de lOuest: Catholic volunteers and the French nation

Simpson, M. (2013) From Zouaves Pontificaux to the Volontaires
de lOuest: Catholic volunteers and the French nation, 1860-1910.
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UWE History, Neil Edmund’s Fund, Occasional Papers No.1, November 2013
From Zouaves Pontificaux to the Volontaires de l’Ouest: Catholic Volunteers and the French
Nation, 1860-1910
Martin Simpson
On 20 September 1870, after a token resistance and the brief bombardment of the Porta Pia,
Italian troops finally invested the city of Rome, extinguishing the last remnants of papal
temporal power. Pius IX became the ‘prisoner of the Vatican,’ ‘Peter in Chains.’ The papal
zouaves, the volunteer force that had spent the decade 1860-70 defending the papal
territories, were confronted with the ruin of their mission and became prisoners rather
than martyrs for the papal cause. Five days earlier, colonel Augustin-Numa d’Albiousse,
commander of three zouave companies at Civita Vecchia, had pleaded in vain to be allowed
to lead his men out in a fatal sortie.1 The multi-national zouaves were divided up according
to nationality and repatriated. Following a mass on deck of the French frigate Orénoque, the
flag of the regiment was symbolically divided up amongst the 657-strong French contingent.
This was not, however, the end of their endeavour: before they had even disembarked a
zouave wrote to his parents, ‘Je suis content d’avance du poste qu’on m’assignera; et
j’espère d’être avec l’aide de Dieu, un vrai chrétien et un bon français.’2 The Franco-Prussian
war, conducted under the auspices of the republican Government of National Defence after
the precipitous fall of Napoleon III’s Second Empire, was to claim the energies – and in many
cases the lives – of numerous returning zouaves. This paper examines the French zouaves,
both in the context of their engagement in papal territories and their subsequent
involvement in the Franco-Prussian War.
In engaging in the Franco-Prussian War the zouaves added another dimension to
what was already a well-rooted and vigorous myth built around their specifically Catholic
heroism. From the unequal and doomed engagement of Castelfidardo onwards the zouaves’
deeds had been reported to a receptive Catholic audience. Zouave exploits were recounted
in diocesan Semaines religieuses, the Catholic press (especially Louis Veuillot’s L’Univers),
hagiographical biographies, martyrologies, memoirs and even romantic fiction.3 The
zouaves of the Franco-Prussian War, reconstituted as the Volontaires de l’Ouest, would offer
fresh heroics for Catholics to admire. Above all the Volontaires distinguished themselves at
Loigny, celebrated as a glorious defeat that proved the martial virtue of Catholic soldiers.
Loigny slotted into the existing legend, confirming and amplifying pre-existing aspects of
the discourse on the zouaves. It is this neglected Catholic discourse on the
zouaves/Volontaires that lies at the heart of this paper.4 In particular, it is intended to
investigate how the Franco-Prussian War impacted upon the ways in which the zouaves
were understood – and how they chose to understand themselves. In exploring the

Acknowledgements/contact details to be added.
C. Du Coëtlosquet SJ (trans. R. F. Clarke), Theodore Wibaux, Pontifical Zouave and Jesuit (London: The Catholic
Truth Society, 1887), p. 248.
2 Philibert Catherin letter, 28 September 1870, in Laurent Bart-Loi (pseud.), Au Service du Pape et de la France.
Catherin 1861-70 (Paris and Lille: Desclée de Brouwer et Cie., 1901), p. 243.
3 e.g. Julien S. Allard, Le Volontaire Joséph-Louis Guérin du corps des zouaves pontificaux franco-belges (Nantes:
Mazeau, 1860); Anatole de Ségur, Les Martyrs de Castelfidardo (Paris: Ambroise Bray, 1861); Sophie de Ségur,
Après la pluie le beau temps (Paris: Hachette, 1871). Carol Harrison discusses the literature of 1860-70: ‘Zouave
Stories: Gender, Catholic Spirituality and French Responses to the Roman Question’, Journal of Modern History,
79 (2007), pp. 274-305.
4 Jean Guenel, La dernière guerre du pape. Les zouaves pontificaux au secours du Saint-Siège, 1860-1870 (Rennes:
Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1998) does not address the myth in detail. Harrison, ‘Zouave Stories’ is limited
to the decade in Italy and only addresses one aspect.
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development and mutation of the zouave legend 1860-1910 analysis will focus on three
related themes: ideas of patriotism and the French nation; ideas of martyrdom and
expiation and lastly ideas of counter-revolution.
To examine the discourse on the zouaves reveals how they were constructed as both
Catholic and French exemplars. The zouaves offered lessons about the French nation and
French identity well before they became embroiled in the Franco-Prussian War. L’Univers
declared, ‘À Rome le régiment des zouaves, formé d’éléments cosmopolites, accomplissent
un œuvre français en protégeant et défendant l’indépendance et la souveraineté du SaintSiège. Ce n’est pas pour rien que la statue de Charlemagne veille aux portes de Saint Pierre
au Vatican.’5 The reference to Charlemagne points to the issue of national history: the
zouaves were placed in a continuum of national history, read in terms of service of the
Church, that legitimated and glorified their actions.6
This discourse existed in a dynamic relationship with competing versions of the
nation, both republican and Bonapartist. In the context of the Second Empire and the Third
Republic, the zouaves could be employed to attack and delegitimize the actions of the
governments of the day. The example of the zouaves served to demonstrate the hollowness
of Bonapartist claims to incarnate the glories of French national history.7 Likewise, the
republican version of France as the republican nation forged through the revolution and
united around the values of 1789 could be challenged and undercut by insisting on the
national character of the zouaves.8 The zouaves were one of the constituent parts of a
vigorous Catholic discourse that countered the discourse and rituals of the Third Republic –
it was, as Jean- Clément Martin has termed the Vendée, ‘contre-mémoire’.9 Ruth Harris
points out that the pilgrimage movement arose in the context of the construction of a
republican symbolism; Lourdes offered an alternative Catholic set of rituals to challenge the
secular cult of the Republic.10 Similarly, Brian Brennan has drawn attention to how
pilgrimage to Rome offered the chance to experience ‘the historical fantasy of the ‘True
France’ that was traditional, Catholic and royal’.11 Much the same applies to the zouaves.
They appealed to royalist traditionalists and ultramontane Catholic opponents of the
Republic because they fitted into their vision of France: traditional, pious, largely rural,
deferential and – for many, if not all of those who celebrated the zouaves - monarchical.
Celebrating the zouaves served to advance a particular vision of France and French
national history. The zouaves encapsulated a vision of a re-Christianised and regenerated
France. Implicit within this vision was the argument that France had lost her way. Mgr.
Charles Émile Freppel of Angers, inaugurating a monument to general Christophe
Lamoricière, original leader of the papal armies in 1860, was explicit on this point. 1789
saw France leave ‘her historic and traditional path’, while the 1830 Revolution which
terminated the Bourbon restoration was ‘one of the most disastrous events of our
history…the principle source of all our faults and all our misfortunes’.12 The logic of the
Léon Aubineau, L’Univers, 23 July 1885, in Athanase de Charette, Noces d’argent du régiment des zouaves
pontificaux, 1860-1885. Basse-Motte, 28 juillet 1885 – Anvers 30 août 1885 (Rennes: Oberthur, 1886), p. 7.
6 On reading the national past: Robert Gildea, The Past in French History (New Haven: Yale UP, 1994); Pierre
Nora (ed.), Les Lieux de Mémoire, 3 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1997).
7 On Napoleon III’s sustained attempts to link the Second Empire to the monarchical past: Matthew Truesdell,
Spectacular Politics (Oxford: OUP, 1997).
8 On the construction of republican symbolism: Nora (ed.), Lieux, volume 1: La République; Maurice Agulhon,
Marianne au pouvoir: l’imagerie et la symbolique républicaines de 1880 à 1914 (Paris: Flammarion, 1989).
9 Jean-Clément Martin, ‘La Vendée, région-mémoire’, in Lieux, volume 1, pp. 519-35.
10 Ruth Harris, Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age (Harmondsworth: Allen Lane, 1999).
11 Brian Brennan, ‘Visiting ‘Peter in Chains’: French Pilgrimage to Rome, 1873-93’, Journal of Ecclesiastical
History, 51 (2000), pp. 741-2.
12 Freppel, Discours prononcé à l’inauguration du monument érigé en l’honneur du général de La Moricière dans la
cathédrale de Nantes le 29 octobre 1879 (Angers: Germain et Grassin, 1879), pp. 8-9.
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3
zouaves was undeniably a counter-revolutionary logic: they defined France in opposition to
the heritage of 1789. The Syllabus of Errors of 1864, in which Pius IX effectively
anathematised the developments of the nineteenth century, reinforced this counterrevolutionary perspective.
Enthusiasts for this vision of France did not see their project as one of constructing a
new French nation; that was something their political adversaries were attempting,
particularly the opportunist republicans of the 1880s. Their project was couched in terms of
the recovery of authentic French traditions, of the restoration of true France. Certainly,
notwithstanding their concern for the contested terrain of the French nation and their
readiness to challenge other versions, these counter-revolutionary upholders of ‘true
France’ were not nationalists. Catholics above and before anything, the zouaves shared in
Pius IX’s rejection of the modern nation-state and its claims. The Syllabus made it clear that
the Holy Father was unable to countenance the sweeping claims made by the nation-state.
By definition, in their fight for the temporal sovereignty of the Holy See the zouaves rejected
many of the tenets of nineteenth-century nationalism.13 Indeed, arguably the zouaves
represented the papacy’s response to the claims of nationalism.14
The political flux of nineteenth century France only served to raise the stakes. The
catastrophes of the collapse of the Second Empire, defeat and the Paris Commune opened
the door for a reshaped France. Those who had championed the zouaves vigorously
engaged in debates over the causes of defeat and French renewal. The zouaves/Volontaires
were deployed in arguments that stability and French greatness could only be rediscovered
in a re-Christianised France, ideally a France dedicated to the Sacred Heart. Mgr., later
Cardinal, Louis-Edouard Pie, speaking at the first anniversary of Loigny cautioned, ‘jamais
vous referez la patrie française, si vous ne refaites pas la patrie chrétienne’.15 The failure of
efforts to restore the monarchy in 1871 and 1873 and the eventual stabilisation of the Third
Republic under firm republican leadership (1877-79) meant instead an anti-clerical regime
which possessed a diametrically opposed vision of France. In this context, to celebrate the
zouaves was to contrast the godless Republic with a vision of ‘true France’ as embodied in
the zouaves. In 1885 the reunion to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the regiment was
promoted as a counter to the Republic’s quatorze juillet.
