maronite and other ‘eastern’ Catholics) and Orthodox Christians respectively.Footnote ¹⁵ For example, in the case of the French, the Catholic presence in Syria and to a lesser extent Palestine propelled French imperial interests in this part of the Ottoman Empire. The role of protecting Ottoman Christian minorities was extended to the Armenians, but with significant differences. Armenian protection was not guided by religious affiliation, although there was a religious dimension to Russian feeling, particularly earlier in the century,Footnote ¹⁶ but by liberalism (particularly for the British and French) and imperialism.Footnote ¹⁷ In the Anglo-Turkish Convention and in the Treaty of Berlin, both of 1878, the British government led the way in compelling the Ottoman Empire to agree to reforms for its Christian communities in its eastern provinces – a clear reference to Armenians. Lord Beaconsfield's Conservative government aimed to establish informal imperial hegemony over Asia Minor and Syria, but this failed because Sultan Abdul Hamid II refused to implement reforms, and relations between the two countries deteriorated.Footnote ¹⁸ Although conservative governments were in power in both France and Britain at the time, it was British and French liberals who sympathized more with the ambitions of Armenian secular political elites for more representation. More generally, most European governments sympathized with the Armenians after the massacres perpetuated against them by Abdul Hamid's regime in the 1890s, yet no action was taken to prevent them at the time or in the future, with further massacres in 1909.Footnote ¹⁹ Nevertheless, British and French governments were able to create much public humanitarian feeling and action in support of Armenian refugees.Footnote ²⁰ For their part, Armenian political elites were influenced by British, French, and Russian political developments, but especially the revolutionary character of opposition groups in the latter.Footnote ²¹ But by the eve of the First World War, Armenian political elites, having set aside violent revolutionary approaches, were closer to the French and British, and European powers were locked in discussions with the Ottoman government, now led by the Committee of Union and Progress, on implementing reforms that would benefit Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.Footnote ²²

This helps explain the readiness of Armenian political elites to seek protection and to align themselves with the Russian, British, and French alliance during the First World War. Although some Armenians fought in the Ottoman army,Footnote ²³ others on the Russo-Ottoman border joined the Russians,Footnote ²⁴ while political elites in Europe and the US advocated a British Armenian Légion, which the British rejected in March 1915.Footnote ²⁵ Consequently, on 20 April 1915, Boghos Nubar requested to go to Paris to defend the interests of Ottoman Armenians because he wished to convince the French government of the need for the Entente to protect the Armenian population, through incorporating them into a Syria under French control.Footnote ²⁶ The British and French governments linked the protection of Ottoman Armenians with their own imperial interests in the eastern Mediterranean. Despite the many decades leading up to the Great War when such interests were cultivated informally (more formally in the British cases of Cyprus and Egypt), French and British imperial interests in the Ottoman Empire remained informal until well into 1916. The entry of the Ottoman Empire into the war did not result in the start of a serious military front in any of the areas where either the British or French had imperial interests. This was despite the fact that originally the plan was to force the Dardanelles by ships alone and, succeed or fail, land troops at Alexandretta. This was overlooked instead for landing troops on Gallipoli.Footnote ²⁷ Subsequently, the Armenian Genocide had no impact on British and French war strategy, as their withdrawal from Gallipoli took them to Salonika. Yet the Gallipoli failure did see them reconsider their traditional imperial interests on the Ottoman periphery in the eastern Mediterranean. But even then it took the best part of a year after the Gallipoli failure for the British and French to start focusing their military strength there, which helps explain the delays in forming the Légion d'Orient. The Armenians were pawns in the greater game of post-war French and British imperial expansion, and thus, as Rodogno has shown for the century before the Great War, humanitarianism, in this case in relation to the Armenian Genocide, was not the main motivation for the British and French to take the side of the Armenians by forming the Légion.

II

Boghos Nubar first proposed using Armenians as part of an Allied landing at Alexandretta in November 1914 in order to protect Cilician Armenians, who he feared would be massacred by the Ottomans in revenge for Armenians near the Russian border joining the Russian army.Footnote ²⁸ The landing at Alexandretta appealed to many British strategic planners, especially General Sir John Maxwell, commander-in-chief of the British forces in Egypt, Lord Kitchener, the war secretary, and Winston Churchill, the first lord of the Admiralty. But there were complications, such as the French demanding a role in a landing, and the unsuccessful attempt to force the Dardanelles with the navy alone on 18 March 1915.Footnote ²⁹ The original plan was to land troops at Alexandretta regardless of whether the forcing of the Dardanelles by the navy had succeeded or failed. But this plan was overlooked for landing troops at Gallipoli, upon the advice of the naval and army high command in charge of forcing the Dardanelles.Footnote ³⁰ In any event, the British government had rejected the formation of a Légion of Armenian volunteers on 9 March for various reasons, including:Footnote ³¹ the uncertainty over the Alexandretta landing; that they were cold about forming such Légions, having also rejected in 1915 CypriotFootnote ³² and Jewish Legion proposals;Footnote ³³ and as shown below, the British considered that the proposal would result in the killing of non-combatant Armenians, before and after the Genocide.

On the day (24 April) that the Ottoman government arrested leading Armenian elites in Constantinople, the day that Armenians commemorate the Armenian Genocide, Cecil Spring-Rice, the British ambassador to Washington, informed Sir Edward Grey, the British foreign secretary, that George Bakhmeteff, the Russian ambassador to Washington had told him that the Armenian National Defence Committee were offering to send 1,000 men via Canada to fight in operations in Cilicia and would pay for uniforms and passage to a Canadian port.Footnote ³⁴ The War Office would not entertain this or any other scheme and Spring-Rice was accordingly informed.Footnote ³⁵ The Foreign Office was equally opposed. In a minute on 28 April, Harold Eustace Satow opined: ‘I don't know what value from a military point of view an Armenian rising in Cilicia would have, but I feel little doubt that it would lead to the massacre of a large number of innocent Armenians.’Footnote ³⁶ Little, of course, did he know what had transpired four days earlier.

