Cross of the Légion d'honneur

Legion of Honour Légion d'honneur
Chevalier (Knight) medal insignia
Awarded by France
Type	Order of merit
Established	19 May 1802; 215 years ago (1802-05-19)
Motto	Honneur et patrie ("Honour and Fatherland")
Awarded for	Excellent civil or military conduct delivered, upon official investigation
Founder	Napoleon Bonaparte
Grand Master	President of France
Grand chancelier	Benoît Puga
Secretary-General	Luc Fons
Classes	00,0  1  Grand-maître 00,067  Grand(s)-croix 00,314  Grand(s)-officier(s) 03,009  Commandeur(s) 17,032  Officier(s) 74,384  Chevalier(s; plural form)
Statistics
First induction	14 July 1804
Precedence
Next (higher)	None
Next (lower)	Order of Liberation (ceased 24 January 1946) National Order of Merit
Order's streamer Grand-croix Grand-officier Commandeur Officier Chevalier Ribbon bars of the order

The Legion of Honour, with its full name National Order of the Legion of Honour (French: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), is the highest French order of merit for military and civil merits, established in 1802 by Napoléon Bonaparte and retained by all the divergent governments and regimes later holding power in France, up to the present.

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

The order is divided into five degrees of increasing distinction: Chevalier (Knight), Officier (Officer), Commandeur (Commander), Grand-officier (Grand Officer), and Grand-croix (Grand Cross).

In the French Revolution, all of the French orders of chivalry were abolished, and replaced with Weapons of Honour. It was the wish of Napoleon Bonaparte, the First Consul, to create a reward to commend civilians and soldiers and from this wish was instituted a Légion d'Honneur, 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 however did use the organization of old French orders of chivalry for example the Ordre de Saint-Louis. The badges of the legion also bear a resemblance to the Ordre de Saint-Louis, which also used a red ribbon.