Yet the Volontaires complicated the issue. Even taking into account former zouaves
who rejoined at lieutenant-colonel Athanase de Charette’s appeal of October 1870, the
original zouaves were no more than a significant minority in a force of about 2,700. 16
Charette himself was commander of the Volontaires who, though they might resemble the
zouaves in certain ways – from an over-representation of the west to a stress on Catholic
fidelity to the point of requiring a curé’s statement – were not the zouaves writ large. They
were a force led by zouaves – all 113 officers had served in Italy - with a scattering of
zouaves in the rank and file. They were, however, engaged in a very different combat. The
Volontaires were one of a range of irregular volunteer forces that engaged in the FrancoPrussian War (ironically including a force led by the zouaves’ determined enemy, Giuseppe
On the issue of nationalism: David A. Bell, The Cult of the Nation in France (Cambridge MA : Harvard UP, 2001);
Bertrand Joly, Nationalistes et conservateurs en France, 1885-1902 (Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2008).
14 Lucy Riall argues that the papacy engaged in an effective ‘culture war’ against Italian nationalists – the zouaves
were perhaps the most dramatic expression of this. ‘Martyr Cults in Nineteenth Century Italy’, Journal of Modern
History, 82 (2010), pp. 225-87.
15 Pie, Éloge funèbre, 2 December 1871, cited in Athanase de Charrette, Souvenir du régiment des zouaves
pontificaux, Rome 1860-1870 – France 1870-1871, 2nd ed. (Paris: Alcan-Lévy, 1877), p. 146.
16 Recruitment to the Volontaires stretched from October 1870-April 1871, notwithstanding the signing of the
armistice in January. During the initial negotiations 178 zouaves joined other army corps. At the outset the
Volontaires numbered 350; by the armistice approximately 2700 had joined. Patrick Nouaille-Degorce, ‘Les
volontaires de l’Ouest. Histoire et souvenir, de la guerre de 1870-1871 à nos jours’, unpub. thesis, 2 vols,
(Université de Nantes, 2005), volume 1, pp. 48-102.
13
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Garibaldi): their history is part of the wider history of the war effort of Léon Gambetta’s
republican Government of National Defence. The zouaves’ service in Rome had been framed
in terms of their desire to fulfil France’s historic mission as la fille aînée de l’Église; the case
for the Volontaires as French patriots was self-evident. Castelfidardo and Mentana provided
martyrs for the papal cause; Loigny provided martyrs for France. Loigny could be
presented as a potential national site of memory, a battle that demonstrated the fraternal
heroism of a whole range of forces – the Volontaires, the franc-tireur battalions of Tours and
Blidah, the mobile guard of the Côtes-du-Nord and the regular forces of the 37th infantry
battalion. However, there was a marked tendency on the part of their champions to sharply
differentiate the Volontaires from other elements of the French army. Unlike other soldiers,
it was claimed, they carried the secret of regeneration and were untainted by the defeat.
They proved that true patriotism was rooted in Catholic values. They were on the one hand
exemplars, on the other pure and expiatory victims whose willing sacrifice would redeem a
fallen France.
Just as the zouaves were not, however tempting the parallel, vendéen or chouan
counter-revolutionaries, the Volontaires were not zouaves, though it is undeniable that
some thought of themselves as such (for instance, Volontaire Joseph Perraud wrote, ‘I will
give with joy half my blood for France, but I want to save the rest for the Pope’).17 Patrick
Nouaille-Degorce argues that the Volontaires must be understood as a separate
phenomenon rather than assimilated to the zouave narrative.18 Certainly, those
unsympathetic to Charette’s monarchism and ultramontane Catholicism distinguished his
leadership of the Volontaires from his years in Rome. La République Française observed,
though Charette’s service in Rome might be worthy of respect, ‘[the fact] that he offered his
sword of a royalist, son of chouans and his pontifical zouaves…where the sons of émigrés
were numerous, to an invaded France, to a republican France led by revolutionary leaders,
that is rather more important’.19 Nonetheless, the Volontaires were assimilated to the
zouave legend – in addition to being routinely referred to as zouaves. There was a marked
reluctance on the part of those who celebrated their memory and exploits to separate them
from the zouaves, or to read them solely in terms of the wider French struggle against the
German invaders. In particular, the commemorative ceremonies organised under Charette’s
auspices, insisted on continuity of the two forces. To analyse the zouave legend in full,
account must be taken of the Volontaires. Conversely, the discourse on the Volontaires is
only fully intelligible in light of the zouave legend.
One major element of continuity lies in the issue of French identity, although in the
context of the defeat, great emphasis was laid on the salvation and regeneration of France.
The zouaves and the Volontaires were employed to advance a certain vision of France and
later to contest the official republican alignment of France with the revolutionary tradition.
It is, however, reductive to read the discourse on the zouaves/Volontaires solely in terms of
political rhetoric. The zouave legend was not solely a political weapon. The primary
audience of Catholics might choose to draw political lessons from it, but equally they were
invited to reflect on lessons of the faith involving expiation, suffering and abnegation. The
zouaves and Volontaires need to be understood in light of the mid-nineteenth century
Catholic revival. There was a powerful emotional dimension to the zouave legend: they
were not just exemplars of the faith, martial heroes to be admired, but Catholics were
encouraged to enter into an emotional relationship with them, sharing in both their pain
Joseph Perraud, letter n.d., in Joseph Perraud, Lettres de guerre d’un zouave pontifical, octobre-novembre 1870,
ed. Pascal Beyls (Montbonnot: P. Beyls, 2000), p. 24.
18 Nouaille-Degorce also shows that recruitment patterns differed significantly. ‘Les volontaires’, volume 1, pp.
52-102.
19 Pierre de Quirielle, République Française n.d., cited in L’Avant-Garde: bulletin bi-mensuel des zouaves
pontificaux, 1 November 1911.
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and suffering and in the sacrifice and suffering of the zouave mothers who mourned their
sons.20 As with Lourdes and the devotion to Pius IX the themes of pain, sainthood, expiation
and the miraculous were to be found within the zouave narrative. It was in light of the new
character of Catholic devotions – including, notably, the cult of the Sacred Heart – that the
zouaves/Volontaires proved so potent.21 Only in this context can we understand the interest
in zouave and Volontaire relics, above all the banner of the Sacred Heart carried at Loigny.
Yet, the zouaves/Volontaires were not merely passive objects of the enthusiasms of
counter-revolutionary Catholics. The zouaves played an active role in the construction of
their own legend. Commemorative ceremonies – most notably the ‘noces d’argent’
celebrations organised by Charette in 1885 – saw the legend powerfully restated. A
newspaper, L’Avant-Garde, was launched in 1892 to keep veterans’ memories alive.22
Numerous memoirs helped to shape the images of the great set-pieces of zouave history –
Castelfidardo, Mentana and Loigny. Moreover, attention was drawn to zouave words, above
all zouave correspondence, central to adulatory biographies, but also featured in works
such as Anatole de Ségur’s Les Martyrs de Castelfidardo.23 (This is not, of course, to deny that
zouave letters were selectively quoted from and subject to a judicious editorial process).
Nonetheless the language of expiatory sacrifice, fidelity to vendéen and Breton ancestry or
identification with the crusades was not simply imposed on the zouaves by those who chose
to celebrate them. This paper then, seeks to understand the zouaves/Volontaires broadly,
while not playing down the overtly political ends to which their myth might be turned.
I
The question of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, the great cause of the zouaves, came
to the fore in 1859 as a result of a momentous shift in French policy towards the Italian
peninsula. As president of the Second Republic, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte had helped to
restore the Pope to his throne in 1849, but by 1859 as Emperor Napoleon III he was
identified with his enemies. At Plombières in 1858, Napoleon III had promised Count
Camillo Cavour, Prime Minister of Piedmont, military assistance against the Habsburgs, in
exchange for Nice and Savoy. Although Napoleon III was not unaware of the dangers of
antagonising French Catholic opinion he proved willing to countenance the dismemberment
of the Papal States. While the French troops garrisoned in Rome would ensure that the Pope
retained the Eternal City and its immediate surroundings, it was envisaged that the
Romagna and the Papal Legations would be absorbed into a kingdom of Upper Italy. The
remainder of the Papal States were to form part of a kingdom of Central Italy together with
Tuscany. It was proposed that the resulting four Italian states (the kingdoms of Upper Italy,
Central Italy, Naples and the rump of the Papal States, the ‘Patrimony of St Peter’) should
Harrison, ‘Zouave stories’, emphasises the importance of the zouave mother in zouave narratives. Certainly,
mothers were celebrated – Anatole de Ségur dedicated Les martyrs to grieving mothers, wives and sisters and
included a chapter on mothers, ‘les véritables protectrices, l’espoir et le salut de la France!’
21 Raymond Jonas, France and the Cult of the Sacred Heart (Berkeley: University of Califnoria Press, 2000). On
this ‘dolourist’ tradition: Harris, Lourdes; Richard D. E. Burton, Holy Tears, Holy Blood: Women, Catholicism and
the Culture of Suffering in France, 1840-1870 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004).
22 L’Avant-Garde reached out beyond France – its readership included Canadian veterans. Likewise the ‘noces
d’argent’ festivities organised by Charette in 1885 were attended by representatives of the Canadian zouaves
and additional celebrations were held in Antwerp for Dutch and Belgian zouaves. See Charette, Noces; Diane
Audy, Les zouaves de Québec au XXe siècle (Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2003), p. 57.
23 For biographies heavily reliant on letters e.g. Allard, Le volontaire; Coëtlosquet, Wibaux and Robert Oheix,
Joseph Rialan, sergent aux zouaves pontificaux (Nantes: V. Forest et E. Grimaud, 1868). Allard wanted to share the
‘treasure’ of Joséph-Louis Guérin’s correspondence, whereas Oheix felt the need to present Rialan’s letters
regardless of the objections of the latter’s father.
20
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form a confederation, under the presidency of Pope Pius IX, in the hope that this would
‘console him for losing the best part of his States’.24
Although the course of events was to escape the control of Napoleon III, the drastic
reduction of papal territories was envisaged from the outset. After the Legations had
declared the Pope’s rule there to be at an end, the publication in France of Arthur de La
Guéronnière’s Le Pape et le Congrès, known to be written at the direction of the emperor,
made the position clear: the pope should depend for his independence on a smaller state.
Defence was to be found in the army of an Italian confederation and income in grants from
Catholic powers.25 These proposals were anathema to Pius IX, but his protests were swept
aside under the pressure of events. The wholly unexpected success of Garibaldi’s expedition
altered the dynamic of affairs in the peninsula and, on 11 September 1860, four days after
his triumphal entry into Naples Piedmontese forces invaded the Papal States. The papal
volunteers who had been arriving over the course of the previous months were finally to
taste combat.