In any event, Grey informed the Colonial Office, which was being included in the discussion because the scheme involved training the Armenians on Cyprus, that he rejected it because ‘the Army Council have repeatedly expressed the view that half organised volunteer risings of this description would have little military value and that they should not be encouraged. There is also little doubt that such an expedition … would result in the massacre of many innocent Armenians.’Footnote ³⁷

Despite the Army Council rejecting the Armenian scheme to raise a contingent, various quarters pushed for one after the Ottoman extermination policy. In July 1915, the Armenian Committee of National Defence addressed a letter to General Maxwell in Egypt, calling on British military action on the Cilician coast in order to stop the massacres against the Armenians and that there were Armenian volunteers in Egypt willing to participate.Footnote ³⁸ About a week later, the Committee of Armenian National Defence reiterated their appeal to Maxwell, disclosing that a volunteer movement under their direction was developing in America and elsewhere. The committee recognized that it was useless for the Entente to now land at Cilicia as previously suggested, but it could not remain idle as reports of massacres continued to pour in. Modifying their earlier proposal, the committee now wanted to ‘concentrate a force in Cyprus and make landings at Mersina and, if strong enough, at Beilan’. If successful, these actions could paralyse Ottoman movements in Asia Minor. Once they had ‘disembarked a large force from Cyprus they would have no difficulty in holding the Taurus, Anti-Taurus and Amanus Mountains against the Turks, especially now that the latter are fully occupied with the Russians on the Caucasus and the Anglo-French in Gallipoli’. The committee was certain of 10,000 men now in Russia, Greece, Armenia, Bulgaria, and America, and all that it wanted was for British officers to train them on Cyprus.Footnote ³⁹

British officials in Egypt continued to show interest. Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Arthur Henry McMahon, the high commissioner in Egypt since January 1915, sent Lieutenant-Colonel Mark Sykes, a Conservative MP and a long time traveller to the Ottoman Empire, to consult with Armenian representatives in Cairo. There, on 2 August, he discussed the proposal with Vahan Malezian, a Cairo attorney and secretary to Boghos Nubar, and Mihran Damadian, a Hunchak and a leader of the Sassoun rebellion of 1892–4. Sykes informed Maxwell of the plan, which called for the raising of 5,000 Armenians, 1,500 of whom had fought in the Bulgarian and Ottoman armies, and the rest workers in the US, who would be trained on Cyprus to land on the northern Syrian coast, landing about 800 men to seize Suedieh and create disorder in the vicinity, with the rest forming bands of about fifty and landing at various points between Ayas and Piyas, pushing north towards Zeitun and Albistan, and there operate as comitajis (irregular fighting units) along Macedonian lines. From approval of the scheme, the force would be operational in eight weeks, so if approved on 15 August, operations would commence on 15 October, allowing the force to enter the mountains before the snow began. The Armenians only needed from the Allies arms, munitions, transport, and cover for their landing. Sykes opined that the concentration of such a force on Cyprus would be profitable even if held in reserve, ‘causing the enemy uneasiness as regards a vulnerable point, and might be useful as a feint to conceal other operations’. Sykes added that it would be better to give the Armenians something to do rather than have them become restless and perhaps divided. Also, the French would need to approve and could provide their contingent at the Dardanelles as an army of occupation of the Adana Vilayet if the scheme succeeded.Footnote ⁴⁰

The Russians, desirous of having another front in Anatolia or Syria to relieve pressures in Transcaucasia, pushed the British with a similar scheme put forward by Captain A. H. Torcom, a Bulgarian Armenian serving in the Russian army. Torcom visited George Buchanan, the British ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary at Petrograd, leaving with him his scheme for the organization of Armenian volunteers for service against the Ottoman Empire. Torcom claimed that he could recruit 8,000 men into ten battalions, and perhaps even 24,000 men into thirty battalions, through recruiting centres at Alexandria, Marseilles, Liverpool, and New York. The corps would be concentrated at Egypt and under the command of either the French or the British. Buchanan told Torcom that he sympathized with the scheme and its cause, but believed it would be hard to gather the volunteers and provide them with arms.Footnote ⁴¹

Despite Russian encouragement, the Ottoman extermination policy, and the military benefits outlined by the Armenian committee in Cairo and Torcom, the War Office stood firm in rejecting the schemes, a decision the Foreign Office supported.Footnote ⁴² Harold Nicolson at the Foreign Office minuted that

As for Torcom's proposal, the Army Council thought it ‘more practical’ than any of the others previously submitted, ‘but the results likely to be achieved … are not such … to justify His Majesty's Government in supporting the scheme in view of the difficulties that its adoption would entail, and of the Financial responsibilities in which it would involve this country’.Footnote ⁴⁴

The War and Foreign Offices had a number of reasons to oppose the formation of an Armenian Légion. In a ‘reverse-type’ of humanitarianism, their approach to preventing massacres was not to provoke the Ottomans or to embark upon a ‘humanitarian intervention’ in response to predicted massacres of ‘allies’ in the event of a landing. This takes further the cases explored by Rodogno across the century before the Great War started, where he shows how humanitarian intervention required both a favourable European political climate and one or more European powers believing that their interests, usually imperial, were at threat before intervening.Footnote ⁴⁵ Ultimately, this was a weak position, alongside the Armenian approach, which was to defend themselves against the inevitable through the formation of an Armenian Légion. In weighing up the idea, the British also determined that the investment in finance, materials, and training did not justify the potential results. These ‘potential results’ must be understood in two ways: defeating the Ottoman Empire and in post-war spoils (i.e. imperialism). Both British and German military personnelFootnote ⁴⁶ wrote after the war, so with the benefit of hindsight, that they were bewildered that the British and French had not attacked Alexandretta in 1915 because the area was an Ottoman point of weakness in so many ways, while British intelligence in the area was certainly aware of this.Footnote ⁴⁷ What was missing from the equation was the additional gains – war spoils and therefore imperialism – and these had not been considered let alone determined, while the area was as much a French interest as it was of British interest.

III

The British rejection of an Armenian Légion was further reflected in the British and French rejection of General Maxwell's plan to use the able-bodied Musa Dagh survivors to launch raids on Alexandretta, and in the subsequent French rejection of a French Armenian Légion.

