General Juchault de Lamoricière: “Christianity is…the animating principle of civilization”

April 7, 2011

French general Christophe Louis Léon Juchault de Lamoricière (1806-1865)

On April 8, Easter Sunday, [1860, General Christophe Louis Juchault de Lamoricière] issued a proclamation to both the volunteers who had arrived and to those who were pondering the call:

The four de Charette brothers, three of whom served in the Pontifical Zouaves, and one as a Papal Dragoon.

“At the sound of the grand voice which lately apprised the world from the Vatican of the dangers threatening the patrimony of St. Peter, Catholics were moved, and their emotion soon spread to every part of the earth. This is because Christianity is not merely the religion of the civilized world, but the animating principle of civilization; it is because the Papacy is the keystone of the arch of Christianity, and all Christian nations seem, in these days, to be conscious of those great verities which are our faith. The revolution today threatens Europe as Islamism did of old, and now, as then, the cause of the Pope is that of civilization and liberty throughout the world.

Private Francis E. Brownell, a Papal Zouave, with the 11th New York Infantry.

Soldiers, have confidence, and believe that God will raise our courage to the level of the great cause whose defense He has entrusted to our arms.”

 

Charles A. Coulombe, The Pope’s Legion: The Multinational Fighting Force that Defended the Vatican (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), pp. 50-51.

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