His main reason in urging the corps d’Afrique was, he claimed, with his usual pride of race, that the origin and dress of the Zouaves d’Afrique were strictly African.
To President Mahan, on that occasion, he gave the following history of their formation:—
“That it was during the Algerine war waged by the Duc d’Orleans, eldest son of Louis Philippe, against Abdel-Kader, the Arab, the Zouave obtained that fame which recommended it to civilized nations.
“The French had their three grand armies of ten thousand; the struggle had been long, desperate, and costly to the French, both in men and materials of war, and the campaign began to wane, till
‘A Moorish king went up and down,
Through Granada’s royal town,’
and the services of the African warriors were tendered to the Duc d’Orleans by an African prince.
“When, in a terrible charge, the duke, receiving a shot through the thigh, was unhorsed, and fell bleeding to the ground, the desperate Arabs, amid the wild shouts of their leaders, charged on their steeds with open mouths and distended nostrils, their javelins drawn for the fatal thrust, those faithful black Zouaves, eighteen hundred, mounted upon jet stallions, rushed to the conflict, in turn charging, and turned the front of their antagonists with double-edged sabres, cut through the ranks of the shrieking enemy, covered the duke with their shields, and bore him away in triumph from the field.
“It was for services such as these in a long and bloody struggle, that could not have been brought to a close without such aid, that the African Zouaves, who served in the Algerine war, were taken as veteran troops with the French to Europe, and their dress and tactics introduced as a part of the military service of the French.
“It was observed years ago by persons visiting Hayti, without their comprehending it closely, perhaps, that the soldiers of that island had peculiar tactics,—‘throwing themselves upon the earth,’ and, as one writer observed, turning upon their backs, then upon their sides, so swiftly that it was hard to determine what they were, all the time keeping up a continual ‘load and fire.’ This was, doubtless, nothing but the original Zouave tactics introduced long years ago by native Africans among these people.”