Family,Class,Honor,Manhood: Lieutenant Edmond de Lotbinière Joly in India,Paris,and Crimea,1850–1857

The North-west Frontier

Edmond evidently passed the exam, for his next surviving letter is from London the following month when he and his father had arrived there from Paris, where the family was then living, in order to make preparations for his enlistment in what he hoped would be a regiment stationed in India. In the typically sentimental fashion of that era’s upper middle class, Edmond wrote to his mother that he was unable to describe all the pain and emptiness that he felt after their parting. He promised to try to follow his father’s wise council while confessing that he was too inclined to become heated in conversation. ²¹ The end of the month found him at Southampton about to embark on a steamship bound for India where he planned to join the Thirty-second Regiment of Foot, then stationed in the Punjab district that had recently been annexed after two fiercely fought wars against the Sikhs. ²²

The East India Company had its own large army, consisting mostly of Indian troops commanded by senior British officers, but they were strengthened by a number of battalions known as the European Infantry. ²³ As it happened, the regiment Edmond joined had been stationed in his home colony, Lower Canada, where it had played a leading role in quelling the Rebellion of 1837. ²⁴ Not surprisingly, given their social status, Edmond’s parents had opposed the rebellion even though they were friends of the patriot leader, Louis-Joseph Papineau, whom they socialized with during his subsequent exile in Paris. ²⁵ But the Joly family was also on good terms with the British military, for Colonel Markham—the commanding officer at Jalandhar in the Punjab—later recalled that Edmond’s father had given him an excellent bottle of champagne while his regiment was stationed at Quebec. ²⁶

Influential contacts were essential on the Indian subcontinent where, in the words of historian Charles Allen, “Talent and application had their place, but came a poor second to that vital bundle of sealed letters wrapped in oilskin which said, ‘He is one of us. Do what you can to keep it that way’.” ²⁷ Edmond reported to his father that he carried excellent letters from prominent men, including Markham, and that Colonel Sir John Bucham had told him that he might find a position on the governor’s staff. Bucham had introduced him at his London club to several senior officers who complimented him on the rapidity with which he and his father had concluded “cette dernière affaire.” He was presumably referring to the purchase of Edmond’s junior rank, for passing an examination was not the only requirement to become an officer or to be promoted in the British Army. ²⁸ Edmond assured his father, however, that he was too ambitious to become a governor’s valet.

Upon arrival in Calcutta (Kolkata), Edmond was informed that he would have to depart for his regiment at once if he did not wish to spend six months in that city. ²⁹ He soon found, however, that he was enjoying “the dinners, the soirées, the horseback rides ‘aux Cours’ (a sort of Champs Ellysées), the society, etc.” (my trans.). ³⁰ Furthermore, the members of the Seventieth Regiment mess, of which he was an honorary member, had mocked his zeal to join his own regiment and suggested that if he could not obtain a six months leave to remain in Calcutta, he should simply disobey orders as many others had. To add to the enticement, young women had pleaded with him to remain until after the governor’s ball. In short, Edmond wrote to his father, he was faced with “many temptations for a young pleasure-loving man launching himself into the world” (my trans.). ³¹ Nevertheless, upon thinking of his poor parents and the sacrifices they had made for him, as well as the sorrow they would feel if his promising career were to end so quickly, he had decided that—despite the dangers of travelling alone—he would leave in two days’ time. ³² He also boasted to his brother that should he find it necessary to resort to his pistols and swords while en route it would only add “un nouveau charme à mon voyage.” ³³

After arriving safely in Cawnpoor (Kanpur), Edmond stopped to attend a ball held in honor of the Queen’s birthday. From there, he was accompanied by two escorts from the native cavalry because the route was reportedly frequented by thieves. ³⁴ His posting was in Jalandhar where, so he claimed, he would have to purchase a bungalow with all the furnishings. Another expense—he also claimed—was the requirement to buy a horse, though this was clearly for status and recreation. Edmond noted that a good horse cost 300 to 400 rupees (thirty to forty pounds) and that a pure blood Arab was worth 1,200 to 1,500 rupees, but he assured his father that he had economized by paying only 80 rupees for “une espèce de grand pony.” Finally, he wrote, one needed an extraordinary number of servants in India, largely because tasks were divided by the caste system. ³⁵ Edmond certainly lived in comfort, for his household staff consisted of a valet en chef, a table waiter, a man to take care of the horse, grass cutters to feed the horse, a water carrier, two cleaners (one specializing in his uniform), a “blanchisseur” (to bleach the fabrics), a night watchman, and two or three coolies to operate his “punka” (ceiling fan) day and night. ³⁶ In short, his colonial posting enabled him to play the role of a minor overlord.

