The Force Publique (; ) was the military of the Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo from 1885 to 1960. It was established after Belgian Army officers travelled to the Free State to found an armed force in the colony on Leopold II of Belgium's orders. The Force Publique was heavily involved in atrocities in the Congo Free State, and also saw action in the Congo Arab war, World War I and World War II. It was renamed to the Congolese National Army in July 1960 after Congo gained independence from Belgian colonial rule.
Establishment The Force Publique was initially conceived in 1885 when Leopold II of Belgium, who established the Congo Free State as his private colony, ordered the Belgian Secretary of the Interior to create a military for the Free State. Soon afterwards, in early 1886, Captain Léon Roget (of the Belgian Army's Regiment of Carabiniers) was sent to the Congo with orders to establish the force. A few months later, on 17 August, he was promoted to "Commandant of the Force Publique".Rudi Geudens, Force Publique: Organisation (1885–1918), accessed October 2011 A number of other Belgian officers and non-commissioned officers were also dispatched to the territory as the nucleus of the officer corps. The officers of the Force Publique were entirely European. They comprised a mixture of Belgian regular soldiers and mercenaries from other countries who were drawn by the prospect of wealth or simply attracted to the adventure of service in Africa.
Under the Congo Free State
To command his Force Publique, Leopold II was able to rely on a mixture of volunteers (regular officers detached from the Belgian Army), mercenaries and former officers from the armies of other European nations, especially those of Scandinavia, Italy and Switzerland. To these men, service in the Congo Free State offered military experience, adventure and—as they saw it—an opportunity to participate in a humanitarian endeavour. From 1885 to 1908 the officer corps consisted of hundreds of Belgians and dozens of Scandinavians, with smaller numbers recruited from other nations.Gann, Lewis H.; Duignan, Peter (1979). The Rulers of Belgian Africa, 1884–1914. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 60. .
Serving under these European officers was an ethnically mixed African soldiery, who eventually became comparable to the askaris fielded by other European colonial powers. Many were recruited or conscripted from “warrior tribes” in the Upper Congo, others were mercenaries drawn from Zanzibar and West Africa (Nigerian Hausas). The role required of the Force Publique was that of both defending Free State territory and of internal pacification.John Keegan, page 822 World Armies, In the 1890s, the Force Publique defeated the African and Arab slavers in the course of the Congo Arab war (1892–1894), which resulted in tens of thousands of casualties. In 1896, an expedition of several hundred Force Publique soldiers entered the territory of the Kingdom of Rwanda in an attempt to claim the area for the Congo Free State, setting up a camp at Shangi. This operation culminated in the Battle of Shangi, with the Force Publique winning a major victory over the Rwandan royal army. Regardless, the Force Publique subsequently withdrew due to internal problems as well as diplomatic pressure by the German Empire.
As time went on, the Force Publique began to increasingly recruit and to rely on Belgian officers and native Congolese soldiers, so that the white and black foreign mercenaries had been mostly phased out by 1908.
Atrocities
Under Leopold II the Force Publique was described as an "exceptionally brutal army". One major purpose of the Force was to enforce the rubber quotas and other forms of forced labour. Armed with modern weapons and the chicote—a bull whip made of hippopotamus hide—soldiers of the FP often took and mistreated hostages. Reports from foreign missionaries and consular officials detail a number of instances where Congolese men and women were flogged or raped by soldiers of the Force Publique, unrestrained by their officers and NCOs. They burned villages they viewed as recalcitrant. There is evidence, including photographs, that FP soldiers cut off human hands, either as trophies, or to show that bullets had not been wasted,Thomas Pakenham, page 600 "The Scramble for Africa", or (by cutting off the limbs of children) to punish parents viewed as not working hard enough in the rubber plantations.
During the Free State period, the Force Publique suffered from institutional problems. During the early years of the force, mutinies of black soldiers occurred several times. By the early 1890s, much of the eastern portion of the Free State was under the control of Arab ivory and slave traders (though the Government was able to re-establish control over the east by the mid-1890s).Thomas Pakenham, pages 29–33 and 394-6 "The Scramble for Africa", Organizational problems were also quite prevalent during the Free State era. With many Force Publique detachments being stationed in remote areas of the territory, some officers took to using soldiers under their control to further private economic agendas rather than focusing on military concerns. By the end of 1891, the force had 60 officers, 60 non-commissioned officers, and 3,500 black soldiers. Friendly tribes and militias were often used to help exert control over the outermost parts of the Free State. By 1900, the Force Publique numbered 19,000 men.