The story of the Musa Dagh refugees, made famous in Franz Werfel's epic tale, warrants a separate article, yet for the purposes of this article it is necessary to establish how the refugees played an important part in why the French were approached to form the Légion in 1915 and rejected it, and the subsequent decision to establish the Légion d'Orient almost a year after in October 1916.Footnote ⁴⁸

Starting in July 1915, Musa Dagh (‘Moses Mountain’) was the site of an Armenian resistance to Ottoman extermination efforts. The inhabitants of the region, issued with deportation orders, fled to the mountain where they prepared a camp and defensive lines, and successfully thwarted several Ottoman assaults for fifty-three days. Just when defence was becoming impossible, they communicated with French warships patrolling the Syrian coast, which transported them to Port Said.Footnote ⁴⁹

The British authorities did not want the responsibility of looking after the Musa Dagh refugees and neither they nor the French knew what to do with them, until almost a year later when the men fit for military service formed the nucleus of the Légion d'Orient. On 10 September 1915, John Clauson, the high commissioner of Cyprus, telegraphed Andrew Bonar Law, the colonial secretary, that three days earlier Louis Dartige du Fournet, the French admiral on the Syrian coast, telegraphed him that 6,000 Armenians were bravely fighting the Ottomans at Musa Dagh. The admiral, replying to a distress signal, provided them with munitions and provisions, but the Armenians wanted the safe removal of about 5,000 women, children, and elderly to Cyprus. Fournet needed a reply by 11 September when he would head for Port Said. Yet, Clauson waited three days before sending his reply to London, a reply that also reached the French Foreign Ministry on that day, in which he bluntly wanted the admiral informed that

Both of Clauson's points were misplaced. The eventual introduction of the Légion into the Christian–Muslim mix of Cyprus did not see Christians (Cypriots and Armenians) ‘teaming-up’ against Muslims, instead exposed a peasant and labouring class still emerging out of a pre-modern Ottoman millet tradition with an identity based on religious affiliation, the village, and opposition to ‘outsiders’ (in this case Armenians), rather than ethnic or racial factors.Footnote ⁵¹ Clauson's other claim that the Armenians fighting at Musa Dagh were part of an insurrection, that is, part of one of the Armenian revolutionary groups that had now revolted, was also wrong. The Musa Dagh Armenians were resisting deportation,Footnote ⁵² and doing a good job of fighting the mutual Ottoman enemy.

General Maxwell believed this, writing to Kitchener that

Maxwell was bored with his role of providing training and supplies to troops destined for Gallipoli and Salonika (his transfer request was honoured in March 1916, whereupon he was posted to Ireland and notoriously put down the Easter Rebellion), so action closer to Egypt excited him. The War Office, not understanding the urgency of the situation, wanted more information because it disbelieved the number of Armenians holding off the Ottoman forces.Footnote ⁵⁴

With no answer on 11 September, Paul Cambon, the French ambassador to London, informed the Foreign Office that the admiral wanted to transport the refugees to Cyprus or Egypt, while on the same day Maxwell informed the War Office that the French admiral had already loaded the 5,000 refugees onto cruisers and that they should be taken to Cyprus or Rhodes.Footnote ⁵⁵ On 13 September, the Foreign Office debated where the 5,000 Armenian refugees should be taken, one minute stating that pressure should be exerted on Cyprus; then Grey minuted that both Cyprus and Egypt were out of the question.Footnote ⁵⁶ Finally, on 14 September, the Foreign Office informed Baron Bertie of Thame, the British ambassador to Paris, that the ‘importation of victims of insurrectionary fighting between Turks and Christians would in present state of feeling in both Cyprus and Egypt be wholly undesirable’, and that the French should arrange to take them to Rhodes or Algeria.Footnote ⁵⁷ In other words, the French should deal with them in Algeria, or the Italians in Rhodes. In the event, the French admiral, no doubt desirous of getting back to his work and relieving the refugees, disembarked them at Port Said, much to the annoyance of the Egyptian authorities, who insisted to London that this could only be temporary.Footnote ⁵⁸ Clearly, the French political and military authorities were in a weak position alongside their British allies, so much so that they attempted to accommodate the British position to relocate the refugees. They tried and failed to have them accepted in Rhodes, Algeria, Tunis, Morocco, and by the Russians in the Caucasus.Footnote ⁵⁹ This not only reflects the power of allies to influence policies, but also of local bureaucratic elites on the periphery to do so as well, even against their own central state authorities.Footnote ⁶⁰

While the British pushed the French to relocate the Armenians elsewhere and to take complete responsibility for them, General Maxwell proposed forming them into a fighting unit to raid the Syrian and Cilician coasts. On 19 September, a week after they had been dumped at Port Said, the French minister in Cairo (since 1910), Jules-Albert Defrance, informed Paris that a leader of the Musa Dagh resistance, Pierre (or Peter) Dimlekian, informed him that those in a condition to bear arms numbered 869 and were aged between fifteen and sixty, and about 500 of these would make good soldiers. Defrance informed his superiors that Maxwell had proposed forming an Armenian Légion, which could raid Ottoman coasts in the Alexandretta region, but Dimlekian preferred to fight with the French.Footnote ⁶¹ Paris wanted more information about Maxwell's plan and the refugees, so Defrance visited the camp on 22 September, where the Armenians were under British quarantine, and informed Paris that there were 4,083 in total: 912 men, 1,296 women, 697 boys, 547 girls, and 631 infants. He confirmed that 500 men were fit to fight and 300 to work. The Armenians told Defrance that they had resisted the Ottomans for over forty daysFootnote ⁶² and wanted to continue fighting the Turks. Defrance informed Paris that Maxwell had spoken to Dimlekian about the British using the Armenians to raid Alexandretta and that Defrance had told Dimlekian that the French and British were co-operating on this because the French were not competing with the British.Footnote ⁶³

Although Maxwell was interested in using the Musa Dagh Armenians to form a Légion, he was not interested in those that could not fight. Defrance and Maxwell proposed to their respective governments that the French would cover the expenses of the Armenian refugees and an Armenian Légion should be formed to launch raids on the Syrian and Cilician coasts.Footnote ⁶⁴ Soon, the various opinions on the formation of an Armenian Légion manifested. Lieutenant de Saint Quentin in Cairo opined that a raid by Armenians in the Alexandretta region would attract the Ottomans to the region and should therefore not be attempted so long as the French and British still had designs on the region.Footnote ⁶⁵ A member of the Foreign Ministry suggested forming a committee of Armenians to appeal for support from the Armenian diaspora, notably in the US, but the bottom line was that, like the British government, the French did not want to encourage a rebellion which did not have good prospects of success. Ultimately, however, both governments would decide together.Footnote ⁶⁶ Maxwell pushed for a decision because he wanted the refugees to leave as he worried they would become frustrated if they remained idle.Footnote ⁶⁷ Grey informed his French counterpart that the French were responsible for finding work for the refugees, and suggested work on the Gallipoli beaches.Footnote ⁶⁸ Théophile Delcassé, in one of his last acts as foreign minister, informed Cairo that he had agreed with Grey that the Armenian refugees should be sent as labourers to Mudros.Footnote ⁶⁹ Indeed a French military agent in Egypt attempted to recruit from the Musa Dagh refugees for service at Gallipoli and Mudros.Footnote ⁷⁰