The decisive encounter between the papal forces and the Piedmontese took place on
18 September. The decidedly unequal engagement of Castelfidardo pitted papal forces
numbering little more than 10,000, under the command of Lamoricière, a political opponent
of Napoleon III who had found his Catholic faith in exile in Belgium, against as many as
60,000 Piedmontese troops. Though the defeat of Castelfidardo resulted in the annexation
of the bulk of papal territories by the victorious Piedmontese, this did not mark the
complete extinction of papal sovereignty. Cavour’s gamble in invading the Papal States was
at least in part predicated on the imperative need to prevent Garibaldi from marching on
Rome. Thus while the kingdom of Central Italy did not become a reality, Rome and the small
Patrimony of Saint Peter remained under papal control, as originally envisaged. The
continuing presence of French troops in Rome guaranteed that this state of affairs would
continue; King Victor Emanuel I could not risk sparking a conflict with France. The Pope
retained Rome until the French garrison withdrew in the context of the Franco-Prussian
War.
Amongst those who fought at Castelfidardo was a 450-strong Franco-Belgian
volunteer force. In 1861 the remnants of this force were reconstituted as part of an
international volunteer force under the leadership of another former French officer, LouisAimé de Becdelièvre, who had led them at Castelfidardo. The name they were to take in
1861 was already anticipated in 1860: the zouaves. The Franco-Belgians had borrowed a
name and uniform from the elite force that Lamoricière had commanded in Algeria. For the
rest of the decade the papal zouaves acted as defenders of the truncated papal territories
until the final fall of Rome.
Though significant, the zouaves were never a large force. Even at their zenith in the
summer of 1870 they numbered 3,200 - though over the course of the decade 9,000 enlisted
at one time or another. When restricted to the French contingent – the dominant nationality
in the multi-national zouaves was in fact the Dutch – it was a mere 3,300 men who upheld
the honour of Catholic France.26 As we have seen, the French contingent repatriated after
the fall of Rome numbered well under one thousand. The key engagements that came to be
associated with the zouaves – Castelfidardo, Mentana and Loigny – were fought by larger
forces, of which the zouaves represented no more than a significant minority. At Mentana in
1867, they were in fact outnumbered by 2,000 regular French troops, hastily recalled in
response to Garibaldi’s incursion into papal territory. Also, service in the zouaves did not
Cavour to Victor Emanuel, 24 July 1858 in Derek Beales (ed.), The Risorgimento and the Unification of Italy
(London: George Allen and Unwin, 1971), pp. 155-63.
25 Arthur de La Guéronnière, Le Pape et le Congrès (Paris: Dentu, 1859).
26 Guenel, Dernière Guerre. In June 1867 of 2289 zouaves, 872 were Dutch, 659 French and 495 Belgian.
24
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necessarily entail combat at all. After Castelfidardo zouave forces were not involved in any
major engagements until Garibaldi’s vain attempt to take Rome in 1867. Despite the initial
inclinations of Xavier de Mérode, the Pope’s minister of war, and Becdelièvre to mount
offensive operations, the policy was firmly one of coexistence with the Italian state,
illegitimate though it may have been in the eyes of supporters of the papacy. The Pope’s
secretary of state, cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, saw papal forces as largely symbolic and
believed that the continued existence of temporal sovereignty rested on the stance of
France.
The fall of Rome and return to France marked a new chapter in the zouave epic and
transformed the nature of their engagement. Aside from the engagements against
Garibaldi’s forces in 1867, the zouaves had spent most of the decade 1860-70 in actions
designed to bring order by tackling the problem of banditry.27 In France they found
themselves plunged into a hard-fought if ultimately inglorious war under the authority of
the republican Government of National Defence. After a series of negotiations in October, it
was agreed that the zouaves should form the nucleus of a new force, the Volontaires de
l’Ouest, under Charette’s command. Three battalions were swiftly recruited, with about
2,000 men under arms in the period November 1870-January 1871. All three saw action,
but attention was above all drawn to the first, which distinguished itself in December at
Loigny, and then, reconstituted with men drawn from the second battalion and reserves, at
Auvours in January. The three battalions were reunited at Rennes on 27 January and
incorporated into the 14,000 strong division of the Army of Brittany under the command of
Charette, promoted to brigadier-general. The division had scarcely taken up position on the
Mayenne line when the armistice was signed.
With the exception of the Volontaires, the division was swiftly disbanded, though
significant numbers of Volontaires also took the opportunity to return home, leaving fewer
than 800 by April 1871. The symbolic end to the Volontaires was marked on 28 July 1871 in
the chapel of the Rennes seminary, where the regiment was consecrated to the Sacred
Heart, thereby fulfilling the wishes of Henri de Verthamon, who had died holding the banner
of the Sacred Heart at Loigny.28 The official end to the Volontaires came shortly afterwards
on 13 August 1871. Charette had declined the offer to serve in the French army when his
request that the Volontaires might not be integrated but continue as a separate force was
turned down.29 The dissolution of the Volontaires therefore was carried out at Charette’s
own demand – though his letter to general Ernest Courtot de Cissey, the minister of war,
contained the telling proviso, ‘that you allow us, as a corps of volunteers, to march beside
the army the day it goes to Rome’.30 Charette’s logic sprang from his conception of the
Volontaires as a continuation of the zouaves: a force that had to remain free to serve the
pope if called upon. Integration into the French army would constitute a betrayal of the
zouave mission: ‘this uniform is the property of the whole Catholic world whose belief we
represent; it is the livery of Rome, it is not ours to be disposed of at will and linked to the
fortunes of an unstable government’.31 Individuals might join the French army but the
regiment could not.
For Charette then, the Volontaires were not distinct from the zouaves: Loigny was
located in the sequence of zouave heroism that had begun at Castelfidardo. The zouaves had
François Le Chauff de Kerguenec, Souvenirs des zouaves pontificaux 1861 et 1862 (Poitiers: Oudin, 1890).
Verthamon’s ten year-old son read out this act of consecration at the 1873 pilgrimage to Paray-le-Monial, site
of the original visions, attended by Charette, numerous zouaves and over 100 monarchist deputies of the
National Assembly. Paray-le-Monial. Le pèlerinage du Sacré-Cœur en 1873. Histoire et documents (Moulins:
Desrosiers, 1873).
29 Letters in ‘Historique de la légion’, appendix in Nouaille-Dégorce, ‘Les Volontaires’, volume 2, pp. 98-109.
30 Charette to Cissey letter, 12 July 1871, in ibid., pp. 107-8.
31 Charette cited in Wibaux letter, 9 July 1871, in Coëtlosquet, Wibaux, pp. 288-9.
27
28
8
never ceased to exist and the fall of Rome did not mark the end of their task. Theodore
Wibaux wrote after entering the Jesuit novitiate, ‘I am convinced of the reality of the mission
given to the zouaves; and I believe that the generous manner in which the regiment has
been dedicated to the Sacred Heart is more than anything else a pledge that it will not cease
to exist but is destined to bear a part in the regeneration of France.’32 At the noces d’argent
of 1885, organised by Charette to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the regiment, and at
the fiftieth anniversary celebrated in the Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre, it was emphasised
that the regiment was still a reality.33 The age of the zouaves was immaterial: colonel
d’Albiousse declared in 1885, ‘si à l’heure marqué par Dieu, la vigueur de nos bras ne
répondait plus à l’ardeur de nos âmes, et bien, mon général, nos fils sont là derrière nous,
pour prendre la place de leurs pères’.34 In 1910 the son of sergeant-major Pierre Ségaux
confirmed this prediction on behalf of himself, his brother and two other sons of zouaves
who were present at the occasion.35
II
In September 1860 French Catholics’ fascination with the zouaves began. The image of the
French volunteers fallen at Casteldfidardo resonated throughout Catholic France. Before the
year was out further fuel was added with Julien Allard’s hagiographical biography of JoséphLouis Guérin, the subject of a cult in his native Nantes. The following year brought memoirs
– for instance Oscar de Poli’s Souvenir du bataillon des zouaves pontificaux – franco-belges –
and Ségur’s matryology. Soon there would even be works of romantic fiction – in 1862 there
appeared in French translation Antonio Bresciani’s Le zouave pontifical, which made
extensive use of actual zouave letters.36 The image of the idealised zouave thus swiftly took
shape, though it must be remembered that there were different registers at play. Oscar de
Poli’s memoirs have light-hearted moments – note his recollection of the regiment’s
adopted dog Garibaldi, ‘mort en soldat à Castelfidardo’ - absent from the accounts of Allard
or Ségur. Yet, however influential these accounts proved, the first efforts to shape French
Catholic understanding of the zouaves came in the form of the sermons preached by Mgr.
Pie of Poitiers and Mgr. Félix Dupanloup, bishop of Orléans, two very different supporters
of the papacy.37
The analyses of the intransigent ‘neo-ultramontane’ Pie and the liberal Dupanloup
were broadly congruent. Both employed the language of martyrdom and identified the
zouaves as ‘new Maccabees’. Both saw parallels to the crusades, Pie referring to Rome as
‘another better Jerusalem, more precious, more necessary’, and both noted the recurrence
of great names in the ranks of the zouaves.38 By extension, both turned to reflections on the
specifically French qualities displayed by the zouaves. Dupanloup argued that martial virtue
was a French quality, consistently demonstrated from the siege of Orléans to Sebastopol. So
too serving the cause of justice, so outrageously violated by the illegal aggression of
Wibaux Letter, n.d. in ibid., p. 328.
Charette, Noces; Mgr de Cabrières, Cinquantième anniversaire de la création du régiment des zouaves
pontificaux (Montpellier: Manufacture de la Charité, 1910); L’Avant-Garde, 1 July 1910.
34 Albiousse cited in Le Gaulois, 29 July 1885, in Charette, Noces, p. 31.
35 L’Avant-Garde, 1 July 1910.
36 Harrison, ‘Zouave stories’.
37 On the divided nature of French ultramontanism: Bruno Horaist, La dévotion au pape et les catholiques français
sous le pontificat de Pie IX (Rome: École française de Rome, 1995). On Pie and Dupanloup: Jacques Gadille, La
pensée et l’action politique des évêques français au début de la troisième République, 1870-1883, 2 vols. (Paris:
Hachette, 1967).
