The Baptist’s Day
“Love God, and go your way!”
Peter Harper, Smoke Signals #17, July 1996
In the last Evangelist, Father Vincent showed how this pagan feast became Christian before being transformed into a patriotic and even a political one. I will explore a quite different aspect.
I am spending time "ad aquas" (at the cottage, in ecclesiastical jargon) in the Laurentians, now that the bug season is coming to a standstill. As I study a map of the nearby Réserve faunique Papineau-Labelle, looking for new lakes to explore by canoe, a detail which never really struck me before comes to my attention: in the northern section of the park, the names of the lakes in Montigny Township appear surprisingly un-Québécois, nonetheless not unfamiliar: de Bonis, d'Albiousse, Lamollière, Montigny, Pimodan, Testard, Charette, ... What they have in common is highlighted by neighbouring lakes, Pie IX, Léon XIII, des Zouaves. All these names are connected with the Pontifical Zouaves, those Romantic knights that flew to the defence of the Papacy in the 1860s.
The connection with the 24th of June is the now defunct tradition that on that day, the Carillon Flag (used by the Quebec Militia at the Battle of Carillon against the invading English) was taken out of its case in the Musée du Séminaire de Québec and paraded out, accompanied by a company of Zouaves in full uniform; a tradition which began in the 1870s and was maintained for about a century. The flag, the story goes, had been received by Louis-de-Gonzague Baillargé from the last surviving Recollet Father. The flag itself is most interesting, since it is the ancestor of our present Québec flag, at least in a way. The four corners are marked with oblique "fleurs de lys", with the royal arms of France on one side and on the other Our Lady on a moon crescent as the "refuge of sinners" under which is the crest of the Marquis de Beauharnois.
Our flag is actually based on a design by Father Elphège Filiatrault in 1902, which he presented as the Carillon Flag (which it obviously was not), which differed from our own in that the fleurs de lys were oblique and pointing towards the centre. In 1903, a Sacred Heart with two branches of maple leaves was added, and the flag was used as the flag of French Canadians under the name Carillon-Sacré-Coeur. Why the Sacred Heart? Well, that is a long story... and we need to get back to the Zouaves. In the early 1860s, the kingdom of Piemont was encroaching on the Papal States, and in 1861 in Milan, Vittorio Emmanuele was proclaimed King of Italy. The Pope's Estates were the last impediment to Italian Unity. It was clear that without the presence of French troops in Rome, the Holy City would soon fall. But Napoleon III's determination was failing, despite the entreaties of his pious and very Catholic wife Eugénie de Montijo, as he listened more and more to the patriotic yearnings which the beautiful Virginia de Castiglione (his current Italian mistress) whispered on his pillow and as he remembered the Carbonaro days of his youth. The Pope's Minister of Armies (sic!), Monsignor de Mérode, a Belgian ex-soldier, had appealed to general Christophe de la Moricière, a hero of the North African wars of colonisation, to establish an independent and international army to defend the Pope, once the French had left, which was just a question of time. Pius IX felt it was his duty to resist any spoliation of "St. Peter's Estate", which the papacy held since the times of Pepin the Short (8th. c.) - "Non devo, non posso, non voglio!" - "I must not, I cannot, I wish not!". This first army corps was named "Les tirailleurs franco-belges" and was composed of a strange mixture of aristocratic and royalist Frenchmen and Belgian Flemish peasants. De la Moricière eventually renamed his troops the "Zouaves", in remembrance of a Kabyle corps which he had commanded in Algeria and which was originally made up of Zwawa tribesmen and he gave them a North African uniform. For ten years, this army group would go from glorious defeat to half-victory (Castelfidardo, Mentana, Citta Castellana, Civita Vecchia...), and when in August 1870, the French Empire fell at Sedan, the Piemontese entered Rome, with the Pope's army putting on only a symbolic defence of 5 hours of combat, since the Pontiff would have no blood shed.
In 1861, the young lawyer Benjamin-Antoine Testard de Montigny, who was in Paris, became the first Quebecer to join the pontifical forces. Other earlier volunteers were Hugh Murray and Alfred Larocque. It is only in 1868, under the influence of Bishop Bourget of Montréal (see the plaque at the base of his monument in front of the RC Cathedral) that some 500 Canadians, nearly all from Québec and all francophones, enlisted amid great popular enthusiasm. In February 1868, the first contingent of 137 was given a farewell Mass at Notre-Dame in which Bishop Bourget spoke for three hours. Each parish was asked to provide a volunteer and $100 in support. The Zouave army numbered in the end about 10 000 men (3200 Dutch, 3000 Frenchmen, 1600 Belgians, 750 Italians..., one Chinaman). There was a saying at the time that "only Frenchmen would dress a Chinaman as a Muslim warrior to go to the rescue of the Swiss Guard!" The Canadian volunteers saw little action and the 8 who died of disease or other causes were buried in the graveyard of St. Lawrence Without. The Zouave Movement was locally opposed by the Sulpicians as well as the Irish Catholics, who felt the Pope needed money rather than soldiers.