Yet the voices supporting the formation of the Musa Dagh refugees into a combat unit were numerous. Arshag Hovhannes Tsobanian (or Chobanian), an Ottoman Armenian in Paris, and a famous writer, journalist, and editor, suggested to the Foreign Ministry that the refugees be formed into combat units, especially since, in his view, the Armenian struggle in Cilicia and the surrounding mountains was not lost.Footnote ⁷¹ Indeed, Defrance informed Paris that the Musa Dagh leaders did not want to work as labourers and they should not be treated like Ottoman prisoners or like Somalis employed at Mudros.Footnote ⁷² Then, Vice-Admiral Gabriel Darrieus, the new commander of the 3rd Squadron on the Syrian coast, weighed in, informing Paris that the Armenian refugees wanted revenge on the Turks, not to work as labourers. He favoured using them as combatants in their native region, particularly in a raid to cut Ottoman rail communications.Footnote ⁷³

But the voices of opposition weighed more heavily. The French Foreign Ministry and Defrance in Cairo thought establishing an Armenian Légion and using it to raid the Alexandretta area would be a bad idea and it was best to employ them at Mudros.Footnote ⁷⁴ Captain E. De Jonquires of the French navy, agreed, rejecting an Armenian corps of irregular troops because this might provoke the Turks, and although the Armenians may not like it, they should be pushed to work as labourers at Mudros.Footnote ⁷⁵ Cambon reported that the British and he were sceptical about encouraging an Armenian uprising in Cilicia because of Ottoman reprisals and were coming around to the idea of employing them at Mudros, well away from Egypt where they might cause mischief.Footnote ⁷⁶ The French War Ministry agreed, although worried about using the Armenians as labourers because of their ‘lack of aptitude’, the naval authorities were opposed to forming them into a fighting unit.Footnote ⁷⁷ The new French foreign minister and prime minister, Aristide Briand, agreed with the reservations over forming an Armenian Légion, which were also shared by Defrance, because it would merely provoke further Turkish massacres.Footnote ⁷⁸

Officially, however, it seems that the French authorities in Cairo were not informed of this decision. In December 1915, Defrance messaged Paris that the male Armenian refugees wanted to return to their mountains after being trained and armed and that if the government approved the French authorities in Egypt would arrange this.Footnote ⁷⁹

IV

One of the reasons given for rejecting an Armenian Légion in 1915 was that it would incite the Ottomans to implement more massacres, but this reason was overcome in January 1916. In a letter to the French military authorities in Egypt, the War Ministry instructed it to proceed with forming an Armenian Légion.Footnote ⁸⁰ Then, in a letter to members of the Armenian Defence Committee in Cairo, the British and French military representatives in Egypt agreed to form a Légion only if they would not be held responsible for more Ottoman massacres.

Based on this extraordinary condition, the Armenian committee was told that ‘the Allied Governments are prepared to form a Volunteer force from the Armenian refugees of Djebal Moussa and from such other Armenian Volunteers as may be sent in by the Committee’.Footnote ⁸²

The deal the Armenian National Committee was being asked to accept was unbalanced. The Allied governments would administer military training; provide arms, ammunition, accoutrements, and boots; and employ the volunteers ‘only in the districts of Cilicia and Lesser Armenia with which the Armenians are as natives familiar’. On the other hand, the Armenian committee was responsible for proving each volunteer with a ration allowance and pay totalling 3 PT (Egyptian Piastres) per diem; six trained men as sous-officers, funded by the committee; extra pay of 2 PT a day for volunteers given responsible positions; and material for clothing since not all the volunteers would wear uniforms. It is obvious from both the tone and the content of the letter that the French government had approved the detailed and specific proposals.Footnote ⁸³

Despite this change of heart, this time it was the Armenians who rejected the formation of a Légion. Defrance informed Paris that the matter of forming an Armenian force was in doubt because the Armenian National Defence Committee believed that activities by such a force would provoke dangerous Turkish reprisals. The Hunchak party, however, was pressing the French naval commander to hasten the arming of Armenians, but Vice-Admiral Moreau, commander of the 3rd Squadron, opposed using the Musa Dagh refugees in this way. Defrance, however, believed that the option should be open.Footnote ⁸⁴ The strongest opposition came from the most influential Armenian, Boghos Nubar. In a letter to Moreau on 22 March, he confirmed his position first taken on 8 March that he opposed any Armenian action that could lead to retaliations on Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, including the formation of a volunteer Légion. He argued that if Armenians wanted to fight, they should enlist with one of the Allies.Footnote ⁸⁵ In Nubar's letter, which Defrance sent to Briand, he expressed concern over the British training about 100 Musa Dagh Armenians in order to blow up railway bridges in Alexandretta and was relieved that the idea was abandoned after the Armenian bishop in Cairo and the Eastern Orthodox patriarch of Alexandria objected for fear of Ottoman reprisals.Footnote ⁸⁶ The concerns over retaliations must be understood within the context of the Genocide and its progress, since it implies that there were still some Armenians in the Ottoman Empire that had escaped it, but unlike six months earlier these Armenians were isolated and not in a position to be protected by an Entente landing with an Armenian contribution.

Nubar's rejection carried much weight, despite the obvious power imbalance alongside the French and British. Indeed, Defrance believed that the question of raising an Armenian Légion was finally closed.Footnote ⁸⁷ Then, seemingly, the final nail in the coffin came from the French War Ministry, which announced that French law forbade the enlistment of enemy nationals into the French army.Footnote ⁸⁸

V

It was not, however, the final nail in the coffin. The proposal was resurrected and agreed to in August 1916 by the commander-in-chief of the French army and the French government and officially agreed to by all parties concerned in October.

