Their history is a forgotten history.

Their valor is unremembered. They were, at times, invisible. When paintings were commissioned of historic moments, their contributions were often forgotten.

They were Black, soldiers of Color, whose bravery was too often unappreciated or taken for granted.

Did you know that Black soldiers marched with the Legions of Rome? That Black men joined the German Hessian regiments that battled in the American Revolution? That the Louisiana Battalion of Free Men of Color lined up alongside Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812.

Black soldiers fought in the armies of Napoleon and were with the French Foreign Legion in Mexico.

These vignettes of history, and many more, are in a new book by local author Charles Balesi. The study, “Black Warriors in White Armies,” 342 pages, is published by Paginae Publications. At $30, copies can be ordered at P.O. Box 1358, Bourbonnais, Ill., 60914.

Balesi today is a resident of Bourbonnais, and he holds a doctorate from the University of Illinois. A native of Corsica, Balesi is a citizen of both France and the United States. He served in the French Army in the War in Algeria. He moved to the United States in 1959 when he married an American woman.

He was the Scholar in Residence at the Newberry Library in Chicago for two decades and is the author of several books, including “The Time of the French in the Heart of North America,” which covers a great deal of local and Midwest history.

This latest book is episodic in nature. It covers, in almost encyclopedic style, many different instances where Black soldiers and African-American soldiers have served in the armies of the world.

Some of those occasions, like the African Americans who fought for freedom and Union in the Civil War and later on the Great Plains as Buffalo Soldiers, are known and have been celebrated in the culture. Witness the movie “Glory’” about the 54^th Massachusetts about the Civil War assault on Battery Wagner outside Charleston, S.C.

But the book makes clear that African-Americans fighting for the United States, faced severe prejudice for years. African-Americans in the U.S. Army were accepted by French civilians, but faced bias from above and at home.

As late as World War II, some high-ranking American officers did not want units with African-Americans serving in Europe. Blacks were blocked, too, for many, many years in this country, from advancing into the ranks of officers.

By contrast, in France, a Black service member could become an officer, and several, of note, did. In World War I, the French used troops from Senegal on the Western Front. Many European nations, including France, used soldiers of color to expand and to police their empires. Along with the French, another success story was Germany.

The Germans were as brutal as anyone in conquering parts of Africa. Once there, though, they offered roughly twice the pay for a soldier than any other nation, making the German Army an attractive career for Africans.

A fair-minded dynamic officer, General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, led an integrated German force in the colony of East Africa. Waging a creative campaign, his soldiers fought through World War I, ambushing their opponents and capturing supplies. He recognized ability and courage, no matter what the color of the fighting man.

Ironically, a generation later, the warped racial theories of Nazism erased much of the history of these soldiers. After that war, Germany went back and awarded pensions to the Black African soldiers who had fought for them in the earlier war.

Two themes repeat throughout the book. If you have good leadership and treat your soldiers fairly and without prejudice, you will have good results.

The book has a great deal of historical sweep. It covers a large part of the world and centuries of combat. The chapters are of uneven length, depending on the area and years of the combat being covered.

The footnotes are at the bottoms of the pages. I urge you not to skip them. Balesi uses them, often, for interesting short biographies of the men mentioned above. There are also touches of humor, as in the Charles De Gaulle quote: “How can you govern a country where one finds 258 varieties of cheese?”

The book is an important work of both military history and social history. It also fills a void in the literature.

Too many history books are often a new mix of facts you already know. How many accounts of Lincoln, Gettysburg or Vietnam do we need?

That’s not the case here. There are surprises in every chapter, on almost every page. This is a book that teaches and you’ll learn.