Editing French Foreign Legion (section)

====Second Madagascar Expedition 1894–1895====
{{Main|Second Madagascar expedition}}

In 1895, a battalion formed by the First and Second Foreign Regiments was sent to the [[Merina Kingdom|Kingdom of Madagascar]] as part of an expeditionary force whose mission was to conquer the island. The foreign battalion formed the backbone of the column launched on [[Antananarivo]], the capital of Madagascar. After a few skirmishes, Queen [[Ranavalona III]] promptly surrendered.<ref name="books.google.com">{{cite book| author=Philip D. Curtin| title=Disease and Empire: The Health of European Troops in the Conquest of Africa| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jVRF8hDyhpgC&pg=PA186| date=
1998| publisher=Cambridge University Press| isbn=978-0-521-59835-4| page=186}}</ref><ref>''Cambridge history of Africa'', p. 530</ref> The Foreign Legion lost 226 men, only a tenth of whom died during actual combat. Others, like much of the expeditionary force, died from tropical diseases.<ref name="books.google.com"/> Despite the success of the expedition, the quelling of sporadic rebellions would take another eight years until 1905, when the island was completely pacified by the French under [[Joseph Gallieni]].<ref name="books.google.com" /> During that time, insurrections against the Malagasy Christians of the island, missionaries and foreigners were particularly terrible.<ref>{{cite book| author=Herbert Ingram Priestly| title=France Overseas: A Study Of Modern Imperialism, 1938| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BOopmtvrsOAC&pg=PA308| date=1967| publisher=Routledge| isbn=978-0-7146-1024-5| page=308}}</ref> Queen [[Ranavalona III]] was deposed in January 1897 and was exiled to [[Algiers]] in Algeria, where she died in 1917.<ref>[[Musée de l'Armée]] exhibit, Paris</ref>