On 28 June 1916, the British Foreign Office informed its French counterpart that it had received a request to free Armenian prisoners of war held in India and wanted to know whether the French had any plans to use the Armenians in any way related to the war.Footnote ⁸⁹ Then, on 4 July, Cambon informed the Foreign Ministry that an idea was being examined to form an Armenian corps on Cyprus, at French expense, since a recent agreement ceded large parts of Armenia to France.Footnote ⁹⁰ Here lies the reason for the resurrection of the proposal to form an Armenian Légion, but before exploring this further it is important to complete the story. Over two weeks followed before Cambon updated the Foreign Ministry that Brigadier-General Gilbert Clayton, of the Arab Bureau in Cairo, in discussions with Georges-Picot, suggested that the Armenian refugees in Egypt and those imprisoned in India could be made into soldiers and grouped on Cyprus to dissuade the Ottomans from moving all their troops southwards against the sherif of Mecca. The British suggested that the Armenians be trained and armed by French officers, which Cambon thought would show French strength without enlarging their field of operations and control the Armenian partisans who might seek to create principalities in northern Syria. Also, it offered a solution as to what to do with the Musa Dagh refugees, who refused to take jobs or act as auxiliaries.Footnote ⁹¹

The resurrection of the idea to form an Armenian Légion was largely due to the Sykes–Picot Agreement. This was what Cambon meant when he mentioned the cession of Armenian populated territories to France in a recent agreement. When the Gallipoli expedition failed, resulting in Bulgaria joining the Central Powers, and when the British offer of Cyprus to Greece, in order for that country to aid Serbia immediately, also failed,Footnote ⁹² the British and the French (and indeed the Russians) needed to work together more closely. Consequently, they decided that they needed to focus on what their aims were in defeating the Ottoman Empire, and given Russian ambitions on Constantinople and Transcaucasia (reflected in a separate agreement with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Sazonov), French interests in Syria and Cilicia, and British interests in Egypt and Mesopotamia, it became obvious that the military effort needed to concentrate on where the British and French interests were. These interests were captured in the Sykes–Picot Agreement, negotiated and signed by François Georges-Picot for the French and Mark Sykes for the British on 16 May 1916. Sazonov played an important role in the agreement, since it was he who proposed to Picot that France obtain a share of Ottoman Armenia (i.e. Cilicia), which pleased Picot, who was ‘in the highest spirits over his new Castle in Armenia’.Footnote ⁹³ The Sykes–Picot Agreement divided the Ottoman vilayets from Adana to Basra into either direct or indirect (where an Arab state would be created) spheres of French or British control. Cilicia (mostly in the Adana vilayet) and neighbouring Ottoman vilayets with a substantial Armenian population would come under direct French control; with the other vilayets populated by Armenians coming under Russian protection.Footnote ⁹⁴ British and French imperial rivalry was suddenly reinvented and a new collaborative relationship was formed, linking the successful prosecution of the war with post-war imperial expansion.

Once French and British post-war imperial expansion was settled upon, it did not take long for them to embark upon a determined effort to form an Armenian Légion. On 1 August the commander-in-chief of the French army, General Joseph Joffre, accepted the proposal to form an Armenian Légion.Footnote ⁹⁵ Joffre agreed with General Pierre Roques, the minister of war, a close friend from their days at the École Polytechnique in the 1870s, that forming an Armenian Légion on Cyprus was an opportunity to threaten the Ottomans and allow the Allies to support a revolt against the Ottomans if desirable. If the Bosnian battalion at Salonika was an example, thirty officers would suffice, opined Joffre. Joffre wanted the Armenian corps to be ready to exploit any political situation in order to cause the Ottoman Empire insurmountable difficulties in this region, and so he wanted the Légion to be under a commander who was responsible to the rear-admiral commanding the Naval Division of Syria. He wanted an Armenian revolt and would direct the rear-admiral to supply them with arms, because ultimately it was in the interests of the Allies to keep Ottoman forces dispersed and engaged in Asia.Footnote ⁹⁶

The Foreign Ministry was anxious for the War Ministry to decide,Footnote ⁹⁷ and the affirmative decision from Roques came on 10 August.Footnote ⁹⁸ He told President Raymond Poincaré and Briand that he would be willing to supply personnel, arms, and provisions for an Armenian Légion on Cyprus, which could act either as ‘partisans’ or as one of several foreign battalions, constituted like the Bosnian battalion in regular units, receiving the same supplies as French troops. The second option would best maximize the investment and was therefore more economical, as Joffre indicated. Roques wanted to know if the British had agreed and was worried that there were not enough Musa Dagh refugees (on 1 May he was informed no more than 250) and their mediocre value had led the War and Naval Ministries to reject using them. He assumed, therefore, that the units formed would be drawn from the Armenian population in Egypt and India, and from the scattered individuals assembled from Asia Minor and Syria in various places. Roques wanted French officers sent to ascertain the conditions in which the first units would be created, with the head of this mission becoming the commander of the corps. He would have to reach an understanding with local British authorities, and with the rear-admiral commanding the French naval division, and then would have to submit to Roques his proposals for organizing the corps. If this was agreeable to the navy, the British, and Poincare and Briand, Roques would immediately send this mission to Cyprus.Footnote ⁹⁹

Four days later, the French Foreign Ministry informed Cambon that the War Ministry was ready to send a mission to Cyprus to organize an Armenian corps, following the suggestion of Brigadier-General Clayton, and wanted Cambon to ask Whitehall if it agreed and if so to inform the French on how many fit Armenians there were in Egypt and India who could join.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Cambon informed Grey but did not mention if the Légion would be trained by the British, the French, or both, putting it forward as a joint Anglo-French idea.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Sykes's minute was most revealing. He backed the scheme because it was a necessary corollary of the Sykes–Picot agreement and because it would propel Anglo-French military co-operation in the Levant.Footnote ¹⁰² Cambon did not ask if the British agreed to the Légion; instead, he asked how many militarily fit Armenians the British held. The War Office informed Grey that there were 400–500 in Egypt (Musa Dagh refugees) and another 179 prisoners of war in India, but how many were fit for combat and would consent to fight was unknown. The prisoners at Sumerpur, India, the India Office opined, would do well, having been taken from the Ottoman army in Mesopotamia. As for the Musa Dagh refugees in Egypt, the director of military intelligence, Major-General Macdonogh, believed that few had martial qualities, while he claimed that Brigadier-General Clayton was against the idea because they were not of good fighting material, contradicting French views of Clayton's position. A labour company was formed in Egypt from amongst the refugees for work on the defences of the canal, while Maxwell was considering using them as muleteers in Salonika to augment the Macedonian (Cypriot) Mule Corps.Footnote ¹⁰³ In any event, Sir Ronald Graham, of the Ministry of the Interior in Cairo, revealed that there were about 450 capable men at the Armenian refugee camp, but that he had failed to induce any to volunteer for the Macedonian Mule Corp or for a labour camp, and felt that compulsion might be needed.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