38 Louis-Édouard Pie, Éloge funèbre des volontaires catholiques, 11 October 1860 (Paris: V. Palmé, 1860), p. 11.
32
33
9
Piedmont. The zouaves, he concluded, were martyrs of the Church, natural rights and
French honour:
Ils ont attesté à l’honneur de notre nation: que la France dans une partie de ses enfants est toujours la France de
Charlemagne et de Saint Louis; que le pays qui envoyait jadis ses plus vaillants chevaliers mourir pour le
tombeau de Christ n’a pas épuisé tout ce généreux sang…que le cœur de la France, si on ne l’étouffe pas, si on lui
laisse son battement naturel, bat toujours pour l’église catholique.39
Pie, who lacked Dupanloup’s stress on the violation of rights, chose rather to understand the
zouaves as a lesson in French values to be addressed to the whole nation. He inveighed
against the suggestion that French volunteers for the papacy should forfeit their citizenship
in fighting for a foreign power:
Dîtes que votre roi s’appelle Pépin et votre Empereur Charlemagne; dîtes que votre bannière, c’est l’oriflamme
de Saint Denys; dîtes qu’un soldat français, au lieu de perdre ses titres de naturalisation, les reconquérait bien
plutôt en faisant les œuvres de la France très-chrétienne, en acquittant les dettes de la fille aînée de l’Église. 40
The death of Lamoricière in 1865 offered both bishops the opportunity to return to
the theme of the zouaves and French identity. Pie praised the general as ‘a great Christian, a
complete Christian…who fought for the militant Jerusalem’. His actions vindicated France,
true to her mission of serving the Church: Lamoricière was ‘one of the truest examples of a
Frenchman’.41 Dupanloup, speaking at Lamoricière’s funeral in Nantes, concluded that the
general went to Rome ‘not to defend an anti-national cause but the French cause par
excellence’.42
From the outset, reflection on the zouaves was bound up with questions of national
identity. If Napoleon III’s restoration of Pius IX to the papal throne in 1849 might have
placed him in a direct line with Clovis, Charles-Martel, Charlemagne, Saint-Louis, Joan of Arc
and Louis XIV, his Italian policy disrupted this relationship.43 That the Patrimony of Saint
Peter was preserved by the presence of French troops in Rome was, from an ultramontane
perspective, wholly insufficient; Pie publically denounced Napoleon III as Pontius Pilate.44
The imperial government had betrayed the papacy and the Catholic mission of France,
received at the baptism of Clovis. The locus of French identity shifted to those who stayed
faithful, above all the zouaves, ‘the worthy sons of the eldest daughter of the Church’. Pie
and Dupanloup argued that the zouaves stood in a line of national Catholic heroism
inaugurated by Clovis and embodied in the great figures of Charlemagne, Saint Louis and
Joan.
Nonetheless, despite Napoleon III’s desire to extricate France from the peninsula,
French troops were once again to prove decisive. The hasty recall of the troops who had
withdrawn in fulfilment of the September Convention, ensured the defeat of Garibaldi at
Mentana. The Marist Paul Huguet, an admirer of the zouaves’ ‘incomparable acts of virtue
and devotion’, argued that they had preserved the French flag from ‘the shame of an
Félix Dupanloup, Oraison funèbre des volontaires catholiques de l’armée pontificale, morts pour la défense du
Saint-Siège, le 2 octobre 1860 (Paris: Jacques Lecoffre, 1860), p. 25.
40 Pie, Éloge, 1860, p. 12.
41 Louis-Édouard Pie, Allocation prononcé par Mgr l’évêque de Poitiers à la suite du service funèbre célébré dans sa
cathédrale à l’intention du général de La Moricière (Poitiers: Henri Oudin, 1865), pp. 29-30.
42 Félix Dupanloup, Oraison funèbre du général de Lamoricière, prononcé dans le cathédrale de Nantes, le 17
octobre 1865 (Paris: H. Gautier, n.d.), pp. 13-14.
43 Edmond Lafond made the former argument in Rome, lettres d’un pèlerin, 2 vols. (Paris: Ambroise Bray, 1856),
volume 2, p. v. The identification was short-lived: soon he identified France instead in the figures of La Moricière
and Pimodan, successors to Saint Louis and de Guise, in Lorette et Castelfidardo, lettres d’un pèlerin, 2nd ed.
(Paris: Ambroise Bray, 1862).
44 Jonas, France and the Cult, p. 265.
39
10
inerasable stain’ by holding the Garibaldians at bay until the arrival of French forces.
France’s national vocation, he concluded, had endured.45 Eventually, however, the
‘abominable betrayals and execrable crimes’ that Huguet had identified outweighed the
zouaves’ example: God’s punishment fell on the Second Empire. Gaston de Sonis, who later
fought alongside the zouaves at Loigny, wrote after the disaster of Sedan that God was
teaching France a terrible lesson: expiation was required.46
In 1873 the first French pilgrims to Rome made a penitent address to Pius IX. They
acknowledged that France’s neglect of her mission had led to disaster for both nation and
papacy. The pilgrims concluded: ‘Le salut de la France, c’est le triomphe de l’Église. Le salut
de la France, c’est votre délivrance.’47 This was by no means an original line of argument.
Commemorating Loigny in 1871 Pie explained the Volontaires’ logic: ‘Behind our human
Fatherland there is the spiritual Fatherland, there is the Church, there is Rome.’48 This
insistent linkage of France to Rome points to what became an important element in the
zouave legend, namely the concordance between 1860-70 and 1870-71. The zouaves
upheld the cause of France in Rome and, conversely, in fighting for France they did not
cease to be the Pope’s soldiers. Sauveur Jacquemont noted that the comités catholiques
supported the Volontaires, accepting that they were continuing the zouaves’ Catholic
mission.49 L’Univers asserted, ‘[le régiment] ne s’est pas transformé en prenant et élevant
son étendard contre nos ennemies. Sans changer de consigne et en restant ce qu’il était, il
s’est trouvé français.’50 Significantly, the Volontaires at Loigny charged to the cry of ‘Vive la
France! Vive Pie IX!’ In the Sacré-Cœur basilica in 1910, commemorating the fiftieth
anniversary of the regiment, Mgr. Francois-Marie-Anatole de Cabrières drew a parallel – the
faithful had offered stones for the building, the zouaves and volontaires had laid down their
lives: ‘what a monument you raised in honour of Pius IX!’51
Nonetheless, the equivalence of the two combats was not necessarily self-evident.
Though they preserved their own identity, the zouaves were ultimately under the authority
of the republican Government of National Defence. It was unclear how victory under these
circumstances might lead to either the salvation of the papacy or the associated reChristianisation of France. Theodore Wibaux found hardship in the campaign of 1870-71,
but no spiritual reward. After Loigny he judged patriotism an ‘empty phrase’ and struggled
with the very idea of serving the Republic: ‘the thought of receiving a Prussian bullet under
the auspices of the Republic is most repugnant to me, though I should have deemed it an
honour to receive any number of wounds under the paternal eye of the Holy Father and for
his sake’.52
Henri Derély, a captain in the zouaves, attempted to resolve the tension between the
Volontaires’ heroism and the disagreeable principles of Gambetta’s republican Government
of National Defence, by disassociating one from the other. ‘Loigny’, he argued, ‘n’a pas été
une victoire pour l’armée de la ‘Défense Nationale’ qui n’avait pas appelé le Dieu de
Clothilde à la rescousse; mais Loigny était une victoire du Christ aussi bien que Tolbiac. Le
Paul Huguet, Le Propagateur de la dévotion à St Joséph et à la Sainte Famille, 6e année (Paris and Brussels:
Libraire catholique de Périsse frères, 1867), p. 66; idem., Les Victoires de Pie IX sur les garibaldiens en 1867 et les
soldats du Pape devant l’histoire (Paris and Brussels: Libraire catholique de Périsse frères, 1868), p. x.
46 Sonis letter, n.d. (October 1870), in Mgr. Baunard, (trans. Mary Herbert), The Life of General Sonis (London: Art
and Book Co., 1891), p. 179.
47 15 August 1873 address, in Horaist, La Dévotion, p. 633.
48 Pie, Éloge funèbre, 1871, p. 143.
49 Sauveur Jacquemont, La Campagne des Zouaves Pontificaux en France sous les ordres du général baron de
Charette,1870-1871 (Paris: Henri Plon, 1871), p. 48.
50 Aubineau, L’Univers, 23 July 1885, in Charette, Noces, p. 6.
51 Cited in L’Avant-Garde, 1 July 1910. Albiousse added that the zouaves’ presence at Rome had allowed the First
Vatican Council of 1870 to take place, where the doctrine of infallibility gave the beleaguered Pope new strength.
52 Wibaux letter, 8 December 1870, in Coëtlosquet, Wibaux, p. 268.
45
11
Sacré-Cœur, ce jour-là, s’est emparé de l’âme de France.’53 The dominant post-Loigny image
of the Volontaires as soldiers of the Sacred Heart indicated that they had fought for France,
but France understood in very different terms to those of the Government of National
Defence or the Third Republic. The banner of Loigny, venerated as a quasi-sacred relic,
acted as shorthand for the uniqueness of the Volontaires’ exploits. Jesuit Alfred van den
Brule recalled holding the banner:
Je fus saisi d’une si indicible émotion que la portant instinctivement à mes lèvres je la baisai comme j’eusse baisé
la robe ensanglantée de la France vaincue, que dis-je? Comme j’eusse baisé la robe humiliée et triomphale à la
fois de mon saveur Jésus Christ.54
That Derély thought to mention Tolbiac was telling. In the Catholic narrative of
French history Tolbiac marked the inception of France, a providential victory over the
invading Germanic Alamans. The Frankish king Clovis, in recognition of the divine aid he
had received, converted to Christianity and was baptised by Saint Remi, a national baptism
by which France became la fille aînée de l’Église. This dedication to the cause of the Church
was found in Pépin, Charlemagne and Saint Louis. Joan of Arc brought about French renewal
by once again identifying France with the Church.55 The Government of National Defence,
however, was blind to the true mission of France. As in 1860, it was the zouaves/Volontaires
who recognised and upheld French values. Loigny, despite its outcome, represented a
victory of Christ; for former zouave Jean Delmas, ‘a miracle of patience, of confidence in God
and of joy in sacrifice’.56 Loigny was fitted into the continuum of French greatness. The
comparisons with Thermopylae (also applied to Castelfidardo) were supplemented with
suitable national examples. In 1889 Vié de Saint Bernard, abbé of Clairvaux, considered
comparisons with Bouvines, Patay and Valmy and in 1911 Mgr. Stanislas-Arthur-Xavier
Touchet of Orléans pronounced it greater than Austerlitz. Challan de Belval, a doctor who
tended to the wounded of Loigny, identified a great moment of national renewal: ‘De par le
Christ le Sicambre Clovis a fait la France! De par le Christ Jeanne d’Arc l’a ressuscitée! De par
le Christ et sous les plis de votre glorieux étendard couvert du sang de vos héros vous l’avez
immortalisée.’57
In the continuum of French national history, there was one figure above all others:
Joan of Arc, credited with having resurrected France through her victories and through her
supreme moment of triumph, her martyrdom at Rouen. The zouaves/Volontaires were
conceptualised as the successors of Joan. In 1868, in a sermon on the liberation of Orléans,
Mgr. Louis Baunard, rector of the Catholic Faculty of Lille University, drew a parallel
between the actions of Joan, the redemptive heroine and the zouaves at Mentana. Both
proved their fidelity to the ‘pact of alliance’ that linked France to God, and both offered their
blood in expiation.58 Loigny was, however, the great parallel. Mgr. Maurice d’Hulst, rector of
the Free Catholic University in Paris, consecrating the rebuilt church in 1893, argued that
Loigny was greater that the neighbouring battlefields of Patay, Sargeau or Meury, victories
of Joan. True glory was found in defeat and martyrdom:
Henri Derély, Le général de Sonis, les Volontaires de l’Ouest et le drapeau du Sacré-Cœur (Paris and Lille:
Desclée de Brouwer, 1892), p. 52.