Under the Belgian Congo
Organisation and role
Following the takeover of the Free State by the Belgian government in 1908, the new authorities reorganised the Force Publique. This process was rather slow, however, and was only completed during the First World War. Though the new Belgian administration was "more enlightened" than its predecessor, it still tried to keep the cost of the colonial army low. As result, the proportion of commissioned Belgian officers to askaris (about one to a hundred) was very low by the standards of most colonial armies of this period. The weaponry of the Force Publique also remained mostly outdated due to the tight budgetary constraints on the colonial administration. Most askaris were armed with single shot 11 mm Albini-Braendlin rifles, though the white cadres and units in Katanga were given better Mauser Model 1889 rifles. Other weapons included Maxim machine guns, smaller numbers of Madsen machine guns, Nordenfelt 4.7 cm and Krupp 7.5 cm cannons.
The uniforms of the old Free State remained in use among the Force Publique until the First World War: Belgian officers wore white uniforms until late 1914, while the blue uniform (with red trim around the neck and down the front opening), red fez and sash of the askaris was phased out in a series of changes during 1915–1917. Thereafter, officers and askaris wore a variety of khaki uniforms.
In 1914 the Force Publique was organised into 21 separate companies (originally numbered but later known only by their names) each between 225 and 950 men strong, along with an artillery and an engineers unit. The entire force numbered over 12,100 men. The companies were as follows: Aruwimi, Bangala, Bas-Congo, Cateracts, Équateur, Ituri, Kasai, Kwango, Lac Léopold II, Lualaba, Lulongo, Makrakas, Makua-Bomokandi, Ponthiérville, Rubi, Ruzizi-Kivu, Stanley Falls, Stanley Pool, Ubangi, and Uele-Bili. There were also six recruit training camps containing an additional 2,400 men.
The separate companies comprising the Force Publique eventually grew to over 600 men each. Their constituent units, known as detachments, were so widely scattered that the force had no real military value. Rather the bulk of these sub-units consisted of small garrisons in fixed locations, with local policing functions. It was intended that each administrative company form a Compagnie Marche of 150 men. Each Marche or field company was intended to have four Belgian officers and NCOs plus between 100 and 150 askaris. In principle, companies comprised two or three 50-man platoons. There were supposed to be enough companies to form three Marche battalions. Eight Congolese soldiers were promoted to NCO.
The 2,875 men of the Troupes du Katanga constituted a semi-autonomous force of six companies: four de marche and two other infantry, plus a cyclist company and a battalion headquarters.
Lastly, there was the Compagnie d'Artillerie et de Génie (Artillery and Engineers Company) manning Fort de Shinkakasa at the mouth of the Congo River in Boma. The fort contained eight 160mm guns manned by 200 men, plus an equal-sized auxiliary force, which saw little or no service during the war.
World War I
In 1914, the Force Publique, including the Katanga companies, totalled about 17,000 askaris with 178 white officers and 235 white NCOs. The majority served in small static garrisons called poste with primarily a police role. With the outbreak of the First World War, the Katangese units were organised in battalions (Ie, IIe, and IIIme) for military service in Northern Rhodesia and the eastern frontier districts of the Belgian Congo. The Force Publique was able to assemble another battalion from smaller units; originally called the IIIe, but changed to the 11e to avoid confusion with the Katanga IIIme battalion.
During the First World War (1914–1918), an expanded Force Publique served against German colonial forces in Kamerun and German East Africa (Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi), as part of the East African campaign. The Force Publique performed well on the battlefield, winning the respect of their British and Portuguese allies, as well as that of their German opponents.
From 1916 onwards, the Force Publique grew to reach a strength of three mobile Groupes (brigades), Kivu, Ruzizi, and Tanganyika, comprising a total of 15 battalions, from the static garrison and police force of 1914. However, it did take until late 1915 for the Force Publique to finish preparations for a large scale offensive on German East Africa. The allied powers, the British Empire and Belgium, launched a coordinated attack on the German colony; by 1916 the Belgian commander of the Force Publique, Lieutenant-General Charles Tombeur, had assembled an army of 15,000 men supported by local bearers and advanced to Kigali. Kigali was taken by 6 May 1916. The German army stationed in Urundi was forced to retreat by the numerical superiority of the Belgian army, and by 17 June 1916, Ruanda-Urundi was occupied. The Force Publique and the British Lake Force then started a thrust to capture Tabora, an administrative centre of central German East Africa. The army went on to take Tabora on 19 September after heavy fighting.WWI in Africa , be14-18.be At the time of the Battle of Tabora in September 1916, about 25,000 men were under arms; during the war their actions were supported by more than 260,000 local bearers. In 1916, Tombeur was made Military Governor of the Belgian Occupied East African Territories. After the Mahenge offensive and the capture of Mahenge in 1917, the Belgian Congolese army controlled roughly one-third of German East Africa.
Interwar period After the First World War, as outlined in the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was forced to cede "control" of the Western section of the former German East Africa to Belgium. On 20 October 1924, Ruanda-Urundi (1924–1945), which consisted of modern-day Rwanda and Burundi, became a League of Nations mandate territory under Belgian administration, with Usumbura as its capital.Strachan, H. (2001). The First World War: To Arms. I. New York: Oxford University Press. .