cavalrymen

According to Wikipedia, a Spahi is a "light cavalry regiments of the French army recruited primarily from the indigenous populations of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco." (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spahi)

I think this is actually Le Francport, a small village in the vicinity of the other October, 1914 French battle pictures in the Bain Collection. Also sometimes written as Le Franc-Port. (It was ultimately the site of the armistice in 1918 and the surrender of Germany after World War II). I cannot find a "Frane Le Port" (as in the negative caption) or a "France Le Port" (the Flickr caption). However, there is a picture in the Bibliotheque National de France's Gallica online photo collection of Moroccan Spahis at Le Franc-Port: gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9041734x

retired at last and artolog: Thank you for finding the date on the negative. bior: thank you for the information about the Spahi regiments. There seem to be quite a few images of the Spahi soldiers in the Bain News Service Collection. It seems probable, artolog, that this image shows Francport as you say, and not "Frane Le Port" which appears in the caption. It looks like some of the French language place names were not correctly written by the Bain captioners. Thank you for helping us fix them.

Other Bain/LOC photos of Spahis:

This could be either of two French communes with Ribecourt in their name. They are in close proximity to each other, and are both in same region as the other Bain Collection photos. They are Ribécourt-Dreslincourt and Ribécourt-la-Tour.

Original Agence Meurisse photo (Meurisse catalog number at right and bottom of Bain negative), published in 1914, at Gallica site has a different caption:

A Ribecourt : une patrouille de premiers cuirassiers et de spahis marocains



Pub. Date 1914

Information on the First Moroccan Spahi cavalry regiment, organized in 1914, at
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1er_R%C3%A9giment_de_Spahis_Marocains

artolog: Thanks for providing us with the source, date, and original caption for this photograph. We'll include this information next time we update the description.

see also

Although it says Dragoons surely these are Lancers

Tim Bickerdike: thanks for the correction. As these troops are holding lances, you are correct. We will update our description.