54 Alfred van den Brule, 2 December 1909, cited in L’Avant-Garde, 1 January 1910.
55 Gabriel de Belcastel, L’Œuvre du Vœu National (Versailles: Cerf et Fils, 1878).
56 Jean Delmas, Les zouaves pontificaux en France (Limoges: Eugène Ardent et Cie., 1877), p. 34.
57 Cited in L’Avant-Garde, 1 July 1910.
58 Louis Baunard, ‘Jeanne d’Arc et la délivrance d’Orléans’, 8 May 1868, in Baunard, Saintes et Saints de Dieu:
Choix de discours et panégyriques prononcés de 1868 à 1909 (Paris: J. de Gigord, 1914).
53
12
le témoignage, la fidélité héroïque qu’aucun revers ne déconcerte, qui s’attache à une cause perdue et la sauve en
croyante à elle. Jeanne, vaincue, enchaînée, calomniée, condamnée, brûlée a cru à la France et sa foi ne l’a pas
trompée. Jeanne est morte et la France lui a dû la vie.59
Yet, enthusiasts identified a still closer link, conflating Loigny with nearby Patay
(where not a shot was fired, as Theuré, curé of Loigny, bitterly noted).60 Charrette was, not
unjustly, accused of fostering the confusion: ‘C’est sur le même champ de bataille où Jeanne
d’Arc en 1429 déployait sa bannière, que nous avons eu l’honneur de déployer la nôtre qui
sera toujours pour nous comme une relique merveilleuse.’61 The image endured, despite the
protests of the inhabitants of Loigny (culminating in the 1901 renaming of the village as
Loigny-la-Bataille). At a tridiuum celebrated in honour of Joan in Bordeaux a cathedral
canon told the faithful:
quatre siècles et demi plus tard, au 2 décembre 1870…c’est le triste hiver de l’année terrible et sur cette même
plaine de Patay un grand linceul de neige est étendu comme pour recevoir le cadavre de la grande nation qui
meurt. C’est la France qui est coupable et doit expier; mais l’expiation n’est pas la mort pour qui espère en
Dieu…de ce champ de bataille, deux fois historique et cent fois héroïque l’honneur va sortit intact, immaculé,
empourpré d’un sang glorieux et avec l’honneur, le secret de la résurrection.62
III
The concept of expiation was at the heart of the zouave enterprise. France had proved an
apostate nation; Napoleon III betrayed France’s mission as la fille aînée de l’Église. Whether
God’s justified anger might be averted depended upon the innocent blood offered in
expiation. Blood was the key to redemption and discourse on the zouaves was saturated
with it. Enrolling in the zouaves was understood primarily in terms of expiatory sacrifice.
The ‘zouave saint,’ Joséph-Louis Guérin, did not expect victory, but aligned himself with, ‘all
the martyrs who offered themselves to the executioners’.63 The ultramontane leader, Louis
Veuillot, encouraging the young Theodore Wibaux to enlist, was explicit: ‘we want to offer
our blood in order to atone for the disgraceful defalcation of France’. Veuillot hoped for the
grace of a second Castelfidardo, a defeat fecund in martyrs.64 The idealised zouave accepted
hardship, extreme physical suffering and death joyfully.65 Dying words that encapsulated
these sentiments were eagerly transcribed.
In their martyrologies relating to Castelfdiardo and Mentana respectively, Ségur and
Huguet betrayed a fascination with what Huguet termed ‘[the zouaves’] blessed and
triumphant ends, their smiling death agonies’.66 Huguet judged them ‘yet more beautiful…
on the bloody straw of ambulances and at hospital [than on the battlefield]’.67 Ségur
captured the zouaves’ fortitude and resignation, and also obliquely their innocence: ‘they
lay on their bloody beds as if in the wedding bed of truth, singing canticles of eternal love’.68
On the young Mizaël le Mesre de Pas, wounded on the eve of Castelfidardo, Bresciani wrote:
Maurice le Sage d’Hauteroche d’Hulst, ‘Discours prononcé à la consécration de l’église de Loigny, le 18
septembre 1893’, in idem., Nouveaux mélanges oratoires, volume III (Paris: Poussielgue, 1900), p. 356.
60 Theuré, Souvenir du 2 décembre: Loigny, son église, ses monuments (Chartres: C. Métais, 1896), p. 1.
61 Charette speech, Le Gaulois, 29 July 1885, in Charette, Noces, p. 27.
62 Coubé cited in L’Avant-Garde, 1 February 1910.
63 Allard, Le Volontaire, p. 19.
64 Veuillot letter n.d. (November 1866) in Coëtlosquet, Wibaux, p. 28.
65 The hardship of a soldier’s life was stressed. Wibaux loathed sentry duty: ibid., pp. 59-60, 126-7, 152. Huguet
pointed to nobles accepting the ‘obligations mesquines et dures de la vie de garnison’: Les Victoires, pp. 164-66.
66 Huguet, Les Martyrs de la liberté de l’Église en 1867. Nerola, Monte-Libretti, Monte-Rotondo, Mentana (Lyon:
Félix Grimaud, 1868), p. 9.
67 Ibid., p. 9.
68 Ségur, Les Martyrs, p. 47.
59
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Prends ton vol âme angélique; ton sang sera une semence de martyrs! Tu fus le premier à en arroser la terre,
mais d’autres entreront en ciel avant toi, parce que Dieu veut que la première couronne soit plus resplendissante
que les autres et multipliera les fleurons pour l’éternité en prolongeant tes souffrances. 69
Guérin too, was favoured with a slow and painful death ‘since doubtless the divine
remunerator reserved a yet more glorious crown for him in heaven’.70 Both proved suitably
eloquent on the nature and meaning of their agony. Mizaël turned to Mary: ‘Je vous offre
[mes souffrances] en union de celles qui déchiraient votre cœur au pied de la croix.’71 Guérin
thought of Christ: ‘Mon Dieu, combien je souffre, mais que votre volonté soit faite…combien
je suis heureux d’offrir mes faibles souffrances à ce bon Jésus qui a tant souffert pour moi.’72
Others found it harder to summon up the necessary resignation and abnegation.
Bernard de Quatrebarbes who died in 1867 struggled to reconcile himself to the prospect of
life with only one arm and a crippled hand: ‘je sais qu’il est infinement bon…je m’offre tout
entier à lui. Si seulement je ne me plaignais point; mais ce qui me console, c’est cette pensée
que le bon Dieu a bien dit ‘Que ce calice s’éloigne de moi’!’73 Nonetheless, the dominant note
was not only an acceptance of pain and suffering, but even a positive pleasure in it. A zouave
made light of the amputation of two fingers, observing that it was little, considering that he
had come prepared to give all his blood and all his limbs.74 Guérin’s comrade, Arthur Chalus,
was by no means unique in repeating that he was happy to die; as to Paul Parcevaux, ‘his joy
at giving his life for God was so great that it shone in his features’.75 Observers saw parallels
to Christ’s Calvary and the Eucharistic sacrifice. Abbé Simon de Latreiche wrote of the
injured of Castelfidardo, ‘ils rendent [à Jésus Christ] le sang pour le sang, et tandis qu’à la
voix du prêtre le sang de l’Agneau coule sur l’autel du sacrifice, le leur coule dans une union
réelle et vivante’.76
The language of martyrdom employed by Ségur and Huguet did not disappear in the
context of the Franco-Prussian War. In some cases there was a sense of deferred
martyrdom, a martyrdom that represented the culmination of a career begun at Rome.
Zouave Henri de Verthamon, bearer of the banner of the Sacred Heart at Loigny, died five
days later in considerable suffering, reflecting, ‘how I regret not having died at Rome for
religion, for the Holy Father…but one can only want what God wishes’.77 Yet there were also
fresh martyrs to celebrate. Victor Charruau, a volontaire who fought at Brou and Loigny, was
described in terms to match any zouave: ‘Dieu voulait faire de lui une de ces hosties pures et
saintes qui continuent la passion de Jésus Christ et expient les peines du monde.’ His death
had an explicitly redemptive quality, abbé Pergeline reporting that he had prayed to suffer
longer to redeem the soul of a friend.78
There was, however, one notable difference between the martyrs of Castelfidardo or
Mentana and the martyrs of Loigny. The marked feature of those who fell at Castelfidardo
and Mentana was their youth – the ‘gentle and delicate and adolescent’, Georges d’Héliand
was aged nineteen, Alfred de la Barre de Nanteuil and Alfége du Beaudiez only twenty, while
Cited in Lafond, Lorette et Castelfidardo, p. 325.
Ségur, Les Martyrs, p. 263.
71 Jean Delmas, La Neuvième Croisade, 2nd ed. (Paris: Blériot frères, 1881), p. 86.
72 Allard, Le Volontaire, p. 80.
73 Huguet, Les Martyrs, p. 193.
74 Huguet, Le Propagateur, p. 231.
75 Guérin cited in anon letter, 2 November 1860, in Allard, Le Volontaire, p. 76; Latreiche, cited in Delmas,
Neuvième croisade, pp. 222-3.
76 Abbé Latreiche, Journal des événements de Castelfidardo, cited in Charette, Souvenir, p. 9.
77 Marquis de Saint-Aulaire, Henri de Verthamon, zouave pontifical, volontaire de l’Ouest, blessé mortellement au
combat de Loigny, le 2 décembre 1870 (Perigueux: J. Bonnet, 1873), p. 118.
78 Abbé Pergeline, Victor Charruau. Allocution prononcé le 27 mars 1872, adresse aux anciens élèves de l’Externat
des Enfants Nantais (Nantes: V. Forest et E. Grimaud, 1872), p. 14.
69
70
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the ‘very pure and very gentle’, Mizaël de Pas resembled a young girl, ‘so much was his
appearance modest and virginal’.79 The English zouave, Julian Watts-Russell, who died at
Mentana aged a mere seventeen, was described by his comrade Wibaux as, ‘the youngest,
and perhaps also one of the most innocent among all those who fell on this glorious field’.
He resembled an angel in death.80 Even zouaves approaching thirty might be portrayed as
children. Delmas wrote of Hyacinthe de Lanascol, ‘his death was that of a child. He fell
asleep smiling’.81
Ségur, in emphasising the torments endured by the dying zouaves, developed a
striking tension between the suffering endured and the zouaves’ young and delicate bodies.
