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National Order of the Legion of Honour Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur
Officier medal of the French Légion d'honneur
Awarded by France
Type	Order with five degrees
Awarded for	Excellent civil or military conduct delivered, upon official investigation
Status	Open since 1802
Statistics
Established	19 May 1802
First awarded	14 July 1804
Distinct recipients	Knight: 74,384 Officer: 17,032 Commander: 3,009 Grand Officer: 314 Grand Cross: 67 Grand Master: 1
Precedence
Next (higher)	None
Next (lower)	Ordre de la Libération
250px Ordre de la Légion d'honneur streamer Grand'croix Grand Officier Commandeur Officier Chevalier Ribbon bars of the order

The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour (French: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur)^[1] is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802. The Order is the highest decoration in France and is divided into five degrees: Chevalier (Knight), Officier (Officer), Commandeur (Commander), Grand Officier (Grand Officer) and Grand Croix (Grand Cross).

The order's motto is Honneur et Patrie ("Honour and Fatherland"), and its seat is the Palais de la Légion d'Honneur on the left bank of the River Seine in Paris.^[2]

History[link]

Consulat[link]

In the French Revolution all French orders of chivalry were abolished, and replaced with Weapons of Honour. It was the wish of Napoleon Bonaparte, the First Consul and de facto sole ruler, to create a reward to commend civilians and soldiers and from this wish was instituted a Légion d'Honneur,^[3] a body of men that was not an order of chivalry, for Napoleon believed France wanted a recognition of merit rather than a new system of nobility. The Légion used however the organization of old French Orders of Chivalry, like the Ordre de Saint-Louis. The badges of the legion do bear a resemblance to the Ordre de Saint Louis, which also used a red ribbon.

Napoleon, as emperor, always wore the cross and Grand Eagle of the Légion d'Honneur

The Légion was loosely patterned after a Roman Legion, with legionaries, officers, commanders, regional "cohorts" and a grand council; and the Emperor angrily rebuked anyone who called this institution an order. The highest rank was not a grand cross but a grand aigle (great eagle), a rank that wore all the insignia common to grand crosses. The members were paid, the highest of them extremely generously:

• 5,000 francs to a grand officier,
• 2,000 francs to a commandeur,
• 1,000 francs to an officier,
• And 250 francs to a légionnaire.

First remittance of the Légion d'Honneur, 15 July 1804, at Saint-Louis des Invalides, by Jean-Baptiste Debret (1812).

According to some sources Napoleon declared: "You call these baubles, well, it is with baubles that men are led....Do you think that you would be able to make men fight by reasoning. Never. That is only good for the scholar in his study. The soldier needs glory, distinctions, and rewards."^[4] This has been often quoted as "It is with such baubles that men are led."

The order was the first modern order of merit. The orders of the monarchy were often limited to Roman Catholics and all knights had to be noblemen. The military decorations were the perks of the officers. The Légion, however, was open to men of all ranks and professions. Only merit or bravery counted. The new legionnaire had to be sworn in the Légion.

It is noteworthy that all previous orders were crosses or shared a clear Christian background, whereas the Légion is a secular institution. The jewel of the Légion has five arms.

First Empire[link]

Napoleon Bonaparte's awarding some of the first Légions d'honneur' on 16 August 1804 at the camp of Boulogne

In a decree issued on the tenth Pluviose XIII (30 January 1805), a grand decoration was instituted. This decoration, a cross on a large sash and a silver star with an eagle, became known as the Grand Aigle, and later in 1814 as the grand cordon (French for "large sash"). After the reestablishment of the nobility in 1808, award of the Légion gave right to the title of "Knight of the Empire" (chevalier de l'empire). The title was made hereditary after three generations of grantees.

Napoleon had dispensed 15 golden collars of the legion among his family and his senior ministers. This collar was abolished in 1815.

Although research is made difficult by the loss of the archives, it is known that three women who fought with the army were decorated with the order: Virginie Ghesquière, Marie-Jeanne Schelling and a nun, Sister Anne Biget.^[5]

The Légion d'honneur was prominent and visible in the empire. The Emperor always wore it and the fashion of the time allowed for decorations to be worn most of the time. The king of Sweden therefore refused the order; it was too common in his eyes. Napoleon's own decorations were captured by the Prussians and were displayed in the Zeughaus (armoury) in Berlin until 1945. Today, they are in Moscow.

Restoration of the Bourbon Kings in 1814[link]

Insignia with figure of Henry IV

Certificate

Louis XVIII changed the appearance of the order, but it was not abolished. To have done so would have angered the 35,000 to 38,000 members. The images of Napoleon and his eagle were removed and replaced by the image of King Henry IV, the popular first king of the Bourbon line. Three Bourbon Lilies (fleur-de-lys) replaced the eagle on the reverse of the order. A king's crown replaced the imperial crown. In 1816 the grand cordons were renamed grand crosses and the legionnaires became knights. The king decreed that the commandants were now commanders. The Légion became the second order of knighthood of the French monarchy, after the Order of the Holy Spirit.

July Monarchy[link]

France's first constitutional monarch, King Louis-Philippe of the House of Orleans, restored the order of the Légion d'honneur in 1830 as the paramount decoration of the French nation. The insignia were drastically altered. The cross now displayed tricolour flags. Louis-Philippe abolished the other orders of the monarchy. In 1847, there were 47,000 members.

Second Republic[link]

Yet another revolt in Paris (1848) brought a new republic and a new design to the Légion d'honneur. A nephew of the founder, Prince Napoleon was elected president and he restored the image of his uncle on the crosses of the order. In 1852 the first recorded woman, Angélique Duchemin, an old revolutionary of the 1789 uprising against the absolute monarchy, was admitted into the order. President Napoleon staged a coup d'état and made himself emperor of the French in 1852.

Second Empire[link]

An Imperial crown was added. During Napoleon III's reign the first American was admitted: Dr. Thomas Wiltberger Evans, dentist of Napoleon III.

Third Republic[link]

In 1870 the defeat of the army in the Franco-Prussian war brought another Republic. As France changed, the Légion d'honneur changed as well. The crown was replaced by a laurel and oak wreath. In 1871, during the Paris Commune, the Hôtel de Salm, headquarters of the Légion, was burned to the ground in street fighting; the archives of the order were lost.

In the second term of Jules Grévy, newspaper journalists brought to light the trafficking of Grévy's son-in-law, Daniel Wilson, in the awarding of decorations of the Légion d'Honneur. Grévy was not accused of personal participation in these scandals, but he was slow to accept his indirect responsibility, which caused his eventual resignation on 2 December 1887.

During the First World War, some 55,000 decorations were conferred, 20,000 of which to foreigners. The large number of decorations results from the new posthumous awards authorised in 1918. Traditionally membership in the Légion could not be awarded posthumously.

Current organisation and officers[link]

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