Edmond appeared to be enjoying his leisurely lifestyle in India, for his letter to his sister, Amélie, described the colorful dress of the Indian women and the handsome appearance of the men with their large black moustaches. Edmond also wrote how in the evening he would sit under a mango tree, smoking his cigars and listening to native musicians. In true Orientalist fashion, he even suggested that if Amélie wished to become a “romancière,” he would provide her with suitable details about India, adding that he would like to write such a novel, himself, but he lacked her narrative talent. That said, he did intend to keep a journal. In fact, he already had a title, “Mon carrière militaire dans les Indes,” but he still had nothing sufficiently interesting to record in it. ³⁷ Edmond’s letters to his sister, who was a year older than him, were particularly nostalgic as well as sentimental, demonstrating the importance of his family ties and evoking the sensibility appropriate to his social class. ³⁸ He wrote in the fall of 1850, for example, that he had acquired a small white dog who was his joy and asked her to show their brother “our little domain, my garden, the small wood, etc.” (my trans.). ³⁹ He also joked that at that moment, he was like a baby unable to chew because a wisdom tooth was breaking through his gum but that it meant that he would now become wise and therefore a man. ⁴⁰

Edmond did not take his aim of becoming a man lightly, however, and in July of the same year, he assured his father that he had reformed his youthful behavior. He claimed that gambling now provided no temptation for him, and, even if it did, he felt confident that he would be able to prevent himself from pushing the game to excess. ⁴¹ Edmond aspired to more than a sober and humble manhood, however, for the main theme of his letters to his father was his prospects for promotion. As early as June, he reported that he had moved up one step, from eighth to seventh ensign, and was therefore no longer the lowest ranked of the regiment’s officers. ⁴² The following month he wrote enthusiastically that various deaths, resignations, and promotions meant that he would be further ascending the ensign ladder in short order. He was now in charge of a company that drilled for an hour every morning under his command. In fact, he boasted, he had been able to accomplish in a month with his men what had taken his predecessors three months. While he still had no close friends, Edmond added, an elderly adjutant who had served in Canada was giving him useful advice on a daily basis. ⁴³ And there was also Colonel Markham who promised to do whatever he could for him.

Edmond had evidently adapted well to army life, but, to his great regret, he had arrived in India shortly after the Second Anglo-Sikh War had ended. ⁴⁴ By September, he was becoming increasingly eager to see action, lamenting the fact that all was quiet in the Punjab at that time. In that respect he was not alone, for historian John MacKenzie states that British officers saw the small colonial wars as “chivalric, virtually sporting events, brief and intense bouts of dragon-slaying.” ⁴⁵ Judging by his letters, however, Edmond spent his time more productively than did most English officers in India. ⁴⁶ He attended local festivals, and in November, he claimed to have become an enthusiastic gardener with the assistance of two servants. He was also studying “l’hindou” and translating French works into English for those in his book club who could not read French. ⁴⁷

A welcome relief from this rather dull routine came when a local rajah sent an elephant and a guard of honor to accompany Edmond and several other officers to his palace where they participated in a pig-sticking hunt. This sport was becoming very popular among the British officers in India, ⁴⁸ and Edmond wrote that it would help to compensate for the fact that his financial situation had forced him to decline the invitation to join the governor-general’s tour of Delhi, Lahore, and the Indian frontier. ⁴⁹ When his father expressed disapproval that he had not joined the escort, however, Edmond offered a somewhat different explanation. He wrote that although Colonel Markham had said that he could grant him a temporary transfer to a company that was taking part in the tour, he had also cautioned that Edmond needed more practice in his drilling, and the cool winter period was the only time that he could “really learn something.” ⁵⁰ Furthermore, Edmond wrote, the colonel had said: “I take some interest in you, and I assure [sic] that it would be much more profitable to you to remain with the regiment.” ⁵¹