It was clear that the zouaves’ true strength lay in the fortitude with which they accepted
pain and death. The language employed suggested the bodies of adolescents rather than
grown men and had strongly feminising aspects. This was heightened by the stress laid on
zouave mothers. Both Ségur and Huguet devoted the closing chapters of their martyrologies
to zouave mothers who mourned their fallen sons. The mothers were depicted as exemplars
in their willing acceptance of the pain of loss and in their understanding of the designs of
God. Georges d’Héliand’s mother, a widow confronted with the death of her only son
declared, ‘I must thank God who made my George experience a happiness which I could
never have given him if He had left him to me.’ She even reportedly recited a Te Deum at the
news.82
There were young Volontaires – both Joseph Perraud and Fernand de Ferron died at
Loigny aged nineteen – but the tenor of the descriptions of the martyrs of Loigny was very
different. In part there were no martyrologies comparable to Ségur’s work, but there was no
shortage of memoirs and annual commemorative sermons were delivered. The fallen of
Loigny were no less heroic than the fallen of Castelfidardo and their status as martyrs was
almost invariably commented upon. Both defeats were understood in terms of expiatory
sacrifice, but the language of youth and innocence was not applied to Loigny. This can be
explained in three ways. First, Castelfidardo represented the inception of a legend and
image of a legion of young Christian martyrs captured the imagination of Catholic
enthusiasts. Loigny (and Auvours) were seen in terms of the last acts in the zouave epic, the
culmination of their mission. By the time of Loigny the zouaves were experienced and
battle-hardened men, notwithstanding the presence of young Volontaires. Second, emphasis
was laid on the bearers of the flag of the Sacred Heart and the heroes Charette and Sonis,
none of whom possessed the striking youth of many of the martyrs of Castelfidardo. Third,
in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War, with fierce debate as to the reasons for the
defeat, Catholics sought to rebut republican accusations that Catholic teachings produced
weak, soft and passive men.83 The feminising language that was applied to the zouaves of
Castelfidardo held little appeal in this changed context. Just as the language of the crusade
could not be applied to Volontaires, a new portrayal of Christian soldiers was required in
1870-71.
IV
The great set-piece of 1870-71 was the battle of Loigny, an engagement that cemented the
reputation of the zouaves/Volontaires and became central to the zouave myth. It also gave
them a new hero, potentially even a saint: the Catholic and monarchist general Gaston de
Ségur, Les Martyrs, pp. 73-74, 91.
Wibaux letter, 7 Nov. 1867, in Coëtlosquet, Wibaux, pp. 141-2.
81 Delmas, Neuvième Croisade, p. 226.
82 Ségur, Les Martyrs, p. 93; Mensor in Le Gaulois, 27 July 1885, in Charette, Noces, p. 157.
83 e.g. Henri de Cathelineau, Le vrai patriotisme développé par l’enseignement religieux (Lille: Lefebvre-Ducrocq,
1879).
79
80
15
Sonis, commander of the 17th Corps. The classic zouave account starts with a conversation
on the eve of the battle. Sonis testified to his conviction that the salvation of France hinged
on re-Christianisation, pointing to his flag of a white cross on a blue background, only to be
told by Charette, ‘this heraldic cross doesn’t speak to me enough about Jesus Christ’.84
Charette thereupon produced the banner of the Sacred Heart embroidered by the
Visitationist nuns of Paray-le-Monial that he had received in Tours. Charette offered the
honour of carrying the flag to his friend comte Fernand de Bouillé, but the latter demurred,
not having served in Rome.85 Instead Henri de Verthamon carried the flag into battle –
Bouillé picked it up when he fell. In a lethal relay the flag passed from Verthamon to Bouillé
to his son, Jacques, to Édouard de Cazenove de Pradines to Jules de Traversay to the zouave
Ferdinand Le Parmentier. The chaplain Pierre Doussot finally brought it back from the
battlefield.86 Of the flag-bearers only Le Parmentier, Traversay and Cazenove de Pradines
survived, the latter taking pride in his status as disabled veteran of Patay, choosing to sit in
the National Assembly in zouave uniform with his arm in a sling. The blood-stained banner
became a relic, prominently displayed at commemorative ceremonies.
The banner acquired its blood-stains in the fading light of 2 December. Initially the
brunt of the fighting was borne by general Antoine Chanzy’s 16th Corps. As the day wore on
Bavarian and Prussian troops recovered to retake the positions from which they had been
driven back and by the afternoon the village of Loigny had been invested by Bavarian
troops, though a remnant of the 37th battalion held out in the cemetery. In a muchdiscussed action, Sonis decided to turn the tide of battle by retaking Loigny, though the
dispersal of the 17th Corps meant that he had relatively few troops at his disposal. Sonis
later maintained that his intention was not to lead a charge of several hundred men, but by
this example to galvanise the reluctant 51st regiment. He also expected to find his action
supported by the nearby third division. In the event, however, the assault comprised of
barely 800: the first battalion of the Volontaires under Charette, the irregular franc-tireur
battalions of Tours and Blidah and the mobile guard of the Côtes-du-Nord. Sonis proceeded
in the spirit of sacrifice: ‘Je ne voulus point me déshonorer en abandonnant ces trois cent
zouaves qui marchaient derrière moi…Je me sentais fort pour le sacrifice que j’allais
accomplir, du consentement de ces braves…il me parut bon de mourir sous le drapeau qui
les abritait.’87 In the absence of any support, the attack fizzled out and the handful of troops
who reached Loigny were soon forced to retreat. Of the 300 zouaves who charged to the
shouts of ‘Vive la France! Vive Pie IX!’ 198 fell.88 Charette was injured and taken prisoner.
Sonis was left on the battlefield with a shattered knee. He was sustained through the bitterly
cold night through a vision of Notre-Dame de Lourdes, while the zouave Fernand de Ferron
expired with his head on his shoulder.89
Two weeks later, Augustin d’Albiousse, commander in Charette’s absence, issued a
short communiqué that set out the zouave reading of the battle:
Doussot cited in Bart-Loi, Au service, p. 266.
On the banner : Bulletin de l’œuvre du vœu national au Sacré Cœur de Jésus, in Charette, Souvenir, pp. 93-6;
Jacquemont, La Campagne; Bart-Loi, Au service. Charette took the chance in Tours to touch it to the relics of Saint
Martin, the warrior patron saint of France, invoked on the reverse of the banner.
86 Accounts differ – only Verthamon and two de Bouillés appear in all versions. Jacquemont, La campagne, pp.
106-7 and Bart-Loi, Au service, p. 280 mention Cazenove de Pradines; he later wrote that his inclusion was
erroneous, though he was wounded defending the flag. He does not feature in the detailed account of abbé
Provost, Loigny-la-Bataille, de 1870 à 1912 (Lille: V. Ducoulombier, 1912), pp. 85-89. See Nouaille-Degorce, ‘Les
Volontaires’, volume 1, pp. 293-4.
87 Sonis, cited in Bart-Loi, Au service, p. 277.
88 Sonis, cited in ibid., p. 280. These figures were given by Charette in his report dated 10 Jan. 1871, ‘Historique
de la legion’, pp. 56-58. Jacquemont gave a figure of 207 zouaves and 11 officers. He put other losses at 60 franctireurs and 150 mobile guards. La Campagne, p. 111.
89 Baunard, Life, p. 205.
84
85
16
La guerre que nous subissons est une guerre d'expiation, et Dieu a déjà choisi parmi nous les victimes les plus
nobles et les plus pures...Retrempons notre courage dans nos convictions religieuses et plaçons notre espoir
dans la divine Sagesse, dont les secrets sont impénétrables…C'est par un acte de foi que la France est née sur le
champ de bataille de Tolbiac; c'est par un acte de foi qu'elle sera sauvée…avec l’aide de Dieu et pour la patrie,
restons ici ce que nous étions à Rome, les dignes fils de la fille aînée de l'Église. 90
The action of Loigny was placed in a line with their service in Rome, a great moment of
expiatory sacrifice, a second Castelfidardo. In the dying moments of the Franco-Prussian
War the Volontaires’ assault on the plateau of Auvours provided more martyrs and another
tale of heroic sacrifice, this time crowned with victory rather than defeat, but after Loigny it
was little more than a footnote.91 Loigny was the supreme expression of the Volontaires’
willingness to offer themselves in expiatory sacrifice. Jacquemont wrote,
la fleur de nos rangs fut moissonnée dans ce terrible combat…[mais] puisqu'ils se sont donnés à [la France] sans
regarder en arrière, puisqu'il a fallu, pour expier tant d'erreurs, des victimes si pures et si belles, attendons le
jour où Dieu se souviendra de nos sacrifices, et ne désespérons pas.92
Yet, Loigny would also stand alone as a self-contained myth that enabled Catholic
France to claim that what glory and military honour could be found in the disasters of the
Franco-Prussian War belonged to them. Its champions insisted that there was a sound
military logic: if properly supported, it would have undoubtedly resulted in victory, just as
an army of truly Catholic soldiers would have defeated the Prussians.93 The myth of the
charge under the banner of the Sacred Heart exerted a tremendous appeal over Catholic
France and even inspired Alexandre Legentil’s vow to build a chapel dedicated to the Sacred
Heart. After Loigny the zouaves/Volontaires were recast as the soldiers of the Sacred Heart,
indissolubly associated with the expiatory devotion that flourished so spectacularly during
l’année terrible. Legentil’s vow was ultimately to result in the Sacré-Cœur basilica at
Montmartre, explicitly conceived as an expiatory monument. Loigny, depicted in a mosaic
inside the basilica, was the great expression of the cult.94
The Sacred Heart was very much a penitential devotion in the wake of l’année terrible,
obsessed with punishment and expiation. Notwithstanding protective and maternal
qualities, it was employed in conjunction with the image of an angry chastising patriarchal
God.95 Marguerite-Marie Alacoque’s original visions had included ideas of divine anger. One
was of Jesus covered in wounds, with the message, ‘This is what my people reduce me to,
they persecute me; it they do not mend their ways I shall punish them severely.’96 1789 was
the first taste of this providential punishment; defeat and civil war was the second. The
zouaves enjoyed a privileged position within the cult, heroes who had rallied to the Sacred
Heart, marking the path that others should follow. The annual services to commemorate
Loigny offered the ideal opportunity to fix this image of the zouaves/Volontaires.
Just as with the dead of Castelfidardo, the divine reward of the expiatory victims of
Loigny was not in doubt. In 1871 Pie was clear: ‘to have fallen under the folds of the banner
Jacquemont, La Campagne, appendix, pp. 195-6.
For an account of Auvours: ibid., pp. 151-63. It was a limited victory – the first battalion of zouaves, joined
once again by the mobile guard of the Côtes-du-Nord, retook the plateau of Auvours, but the French lines were
broken that evening, forcing a general retreat from Le Mans.
