Historic Fort Wayne - Civil War Days July 11-12

[kryptonite]

Subvet - Civil War Days was incredible, I took some friends and everyone was thrilled.

I have a question, who were the soldiers in the red outfits fighting with the Confederate batallion? I know there were a number of countries that supported the CSA, so did some country or countries send a few troops to support them?

[gnome]

Kryptonite, since I didn't make it to the fort this year, I might be mistaken, however, what I think you are refering to are Zouave Troops. The history of the Zouave are all over the internet, nut in a nutshell, they started as North Africans fighting for the French. They were known as colorful, fearless, exceedingly vicious and flamboyant.

The Zouave became a touchstone for super ellite fighters. They were very popular with the public as they put on quite a show...flaming swords, horseback feats of daring, expert marksmanship with bow n arrow, spears, and fire arms. In short they were a big hit at parades.

The legend of the Zouave grew and grew and eventually caught on this side of the pond. Before the Civil War a small ellite force of Zouaves were part of the US Army. When the Civil War broke out, both the North and South had Zouave attired troops.

Krypto, I suspect you saw some Zouaves doing their ZouaveThang. Subvet or PlymouthRes will know for sure.

here is the wiki link ... in which I learned the French Army kept their Zouaves around until 1960 and that the face on ZigZag cigerette papers is a Zouave http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zouave

[Stosh]

Reading that wiki about the Zouave was interesting. People I spoke to at the Civil War days event commented that they thought they were Polish mercenaries. Upon reading the wiki, it more or less confirmed what I thought, that the Zouaves of the Civil War were not foreign soldiers at all, but regiments attired in the Zouave-like attire.

There were a lot of differently attired regiments at the outset of the Civil War. Most of these, as well as the Zouave units, tended to replace their clothing with standard issue uniforms as the war drug on.