It's that. The Monarchie de Juillet was virtually a republic with a King of the French people (no longer the "King of France") sworn to the Charter as head-of-state (it's described as a monarchy surrounded and checked by republican institutions. Louis-Philippe was mocked by royalists as the Citizen-King). It was by a kind of compromise regime between the royalists and the republicans. It was a constitutional monarchy, a bit like Britain's.
Ah, ok, I thought as much. This, however, is where I think we're just going to need to agree to disagree, though. I've really enjoyed this conversation though - one of the things I love about CiV is how I'm learning new things every time I play, and reading up on the Legion's history and traditions (
francais par sang verse was particularly interesting for me) was really cool as well. You're clearly pretty learned about this - are you French?
Louis-Philippe was certainly as constitutional as monarchs get (apparently he fought for the Revolution as a youth
). And he earned his Citizen-King moniker - he abandoned the policy of strict censorship his predecessor put in place, lowered the qualifications for voting, and even replaced the white-and-gold Bourbon flag with the
tricoleur. All well and constitutional.
The problem is, when
one man in a country is able to order these things done and have his wishes obeyed, the country is many things, but it certainly isn't a liberal democracy and the comparison with Great Britain is thus misleading. The contemporary King William IV of Britain was merely a bystander as huge changes were pushed through on his watch: the end of slavery, the Poor Laws, the Reform Acts. And that's exactly how things are, and should be, in a constitutional monarchy.
There's a difference, in short, between a country with a genuinely constitutional form of monarchy (with the monarchy restrained into a consultative/titular role) and a country in which a King is by his own inclination passing the very same laws constraining his own power. Bhutan today, for instance, has a benign, enlightened Crown Prince doing very similar things. It doesn't make it a constitutional monarchy and thus a Freedom representative.
I really question whether countries in the early 19th century can be said to have an "ideology" for the purposes of CiV at all. The tripartite Freedom/Order/Autocracy split is clearly intended to represent the 20th century after WWI.
I'm not quite sure why they chose Légion Étrangère (except perhaps lazyness/budget.. they recycled a now discarded unit and its bonus), but from the look of it they may have meant that first level tenet instead to represent a measure in early republics/democracies to defuse the threat to the new institutions the old militia/ex-soldiers of the ancient regime were (eg: the mess the ex-soldiers of the Empire recycled in private militias made during the Weimar Republic): send them to defend the colonies and to fight for you abroad.
I actually thought they were to represent the antithesis of the Volunteer Army - the levee en masse, sudden glut of cheap (free) troops. That's on the assumption that the Foreign Legion was chosen because it was... well, French, and they needed to put it somewhere, rather than it having any historical significance.
It's every peacemonger's emergency weapon; like someone said before a free Chichen Itza and half red faces from specialists is way more powerful, and 90% of the time that should be your 1st level 2 tenet; volunteer army is the one policy you leave open (always have a spare level one tenet and a writer near by) while your empire grows tall and peaceful and start causing red faces around the world with your tourism, until someone else decides to take you out; then two turns later they find their pathetic rifle forces overpowered by 6 pracinhas/infantry. 