The Foreign Office replied to Cambon without stating that the British government had accepted or rejected the proposed scheme, although it implied that it had accepted it because it only encouraged it. The letter disclosed how many Armenians were under British authority and that Clauson had been requested to provide information on a camp.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

The initial Colonial Office view was neither negative nor positive. There was, a minute stated, ‘no reason why such a body should not be sent to Cyprus were it not that it might have very bad political results on the Moslem population of the Island who do not like Armenians’.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ This was a gross generalization. The Colonial Office decided to wait for Clauson's views before officially giving its own.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Clauson was a notoriously stubborn high commissioner: in October 1915, he had refused to inform the Greek and Turkish Cypriot political elites that the British government had formally offered to cede the island to Greece because he did not want to upset the ‘loyal Muslim’ elites;Footnote ¹⁰⁸ he had a difficult relationship with the military intelligence officers working on Cyprus and Egypt because they considered him too negligent on security and he considered the military intelligence officers too intrusive;Footnote ¹⁰⁹ and finally his rejection of the Musa Dagh refugees. This time, Clauson was obliging, informing Bonar Law that there were difficulties of sea and land transport and the necessity of importing many necessities at much expense and delay, and it was ‘advisable to minimise contact with the Cypriot Turks who are uneasy … For these reasons I would recommend that a secluded site in the north or east of the island be sought.’Footnote ¹¹⁰ Bonar Law informed Cambon that he agreed with Clauson on minimizing contact with the Cypriot Turks.Footnote ¹¹¹

The military and government authorities in Egypt had mixed views about the scheme. McMahon, Graham, and General Archibald Murray, commander-in-chief of the troops in Egypt, were pleased to be rid of the Musa Dagh refugees and that the force was not going to be trained in Egypt,Footnote ¹¹² but Murray stated that the British authorities were unable to provide equipment or training, so the French had to take all responsibility. He was also unhappy with Cyprus's selection as the training base: ‘I do not consider that Cyprus would be a desirable place in which to train these men but no doubt it will be possible to find some other locality which is in French occupation.’Footnote ¹¹³ Graham agreed, stating that ‘there seems no reason that we should undertake their training in Cyprus and I imagine that the authorities in Cyprus would not encourage any idea of the kind. The French now hold several islands in the eastern Mediterranean, which are equally, or almost equally, suitable for the purpose.’ Both Graham and Murray were wrong, as the French wanted Cyprus and Clauson had agreed, although he had never been asked to agree or disagree – as one Foreign Office minute put it, Clauson implied a ‘grudging acceptance’.Footnote ¹¹⁴

During September, the French remained apprehensive about the British position on an Armenian Légion on Cyprus. On 9 September, Defrance informed the Foreign Ministry that the French were training about 200 Armenian refugees in Port Said, but the British preferred to send them to Salonika as muleteers, although the British merely wanted to be rid of them. He wanted advice on whether the French government wanted them or not, and if the French wanted them whether they would pay the cost of keeping them and their families.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Colonel T. G. Hamelin, of the French General Staff second section Africa, learned that the British were opposed to using Cyprus and so the French should drop the idea, adding that the Armenians were not worth the money to compensate the British.Footnote ¹¹⁶ But then Defrance sent to Briand two documents detailing discussions on the ground between French and British officers over what to do with the Musa Dagh refugees that showed that a Légion under French command in Cyprus was feasible.Footnote ¹¹⁷ In Bremond's letter to Defrance he detailed the number of Musa Dagh refugees at Port Said, those fit for service, the training already undertaken, and the constructive discussions with two British officers, General Althem and Colonel Elgood, over using the Armenians.Footnote ¹¹⁸ Discussions between Defrance and McMahon showed that the British had found the Armenians difficult, and would be pleased to be rid of them.Footnote ¹¹⁹

It was not until 13 September that Cambon informed Briand that the British did not oppose the creation of an Armenian Légion, but wanted it camped in northern or eastern Cyprus where there were fewer Muslims. He also informed Briand on the number of Armenians under British control (in Egypt and India) who could form the nucleus of the corps.Footnote ¹²⁰ Although the proposal for a Légion was moving towards acceptance, a final decision had not yet been taken.

Meanwhile, the Musa Dagh refugees were growing restless. The French navy in the Mediterranean reported to the Naval Ministry that some Musa Dagh Armenians had protested to the minister of state, Denys Cochin, about being enrolled in the British army and asking to be employed as paid guides for the French in their country.Footnote ¹²¹ The letter, dated 11 September (but not sent to Briand until 11 October), thanked France for saving them from certain extermination and declared that they considered themselves under French protection. They had started military training, but it was stopped without explanation, and the British offered them work (i.e. as muleteers in Salonika), which did not match the assurances they were previously given (i.e. that they would fight the Ottomans on their home soil). They were now told that the planned operations (i.e. at Alexandretta) could have devastating consequences for Armenians still in the Ottoman Empire. Yet, they wanted to continue training to help France when it needed them to aid in reconquering their villages and Cilicia. They claimed that the British were threatening to send them to work on the Port Said roads, and although they have nothing against the British, they wanted the French to honour the assurance given when they were saved.Footnote ¹²² Defrance highlighted the restlessness of the Musa Dagh refugees to the Foreign Ministry on 22 September, asserting that a decision was vital because of friction with the British.Footnote ¹²³ Clearly, the role of local agency again came to the fore, since the actions (or inaction from a British view point) of the Musa Dagh refugees in Egypt frustrated the British in Egypt into becoming the strongest advocates for their formation into the Légion.