92 Ibid, pp. 122-3.
93 e.g. Delmas, Neuvième Croisade; Charette 10 Jan. 1871 report; Bart-Loi, Au service; Pie, Éloge, 1871;
Cathelineau, Vrai patriotisme.
94 Jonas, France and the Cult.
95 Jonas, ‘Anxiety, Identity and the Displacement of Violence during the Année Terrible: The Sacred Heart and the
Diocese of Nantes, 1870-1871’, French Historical Studies. 21 (1998), pp. 55-75.
96 Jean Delmas, Le pèlerinage de l’Anjou à Paray-le-Monial, 29-30 juin 1874 (Angers: Briand et Hervé, 1874), p. 28.
90
91
17
of the heart of Jesus is to acquire the privilege of the beloved disciple’.97 Thirty-eight years
later, Alfred van den Brule addressed a prayer to the fallen:
Soldats de Christ, Martyrs de la France, hosties sacrées et saignantes des deux plus grandes causes…vous dont
les cendres furent déposées là comme pour être unies au corps de l’Auguste Victime et dont le sang fut répandu
là comme pour être mêlé à son précieux sang…nous vous prions comme l’on prie les reliques des saintes.’98
Yet, though the language of martyrdom was applied to the fallen Volontaires, there was no
work comparable to the martyrologies of Ségur or Huguet. Perhaps the sheer number of the
dead restrained this impulse. Laurent Bart-Loi’s solution was to provide an appendix listing
all the dead, wounded and missing.99 Biographies served to make the case for particular
individuals – for instance Philibert Catherin, Verthamon or Charruau – and the frequent
mentions of individual zouaves in memoirs might stretch into page-long pen-portraits.
However, there was one compelling martyr: Sonis. For abbé Vié he was the equal of Bayard
and ‘since Saint Louis a soul at the same time so religious and so warlike has not been
seen’.100
This ‘archetype of the Christian hero’, emerged from Loigny, in the words of Mgr.
Freppel of Angers, who delivered his funeral oration, as ‘a glorious image of the mutilated
Fatherland’.101 Emphasis was placed on his vision of Notre-Dame de Lourdes; Charette later
recounted that when he saw Sonis on the next day, ‘his handsome and noble face was
radiant: he was still under the influence of the vision he had in [the] night, covered and
buried in the snow as if in a shroud’.102 There followed 45 days of intense suffering in the
makeshift hospital of the presbytery of Loigny. Theuré, curé of Loigny, recounted admiringly
that Sonis blessed God when his leg was amputated at the thigh. Remarkably, Sonis
returned to serve in the French army; if scarcely able to walk, he could still ride. Mgr.
Freppel summed up his life after Loigny as ‘the seventeen-year struggle between a soul
magnified by suffering and remains of a body become incapable of serving it…martyrdom
renewed twenty times over’.103 Mgr. Baunard produced a hagiographical biography that
closed with hopes for his future sainthood. In 1891 the Institut de Notre-Dame de Chartres
made a pilgrimage to his tomb.104
V
Regenerating France was, for many, an explicitly counter-revolutionary project. The
Revolution represented the rejection of God and negation of France’s national tradition. The
whole zouave enterprise was frequently read in terms of the struggle against the
Revolution. In the wake of Mentana vicomte Sioc’Han de Kersabiec commented, ‘la
Révolution cette fois, attaquée du front et sérieusement, a dû reculer; elle se sent blessé et
en train d’être vaincue’.105 Catherin also read the Franco-Prussian War through the prism of
Pie, Éloge, 1871, p. 144.
Alfred van den Brule, 2 December 1909 address, cited in L’Avant-Garde, 15 January 1910.
99 Bart-Loi, Au service, pp. 292-8.
100 Abbé Vié, Éloge funèbre des soldats françaises morts à la bataille de Loigny, prononcé dans l’église de Loigny, le
2 décembre 1889 (Orléans: H. Herluison, 1889), p. 20.
101 Freppel, Éloge funèbre du général de Sonis (Angers: Germain et Grassin, 1887), 2. Pie almost certainly had
Sonis in mind in 1871: ‘la patrie, tristement amputée en elle-même, s’intéresse au sort de ces glorieux mutilés
dans lesquels elle reconnaît l’image de son propre démembrement’. Éloge funèbre, 1871, p. 144.
102 Charette, 30 May 1892 speech, in Collège de Juilly. Inauguration des bustes de Mgr de Mérode et du général de
Sonis, anciens élèves (Paris: F. Pichon, 1892), p. 11.
103 Freppel, cited in Derély, Le général, p. 56.
104 Provost, Loigny-la-Bataille, p. 445.
105 É. Sioc’Han de Kersabiec, Les soldats du Pape. Journal de deux zouaves bretons (Nantes: Libaros, 1867), p. 2.
97
98
18
the Revolution, diagnosing a struggle between Church and Revolution.106 Prussia
represented Protestantism and the Revolution (two linked evils, characterised by revolt
against God). Yet Catherin foresaw defeat: France was infected with the principles of 1789.
It was through divine chastisement that French regeneration would come about. In August
Catherin wrote, ‘la France finira par sortir de ces tristes événements complètement purifiée
des principes fâcheuses de la Révolution et reprendra ses vieilles traditions de Fille aînée de
l’Église’.107 The zouaves were the privileged carriers of redemption: Catherin’s
disappearance at Loigny made him an expiatory victim whose blood would fertilise a
regenerated France.
That the reasons for the fall of France lay in the fatal doctrines of the Revolution was
a commonplace. Nicolas Vagner, the father of another zouave who had disappeared at
Loigny, wrote in May 1871, ‘Pauvre France! À quelles tristes destinées t’ont réduite 80 ans
d’enseignement irréligieux…le fondateur de l’Église a attendu une réforme, une conversion
de la France; mais notre folle patrie gangrenée ne s’est point repentie et Dieu s’est lassé.’108
The zouave narrative was inscribed within the broader language of counter-revolution from
the outset. Lamoricière’s order of the day on taking command of the papal armies in April
1860 was unequivocal: the Revolution threatened European civilization as Islam had in
previous centuries. The zouaves were understood – and understood themselves – in
opposition to the revolutionary tradition. 1870-1871 did not change this. The great addition
to the zouave legend, the Sacred Heart, proved perfectly in line with zouave thinking,
stressing expiation and reading the Revolution and l’année terrible as divine chastisement.
Moreover, the Sacred Heart was the literal symbol of the counter-revolution, worn by the
Vendéen counter-revolutionaries of 1793-4. In 1870-71 therefore a counter-revolutionary
force identified with a counter-revolutionary devotion in a mutually-reinforcing association.
Raymond Jonas argues persuasively that the cult of the Sacred Heart was
inextricably bound up in a counter-revolutionary context, not least because the leading
participants had no interest in extracting it from this context. Legitimist deputies Pradines
and Gabriel de Belcastel enthusiastically sponsored the ‘National Vow’ movement to
dedicate France to the Sacred Heart. The latter led the delegation of deputies on the 1873
Paray-le-Monial pilgrimage, while the former pressed for the National Assembly to attend
the laying of the first stone of the basilica.109 In numerous speeches Belcastel advanced a
Manichean reading of French history as a struggle between God and Revolution; redemption
was to be found in a regenerated Catholic France under the flag of the Sacred Heart.110
Charette, invited to serve on the organising committee of the ‘National Vow’ basilica, liked
to display the image of the Sacred Heart worn by his great-uncle at his execution in
Nantes.111 Whatever the moderation or prudence of Mgr. Joseph Guibert, archbishop of
Paris, and his successor, François Richard, Sacré-Cœur could not but be seen as a counterrevolutionary monument.
The zouaves’ social origins sharpened their identification with counter-revolution.
Despite frequent statements that the zouaves and volontaires recruited from all classes and
were genuinely democratic and egalitarian, the over-representation of the nobility was
Catherin letter, 22 July 1870, in Bart-Loi, Au service, p. 206.
Catherin letter, 9 August 1870, in ibid., pp. 212-13.
108 Nicolas Vagner, Une visite au champ de bataille de Loigny, 22 avril 1871, 4th ed. (Nancy: Vagner, 1878), pp. 89. Bart-Loi listed 131 zouaves as wounded at Loigny, 66 as killed and 21 as simply disappeared – many bodies
were never identified. Vagner was lucky, able to identify his son Charles’s grave on the information of Le Gonidec
de Traissan.
109 Jonas, France and the Cult, 224-243.
110 Gabriel de Belastel, L’Œuvre; idem., Le Drapeau de Dieu (Toulouse: Douladoure-Privat, 1881) - both speeches
delivered at the annual Assemblée Générale des Catholiques.
111 Léon Aubineau, L’Univers, 23 July 1885, in Charette, Noces, pp. 6-10.
106
107
19
inescapable.112 Jean Guenel estimates that 44 of 60 zouave officers were noble and argues
that so too were many sous-officers and members of the rank and file; Nouaille-Degorce
calculates that, if the particule can be taken to denote nobility, 466 of 4680 volontaires were
noble. Yet it was not a corps of nobles and their deferential tenants; enrolment patterns
show that nobles were seldom joined by peasants from the locality. The decisive influence
in recruitment was that of the clergy.113
Zouave political thinking appears more clear-cut. Jacquemont wrote defensively, ‘Si
le plus grand nombre d’entre eux étaient royalistes, leur fera-t-on un crime? S’ils avaient
appris de leur Roi à aimer avant tout la France et à s’immoler pour elle, n’ont-ils pas prouvé
que c’était là une bonne école de patriotisme?’ Religious and patriotic motivations trumped
all, he insisted; not even the grandsons of Vendéen leaders hankered after the Bourbon
panache blanc.114 Guenel argues for a pervasive legitimism within the zouaves, a tendency to
link ultramontane Catholicism to a belief in the monarchy as the instrument of redemption
and re-Christianisation. Certainly, many legitimists saw ultramontane Catholicism as
inseparable from their cause and believed that only they stood for Catholic interests. This
was very much the position of Belcastel. In short, the notorious legitimism of Charette was
shared by many of his comrades. It was perhaps fitting that he laid the famous banner of
Loigny on his sovereign’s defunct body, having attended the deathbed of the Bourbon
Pretender, the comte de Chambord.
Charette also symbolised the counter-revolution through his great-uncle, Vendéen
leader François-Athanase de Charette. Other great names of the counter-revolution were
prominent in the zouaves. Allard celebrated Guérin’s vendéen blood and read the zouaves
through the prism of the ‘guerre de géants.’115 The Volontaires boasted a Stofflet, a Cadoudal,
and the grandsons of Marquis Charles Bonchamps.116 However, although recruitment
figures reveal a substantial over-representation of the west in both forces, the fit with the
heartlands of the Vendée/chounannerie is in fact a poor one.117 Also a vendéen or choaun
heritage proudly proclaimed might mean little more than a pride in a mythologised past.118
The zouaves and Volontaires in many ways possessed a counter-revolutionary
identity, and both their champions and their detractors often read them in these terms.
