Technically, yes, they did. But these are Foreign Legion troops on the ground, not the regular French Army, although the officers are Frenchmen. The current crop of legionaries are from the Former Yugoslavia, and other parts of Eastern Europe, and they're rock hard. In the '80s most of the Legion were Englishmen, and they were made into something much tougher than the British Army's regular infantry units could churn out. Bearing in mind that the Legion is a lot bigger than most people think (it's not just one unit), and are made-up of much more capable and resilient soldiers than the USMC could ever dream of creating.
Furthermore, the French public have become the most vocal opponents of the tide of Mohammedans swamping France and other parts of Western Europe. But the largely left-wing press avoids covering the massive protests, because they think that they're "racist". If the truth be known, the French are nowhere near as spineless as history has labelled them. Nowhere near as cowardly as the Jew, for instance.
Which Jew?