Finally, on 23 September, the office of the chief of General Staff, General Pierre-Georges Duport, informed Briand that London had finally consented to the formation of a French–trained Armenian corps in northern or eastern Cyprus (letter received from French Military attaché in London dated 15 September). The problem was that there were only about 200 refugees in Port Said available and the French vice-admiral had agreed to their employment as muleteers by the British in Egypt or Salonika. Duport was sending Commandant Louis Romieu, an infantry officer, to Egypt to resolve the situation with the British.Footnote ¹²⁴ Subsequently, Duport added that the corps may be recruited from Armenians outside Egypt as well.Footnote ¹²⁵

The French authorities in Egypt, who were not updated on the latest developments, observed a change in the British. Saint-Quentin informed the Foreign Ministry that British authorities were willing to leave employment of the Armenians to the French, so long as they and their families were removed from Egypt.Footnote ¹²⁶ Defrance and the French military attaché in Egypt informed the Foreign Ministry that General Murray was fed up with the Armenians because they had refused to serve as muleteers and had failed as labourers, so he would be relieved if the French took responsibility for all of them, including their families.Footnote ¹²⁷ Briand, referring to a further letter by Bremond on the subject, informed Roques that it was vital to form the Légion to end British and Armenian frustration.Footnote ¹²⁸

In October, the project gathered momentum. On 2 October, Duport informed Briand that Romieu had left for Egypt to start recruiting and finalize discussions with the British. Defrance suggested that the French government could reimburse the British for the costs of looking after the Musa Dagh refugees (30,000 francs a month) over the last year and take on the expense of caring for the women, children, and elderly.Footnote ¹²⁹ Finally, on 14 October, the Foreign Office officially informed Cambon that there was no objection to releasing any of the men in the refugee camp to form the Légion on Cyprus.Footnote ¹³⁰ Egypt, however, was not informed about the official decision. McMahon asked the Foreign Office for answers after two French officers visited him about transporting the Armenians to Cyprus.Footnote ¹³¹ Although the Foreign Office had consented to the French government, it had not been informed of French procedures to transport and train the Armenians on Cyprus.Footnote ¹³² As late as 15 October, Defrance had informed the Foreign Ministry that he had word that Murray opposed Cyprus as the training base.Footnote ¹³³ On that day, however, Romieu met Murray and they agreed for the Légion to be trained on Cyprus, but Murray would await approval from the War Office and Clauson.Footnote ¹³⁴ On 19 October, Cambon informed the Foreign Ministry that London had informed its authorities in Egypt to facilitate departure of Armenians to Cyprus.Footnote ¹³⁵ Indeed, Grey informed Egypt that the French had appointed Romieu to arrange with the Egyptian authorities for the transportation of the militarily fit Armenian refugees to Cyprus for training.Footnote ¹³⁶ The British military in Egypt, however, would only comply if the War Office, which Grey had kept in the dark, approved.Footnote ¹³⁷ Eventually, the Foreign Office informed the War Office of its decision.Footnote ¹³⁸ Meanwhile, arrangements were also made for the British to transport the Armenian prisoners of war in India to Cyprus,Footnote ¹³⁹ earning the ire of one Colonial Office minion: ‘I am not impressed with this method of raising troops.’Footnote ¹⁴⁰ The French government was so pleased with the British government that Cambon asked the British also to send to Cyprus the 250 Armenian prisoners of war near Bombay. The Foreign Office agreed, informing the authorities in Egypt that the Armenian patriarch was travelling to India to ‘persuade them to enrol themselves under French flag’.Footnote ¹⁴¹ For the British, the French Armenian Légion was a joint Allied project, as was inadvertently stated by the Foreign Office to the India Office.Footnote ¹⁴²

The final arrangements were left to Clauson and Romieu in Cyprus, again reflecting the important role of local agents and men on the ground. Defrance informed the Foreign Ministry that the British Foreign Office had finally telegraphed Clauson that Armenians would go to Cyprus.Footnote ¹⁴³ Indeed, a letter dated 24 October 1916 reveals that the Cyprus government informed Romieu that a site had been found at Monarga, a Muslim Cypriot hamlet (despite earlier concerns about interaction with Cypriot Muslims) sixteen miles north of Famagusta, and near Boghaz, an Orthodox Christian hamlet, at the base of the Karpass Peninsula.Footnote ¹⁴⁴ Three weeks passed, before Clauson telegraphed Bonar Law with this fact, where he also revealed that the first Armenians would arrive by the end of November.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ Romieu informed his superiors of his meeting with Clauson on 28 October, with the only outstanding question remaining that of transporting and settling the non-combatants on Cyprus.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ The final question for the British was secrecy. The Colonial Office ordered Clauson to keep a ‘strict watch’ on the correspondence from Cyprus with a ‘view to suppressing reference to the Armenian Corps at Monarga’. Accordingly, John Fenn, the acting chief secretary, ordered the military authorities on the island to suppress references to the Armenian corps.Footnote ¹⁴⁷

The Colonial Office was concerned at the establishment of the French Armenian camp in Cyprus. W. D. Ellis, a secretary in the Colonial Office who had first dealt with Cyprus in 1904, claimed that ‘you cannot bring some thousands of Armenians to Cyprus without the Government being injured in the matter’, especially because the Armenians were unpopular with both Greeks and Turks – again projecting an observation of Anatolian ‘politics’ onto Cyprus, where Armenians were a small minority.Footnote ¹⁴⁸ He hoped that Clauson would ‘prevent any difficulties arising’.Footnote ¹⁴⁹

Lastly, there remained convincing Boghos Nubar Pasha, who had been left out of the decision-making process until October. In Paris, on 2 October 1916, Nubar was informed about the establishment of the Légion d'Orient and Romieu's appointment as commander. Romieu's aim, Nubar postulated, was ‘the training of a group of military and non-military volunteers for a possible expedition to Asia Minor’. Nubar believed that the force could be used in two possible expeditions: in northern Syria to aid rebels of the sherif of Mecca, or in the allied campaign in the Balkans. He was confident that the Allies would land troops in Syria and Cilicia, and so the Armenian volunteers would become civilian administrators. He estimated that 1,000–2,000 volunteers would be raised, who would serve in a larger Allied contingent. The existence of the force, Nubar worried, had to remain a secret because the Ottoman and German justification for the deportation and subsequent extermination of the Ottoman Armenians was their enlistment in Allied armies.Footnote ¹⁵⁰ The French Foreign Ministry believed that Nubar wanted a guarantee that Cilicia would be separated from Syria, and that Armenians would have religious freedom in Cilicia. The anonymous writer also thought it important to French influence in Asia Minor to employ Armenians, and recommended that Romieu be authorized to recruit more Armenians in Egypt.Footnote ¹⁵¹ Then, a member of the French War Ministry in Egypt weighed in, arguing that several months before, after the success of the Russian army in the Caucasus, Armenian elites had hoped for an autonomous region under the czar, including some Ottoman Armenian territories, but now they understood that more of them could be under French rule. Therefore, France should promise this in order to recruit as many Armenians from across the world as possible. The author was assured that Boghos Nubar and his supporters would aid Romieu's efforts to enrol Armenians.Footnote ¹⁵²