Hostile commentators could interpret the Volontaires as an archaic aristocratic-dominated
expression of the counter-revolutionary west. It was equally notable that zouave/Volontaire
champions were also frequently legitimists – notably Pie, Freppel and Cabrières, if not
Dupanloup. There was not only substantial ideological overlap between the zouaves and the
Volontaires, but the temptation to read the two forces as basically congruent was strong.
Yet, notwithstanding the insistence on continuity, they were forces recruited in very
different circumstances at the service of very different aims. Though the zouaves fought
alongside French troops at Mentana, for most of the decade 1860-1870 they were isolated
and at odds with the French government – and self-consciously so. This was obviously not
the case in 1870-71, whatever the Volontaires’ reservations about the Government of
National Defence, or even about the regular army (volontaire Perraud wrote, ‘God cannot
Jacquemont claimed that many were ‘enfants du peuple’ and social distinctions were ignored: ‘c’est le
catholicisme qui inspire la vraie démocratie…nous étions tous unis par une camaraderie intime et
charmante...Notre uniforme effaçait toute autre distinction.’ La Campagne, p. 52.
113 Guenel, Dernière guerre, p. 42; Nouaille-Degorce, ‘Les volontaires’, volume 1, p. 99; on nobles in the rank-andfile: Huguet, Les Victoires.
114 Jacquemont, La Campagne, p. 54.
115 Allard, Le volontaire, p. 96: ‘Nous sommes les fils de saints, la terre que nous foulons…a été arrosée par le
sang que nos pères ont versé.’
116 Jean-Clément Martin¸ La Vendée de la mémoire (Paris: Seuil, 1989), p. 132.
117 Nouaille-Degorce, ‘Les volontaires’, volume 1, pp.50-102.
118 Geoffrey Cubbitt, ‘Memory and fidelity in French Legitimism: Crétineau-Joly and the Vendée’, Nineteenth
Century Contexts, 21 (2000), pp. 593-610.
112
20
protect and cherish the souls of soldiers who speak only blasphemy and shamelessness’).119
Supporters of the zouaves chose to read them as the embodiment of French national
tradition, but the argument for the Volontaires as patriots was stronger and did not hinge on
a particular interpretation of national history. In light of Loigny and Auvours might they
command respect as an expression of national cult of the French resistance of 1870-71?
Unity was elusive in the wake of l’année terrible. Though it has been argued that
there was a willed collective amnesia, the defeat was omnipresent in the early years of the
Third Republic, a staple of political discourse. Competing projects for national regeneration
rested on particular constructions of the collapse.120 The commemoration of the Volontaires
must be understood in this context. In the absence of any hegemonic interpretation of the
defeat, it was hard for any particular memory to gain universal consent. Nonetheless,
certain episodes were celebrated, notably the glorious resistance at Bazeilles, whose
‘maison de la dernière cartouche’ was immortalised by Alphonse de Neuville.121 At first
sight, it might be thought that Loigny would exercise a similar appeal. A narrative of
resilience, heroism, sacrifice and unity could be woven around the events. As with Bazeilles,
there was heroic resistance, in the shape of the two battalions of the 37th regiment in the
cemetery. A disparate range of forces united, sacrificing themselves in a magnificent effort
to afford them fraternal assistance. Catholic politician and advocate of social Catholicism,
Albert de Mun, argued that Loigny should feature in school primers, one of the
‘impérissables modèles du sacrifice offert à la patrie’.122
In 1893 Mgr. d’Hulst drew a lesson of patriotic unity. Sonis and Charette symbolised
‘the alliance of the national flag and the white banner [of the Sacred Heart]’. The rebuilt
church, conceived as both expiatory chapel and ossuary, was ‘a Christian pantheon of
martyrs’, offering a great lesson: the indissoluble union of patriotism and faith, cemented in
blood.123 Already in 1884 abbé Beauchet had held out the hope that Loigny might become ‘a
national pilgrimage’.124 Yet, the theme of unity was drowned out by forceful arguments
about Catholicism and patriotism. Vié, comparing the Volontaires to Joan at Tournelles and
Patay, concluded rhetorically, ‘Qui donc avait osé dire que la piété diminuait la bravoure et
qu’une jeunesse formée par des prêtres serait moins vaillant? Zouaves de Loigny, vous nous
avez bien vengés.’125 The inclusive nature of the celebration of Loigny in terms of lessons of
fraternal unity was undercut by the emphasis on the Catholic nature of patriotism. The anticlerical offensive embodied in the lois Ferry, designed to render state education secular,
sharpened the need to prove the virtues of Catholic principles. Arguments about
regeneration had given way to arguments about Catholic education. D'Hulst’s reading of
Loigny framed an argument for the rights of Catholic education. Catholic schools would not
divide the nation:
Aux jours de nos désastres cette fraternité c’est révélée. On n’a pas demandé aux zouaves de Loigny s’ils avaient
le droit de déployer la bannière du Sacré-Cœur. Et ceux-là…n’ont pas demandé à ceux qui combattaient à leurs
côtés d’autre certificat que celui de la vaillance et du dévouement. 126
Perraud letter, 1 December 1870 in Perraud, Lettres, p. 42.
Karine Varley, Under the Shadow of Defeat. The War of 1870-1871 in French Memory (Basingstoke: Palgrave,
2008).
121 Ibid., pp. 152-74. L’Avant-Garde played upon this legend, identifying the original ‘maison de la dernière
cartouche’ in the farmhouse of Crocette at Castelfidardo where twelve zouaves held out (15 September 1911).
122 Cited in L’Avant-Garde, 1 July 1910.
123 Mgr d’Hulst, ‘Discours, 18 septembre 1893’, pp. 358-60.
124 Abbé Beauchet, Quatorzième anniversaire de la bataille de Loigny, 2 décembre 1884 (Nancy: Imprimerie
catholique de R. Vagner, 1884).
125 Vié, Éloge, p. 21.
126 Mgr d’Hulst, ‘Discours prononcé à la distribution des prix à l’école Saint Etienne à Meaux, le 30 juillet 1891’,
in d’Hulst, Nouveau mélanges oratoires, vol. IV (Paris: Poussielgue, 1901), pp. 89-90.
119
120
21
While Loigny did become a site of pilgrimage – in 1901 a 350-strong pilgrimage was
organised by the Union provinciale de la jeunesse catholique de l’Orléannais – it could not
become a national site of memory.127 In part, the sense of a Catholic site of memory, a
counter to the secular Panthéon militated against this. In part, also, this was because the
monarchist convictions of Charette and his fellow zouaves were imprinted on the site. The
expiatory chapel contained a stained glass window of Saint Henri with the features of
Chambord. In part, though, this reflected the fact that the zouave/Volontaire version of
heroism and patriotism, was not only incompatible with but an implicit challenge to the
civic ideals of the Republic. The whole language of expiation was inherently divisive. As
Jonas points out, the process of expiation was designed to ‘identify and incriminate
others…to fix their transgression in memory though community rituals and monuments’.128
The truly guilty were not those penitents who built the Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre. In using
Loigny to advance arguments about Catholic patriots the Volontaires’ champions implicitly
identified those responsible for the defeat. Henri de Cathelineau declared, ‘Si dans ces jours
d’épreuve, il s’était trouvé plus de soldats chrétiens, nous n’avions pas à pleurer sur le sort
de nos frères de l’Alsace de la Lorraine.’129
The zouaves/Volontaires were Catholic heroes whose heroism was to be enjoyed and
celebrated by enthusiasts for a rechristianised France, a vision that seemed within reach in
the aftermath of l’année terrible. With the stabilisation of the Third Republic in the 1880s,
celebrating the zouaves was to assert the continuing existence of another France and the
essential falsity of the revolutionary principles that were proclaimed as the foundation of
the Republic. The legend of the zouaves was a touchstone for the values that united antirepublican, clerical conservatives, irrespective of their views on monarchy. Just as with the
‘National Vow’ movement, commemorations of Loigny and the zouaves served to advance
an alternative vision of France, French national history and French identity. Applauding the
truly French nature of zouave/Volontaire heroism was to operate within a distinctive
Catholic definition of the national. In this perspective the very concept of sacrifice was
foreign to the Republic; Loigny offered a national lesson. The banner of the Sacré-Cœur was
the symbol of French regeneration. The Volontaires reaffirmed the zouaves’ recognition of
the value and necessity of expiatory bloodshed. They also demonstrate the strength of
dolourist Catholicism, balanced by a confidence in divine intervention. Sonis’ words
exemplify this tradition: ‘J’aime à être brisé, consommé, détruit par vous… Détruisez et
travaillez-moi…Que je sois crucifié, mais crucifié par vous!’130 Miracles stretching from the
visions of Marguerite-Marie to the deliverance of Pontmain from the Prussian invaders
were the counterpoint to this acceptance of pain.
The experience of 1870-71 gave the champions of the zouaves new heroes to
commemorate, new sites of memory to consecrate and a new confidence in engaging in
debates over French identity. The Volontaires might never be a national cult, but they
possessed a resonance and political edge that the zouaves lacked. 1870-71 forged
convincing national heroes: the zouaves were viewed in a new light by those previously
inclined to denigrate them. For their supporters however, it only laid bare the truly national
impulse that had always animated them: Guérin had died for France no less than Perraud.
Clerical opponents of the Republic, whether overtly monarchist, or non-dynastic
conservative proponents of ‘social and religious defence’ or even those who, obedient to the
Report préfet Loiret to ministre de l’intérieur et cultes, 4 July 1901, Archives Nationales (Paris) F 19 5562.
Jonas, France and the Cult, pp. 140-41.
129 Cathelineau, Vrai patriotisme. Cathelineau wrote in the context of the threatened closure of schools run by
non-authorised religious orders, in particular Jesuits. He emphasised the vendéen/Breton identity of the
Volontaires, arguing that their religious and patriotic devotion made them the heirs of 1793.
130 Musée de Loigny-la-Bataille, Association des Amis de Sonis-Loigny website, accessed 15 November 2010.
127
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policies of Pope Leo XIII, officially ‘rallied’ to the Republic in the 1890s, found a set of
compelling arguments in the Volontaires. Yet, the potential political uses of the Volontaires –
as a counter to the dominant official republican discourse, as an argument for the value of
Catholic education – did not necessarily outweigh the significance they held in religious and
spiritual terms. Reflecting on the zouaves and the Volontaires was to reflect on the issues of
sacrifice, suffering and expiation. The faithful were invited not merely to celebrate heroism,
but to enter into the pain of individuals, the physical pain that often accompanied the
martyrs’ deaths and the pain of those who mourned the fallen. The zouaves and Volontaires
taught the powerful lesson that suffering was never in vain.