After the war, the French troops returned home to fight the German invasion under the name of "Volontaires de l'Ouest". It is then that they were presented by Léon Dupont, the "Holy Man of Tours", with a banner made by the nuns of Paray-le-Monial representing the Sacred Heart on a white background with the words "Coeur de Jésus, sauvez la France" - "Heart of Jesus, save France". On the reverse were later added the words "Saint Martin, patron de la France, priez pour nous" - "Saint Martin, patron of France, pray for us". This was based on a revelation of Christ to St. Marguerite-Marie Alacoque in 1688 c. asking her to have his "Sacred Heart" displayed on the flags of France. This flag flew at the battle of Loigny and was stained with the blood of the dying amid the "incense" of gunsmoke. After the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, the banner reappeared at the deathbed and on the coffin of the Duke of Chambord (+1883), the Bourbon pretender who would have reigned as Henri V had he accepted the tricolour flag of Revolutionary France! Meanwhile, the Spanish Zouaves joined the Carlist forces in the civil war raging in Spain; among them Hugh Murray (the 2nd Canadian Zouave) who died in battle of Manreza.
The Canadian Zouaves also took on the Sacred-Heart flag as their own. It replaced their earlier banner (white with the tiara and keys on one side, and on the other, their motto "Aime Dieu et va ton chemin! - Love God and go your way" - with a beaver and two crossed maple leaves.) - Notice that the beaver and the maple leaf were then considered emblems of French Canada... Eventually, the Sacred Heart was also added to the "new" Carillon Flag, and the flag was flown everywhere in Quebec till that fateful day, January 21 1948, when then-premier Maurice Duplessis took down the Union Jack (he would not fly the Red Ensign) from the tower of the National Assembly and hoisted our present flag.
But there is another connection beween the Zouaves and he old Quebec militia: during the battle of Carillon, Our Lady appeared in the sky deflecting the English bullets - as she was seen sobbing over the devastated battlefield of Loigny after the French defeat. But France was defeated because of her sin... but that is another story leading to the erection of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on Montmartre (in a later issue perhaps). There the parallel stops, no one has suggested to my knowledge that New France was conquered because of her sin!
The Zouaves eventually disbanded everywhere except in Québec, where they maintained their regiments under the name of the Union Allet. In 1900, sons and relatives, and eventually all Catholic men, were allowed to join. By the early 1960s, there were some 4000 men enrolled under the banner, who drilled every week and paraded at all patriotic and religious manifestations. And every summer, they met for field manoeuvres and military training... in case the call of religion and of the papacy should be heard once more. They still apparently exist in some form and have an active phone number in Québec City, but, despite repeated calls, I never got an answer. Their memory survives in place names and in broken dreams: take for instance their colonisation of the West bank of Lake Megantic where a dozen families settled in the 1870s to found Piopolis (the City of Pius IX!) - only four remained 5 years later. There is a shrine to their memory at Mary Queen of the World Cathedral in the so-called "Chapelle du Souvenir". Large marble slabs list the names of the 500 or so volunteers. Exposed are various relics related to the Zouave adventure: flag, uniforms, prayerbooks, medals, and a painting which once hung in their Casino (social club) in Rome. - In the same chapel one can also venerate Bishop Bourget's extensive relic collection, the major piece being bones of St. Zotique encased in a wax reclining figure. There is also a wax representation of a child, marked "Holy Innocent" (sic!)...
Many have wondered why the Zouave phenomenon had such success in Quebec, but not elsewhere. In 1980, René Hardy in his book "Les zouaves, une stratégie du clergé québécois" (Montréal: Boréal Express) thinks it has a lot to do with Ultramontanism. There are also nationalist connections: the zouaves have some indirect link with the old Militia which till 1864 used to reassemble every year in every Quebec parish on St. Peter's Day (traditionally in the rain). There are also links with the traditional right, both here and in France. Just an anecdote: in 1914 at the beginning of the Great War, the future Maréchal Pétain was spending the night at the home of the late Zouave general de Sonis; during the night, he learned that he had been promoted to brigadier-general, and the daughters of General de Sonis took the stars from their father's old uniform to sew them onto Pétain's. Talking about Pétain, the other day at Hudson in a flea market I saw for sale a large porrait of the Maréchal with an inscription by his wife thanking a Mr. Blais for his support and kindness towards the old man then in jail at the Ile de Ré. I resisted buying it... Where would I hang it?... Pétain had a significant following in the Belle Province, and many remained faithful to the end.
I hear that there is someone currently writing a thesis on the Zouaves... it will be interesting to read.