Returning to the beginning of this article, over three years later, in December 1919, Nubar in a memorandum on the Armenian Légion, disclosed that on 24 October 1916, in the French embassy in London, he met for the first time Georges-Picot in the presence of Sykes, and was shown the Sykes–Picot Agreement. From this agreement, and that with Russia, Nubar believed that Armenia would be divided into two parts after the war: one composed of the eastern vilayets of Van, Erzerum, Bitlis, Dersim, and Trabzon, under Russian control, and the second part Cilicia and the three western vilayets of Sivas, Kharput, and Diayarbekir, under French authority. By December 1919, Russia had been Bolshevik for two years, and the Russian Armenians, led by Dashnak leaders, had established a precarious independent republic in Transcaucasia. Ostensibly, Russian Armenia had become independent, but in order to survive it needed support from a great power that opposed both Bolshevism and any Ottoman/Turkish resurgence. Nubar recalled that Georges-Picot asserted that the French would be willing to grant autonomy to the Armenians under their control, but ‘the Armenians should earn the right to the liberation of their fatherland, by providing volunteers for a planned expedition in Asia Minor’.Footnote ¹⁵³ Accordingly, it was agreed to form the Légion d'Orient, with the three particulars outlined at the beginning of this article.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ Thus Nubar had been brought on side.

VI

This article has tapped into various historiographies in order to answer the complex question of why and how the Légion d'Orient was formed in October 1916. These historiographies included: French and British imperialism in the eastern Mediterranean; the French and British war effort and war spoils at the expense of the Ottoman Empire; French and British interventions in the Ottoman Empire and responses to the Armenian Genocide; and Armenian efforts to avenge the Genocide and forge a safe homeland. Overall, the French, British, and Armenians had different agendas, yet exhibited a similar cautious attitude to bringing to fruition these different aims, as shown by the various rejections of the formation of an Armenian Légion, until, for the French and British, they had determined on the war spoils in the Sykes–Picot Agreement of May 1916.

The eventual formation of an Armenian Légion under French auspices in October 1916 reflected in every way the differing agendas of the three parties involved, as well as French and British determination to form it after the Sykes–Picot Agreement. For the French, the Légion allowed them to contribute manpower to a military theatre of imperial importance where otherwise they could not, because troops were preoccupied fighting elsewhere, especially the western front. This theatre was of growing importance because both the French and the British had imperial designs on the Ottoman Empire once defeated, and in the French case they planned to use the Armenians not only as ‘proxies’ to ‘liberate’ their homeland but as part of the army of occupation after. The formation of the Légion also benefited the British. They were relieved of Armenians in their care in Egypt and India, which was becoming a ‘nuisance’ for local officials. Secondly, it allowed them to accept the French as ‘partners’ in the campaign in the Middle East by adding – it was hoped once trained – French troops, without the British expending any resources, with the exception of space for training them in Cyprus. For Armenian political elites, it was initially a defence against what they believed would be Ottoman massacres in revenge for Armenians joining the Russian army in the Caucasus, and what they hoped would lead to Armenian autonomy, and certainly at the time of accepting it, the lure of a safe homeland under French protection was too great.

It is important to understand that in order to achieve the formation of the Légion d'Orient, a significant hurdle was overcome, namely the traditional British and French imperial rivalry in the eastern Mediterranean. This was reinvented to bring about a greater ‘French’ military contribution to the Middle East theatre (via the Armenian volunteers), and as evidenced by the Sykes–Picot Agreement, the British were willing to accept a formal French empire in portions of three (Sivas, Harput, and Diyarbakir) of the so-called six Armenian vilayets, parts of Adana vilayet, and the Syrian coast, not because they were not interested in these areas themselves, because they were certainly interested in Alexandretta, but because this territory was of less interest to them than Mesopotamia and Palestine. If this territory had been of prime imperial interest to the British they would have accepted to undertake the Armenian Légion scheme when first proposed in late 1914 or during 1915. Moreover, by providing the French with the use of Cyprus, which had been under British occupation and administration since 1878 and annexed in 1914, as well as facilitating the recruitment of Armenian men for the Légion from Egypt and India, the British were aiding the French in achieving their imperial ambitions in the eastern Mediterranean, which, although tied to the war effort, could threaten existing British imperial interests in Cyprus and Egypt, and new ones in Mesopotamia and Palestine.

It is also important to understand the complex power balances at play. Although the Armenian political elites were able to once reject the formation of the Légion early in 1916, they had done so by drawing upon the exact reason the British and French had given to reject it in 1915 – the likely Ottoman massacres against Armenians and thus on humanitarian grounds that could not be questioned. The Armenians were clearly in the weaker position, having failed to convince the British and French to form the Légion in 1915, while not being able to resist its formation once the great powers had become determined to form it late in 1916, especially since there were by now few Armenians left in the Ottoman Empire. Furthermore, the Armenian desire to forge a safe and secure homeland was reliant on French imperialism, which was dependent, as discussed above, largely on British military prowess in the Middle East. What kind of Armenian autonomy would the French grant the Armenians – who are being asked to fight for it – when according to the Sykes–Picot Agreement Cilicia and its surrounding areas were to come under formal French imperial control? The French (and British) were using the Armenians for their own post-war imperial agenda(s), reflecting the obvious power imbalance, and humanitarianism, in response to the Genocide, was merely an afterthought, if that, since the Légion remained a public secret. In this way, this episode of humanitarianism clashing with imperialism resembles some of the examples discussed in Rodogno's book. The fact that the French pulled out of their deal with the Armenians in 1920 (a subject deserving revisiting elsewhere) indicates the weakness of their humanitarian impulse as much as their weak imperial impulse and imperial capabilities at the end of the long nineteenth century.