The briefly loved and beautiful zouave uniform
Print shows a French Zouave in 1853, wearing the uniform and holding a rifle, on cigarette card issued by Kinney Tobacco Company as an insert with the Sweet Caporal brand cigarettes.
When the French went into Algeria in the 1830s, they encountered the Zouaoua people, a Berber tribe along the Djurdjura mountains. Allying with these tough mountain people when possible, metropolitan French officers fell in amour with their costume of flowing colorful breeches, short jackets, turbans or fez, and capes– soon borrowing these for locally raised troops and even for European units.
By the Crimean War, French Zouave units were engaged in combat and, being the first modern European conflict since 1815, caught the imagination of those who were military minded on the other side of the Atlantic.
A French cantinière attached to a Zouave regiment during the Crimean War, 1855 – photo by Roger Fenton
Zouave of the 2nd French Zouave Regiment poses with battle standard after the Battle of Solferino, 1859
By the 1850s many fashionable “marching units” of militia in the U.S. were patterned on Zouave gear which led to an explosion of units on both sides of the Civil War.
Zouaves of Company G, 114th Pennsylvania Infantry. Petersburg, Virginia.
Louisiana Tiger by Pierre Albert Leroux
Zouave de la Louisiane – Pierre Albert Leroux
Sergeant Henry G. Lillibridge of Co. H, 10th Rhode Island Infantry Regiment, in Zouave uniform with saber bayoneted rifle
Manhattan Rifles recruiting poster, 1862
Colls Zouaves
An unknown private, supposedly with the 114th Pennsylvania (Collis Zouaves)
It wasn’t just in the U.S, North Africa, and France that the Zouaves caught on. During the 1863 Polish Uprising against the Tsar, there was a unit of black-robed Death Zouaves in the free Pole forces.
How cool is a name like the Zouaves of Death?
Even Van Gough himself painted a series of Zouave portraits in the 1880s after he observed a number of officers and men nearby in garrison. They have become some of his most interesting and well-loved works.
Zouaves, as interpreted through the eye and hand of Van Gough
The French, for their part, maintained Zouave units, especially among North African troops, into the 1960s. While forces in other countries were very popular until as late as the early 1900s.
1888 French Zouave
111-SC-74974 French Zouaves during the Chinese Relief Expedition (Boxer Rebellion), 1900
French colonial Zouaves on maneuvers with M1886 Lebel rifles, in 1909
Posed shot of French Zouaves firing Hotchkiss machine gun note the assistant gunner catching brass in a canvas feed bucket
Autochrome of a French Zouave eating a meal, Valbonne, 1913. He is wearing medals for service in Tunisia and Morocco
Zouaves in 1865-1870, Charles-Edouard Armand-Dumaresq, around 1880 French uniform units did not disband until 1962
French Zouaves during the early days of WW1 postcard
Evolution of Zouave dress from 1830 to 1955
Today, North African countries, to include Morocco and Algeria, still maintain Zouave influence in certain dress uniforms while the Italian Bersaglieri, with a lineage of service that included Libya and Tunisia as well as Spanish paramilitary Regulares assigned to the country’s legacy enclaves of Céuta and Melilla, retain red fezes.
Italian soldiers stand guard at Chiaiano cave a quarter of Naples on 10 July 2008. AFP PHOTO / FRANCESCO PISCHETOLA
North African-deployed Spanish Regulares
And of course, there is always the Zig Zag guy.
The Library of Congress has more than 270 vintage Zouave images online covering not only U.S./Confederate units but also French, Brazilian and Ottoman troops.