Edmond had good reason to accept this advice, for Markham had recently saved him from what he referred to in English as “a bad scrape,” thereby playing the father-like role that had long been common practice for benevolent commanding officers. ⁵² Edmond had rather foolishly agreed to act as second in a duel for a friend named Shortt, making him subject to the death penalty, but there were evidently no consequences. He also believed that Markham was likely to become a brigadier in Peshawar, the capital of the North-west Frontier District, where he wished to follow him. ⁵³ This prediction eventually came true, for nearly a year later, in January 1852, Edmond wrote to his father that they had finally arrived at the end of their march to Peshawar where the bands of the Fifty-third, Sixty-first, and Ninety-eighth Regiments welcomed them and where the following days were filled with dinners, balls, cricket, and other amusements. He had experienced an exciting adventure en route, for in galloping across the countryside on his prized horse named Peshawa (he had obviously replaced his pony), they had failed to clear a gulley and the horse had broken his leg. This accident, Edmond claimed, had taken place near the eighty-foot-high tomb of Alexander the Great’s legendary horse, Bucephalus. He added that the tomb, with its treasures, had been reported by a general in 1829, but when Edmond descended into it, he found only birds’ nests. With the help of fifty men from his company, the brash young officer then lowered his own horse into the tomb. ⁵⁴ His father later published an account of the story in which he predicted that Peshawa’s remains “will be found by some future explorer, and pass for the bones of Bucephalus.” ⁵⁵ The fact is, however, that even though ancient accounts state that Bucephalus died after the Battle of Hydaspes in 326 BC, the exact location where Alexander created a city in his honor is still disputed, and no traces of a monument have been found. ⁵⁶

In the meantime, Edmond’s letters to his family had obviously upset them, for he wrote to his father two months later, in March, vowing that although they had a bad opinion of him “you will see how much you have misjudged me” (my trans.). ⁵⁷ His brother had even accused him of threatening to kill himself in order to “oblige my father to give me the means to pursue my follies” (my trans.), and Edmond replied that he would never forgive him for thinking he was capable of such a thing. ⁵⁸ He did admit to his father in May, however, that he had been on the edge in the past, adding rather ironically—given his father’s critical attitude—that “it was you who held me back and prevented me from falling completely” (my trans.). ⁵⁹

Pierre-Gustave’s admonitions only fueled his son’s ambition, for Edmond wrote in August that even though he had said he would prefer to remain an ensign than become a lieutenant in debt, there might soon be a retirement that would enable him to advance a rank. ⁶⁰ Such a promotion would obviously be costly, but he nevertheless proceeded to acquire it without his father’s permission. To avoid his father’s anger, Edmond wrote that he had been on the point of selling his new commission because of the enormous interest on the £250 he now owed Barings Bank, yet he insisted that he was not asking for more money. Instead, he would pay off his debt by increasing the monthly instalments to 100 rupees (£10). ⁶¹ When Pierre-Gustave, nevertheless, made it clear that he disapproved of how his son had become a lieutenant, Edmond replied that he had been forced to act while Colonel Markham was in England, presumably where he could push the promotion forward. With the next step already in mind, Edmond added that he was attempting to become the aide-de-camp for General Frederick Roberts, commander-in-chief of the British Army in India. ⁶²

But Edmond was still in Peshawar a year later, in November 1853, when he spent more than half of the £50 his father had sent him on his twenty-first birthday (the year of his majority) on the purchase of another horse that he named Canada. His plan was to enter the upcoming races with their prize of 1,050 rupees. Edmond admitted that he was well aware that his father might not approve of what he referred to as his small extravagance, but he reasoned that one could not do without a horse in India and that races were an inexpensive amusement. ⁶³ Horse races were not the only form of amusement for officers in Peshawar, however, for Edmond wrote to his mother the same month that the season of balls had begun, adding that even though the city was not as gay as Quebec, one had to learn to be satisfied. ⁶⁴ In further keeping with his cultured sensibility, he had been granted a role as the Frenchman in a theatrical production that included three “femmes de la régiment” as actresses. ⁶⁵

Edmond described Peshawar as unlike any other city in India because there one met people from all the Asiatic countries, but he added that he was still glad that his regiment would be quitting “cette horrible Vallée de Peshawar” in January 1854, at the latest. ⁶⁶ Following another eleven-month gap in Edmond’s surviving letters, during which he remained a lieutenant in Peshawar, he informed his brother that he was more than ever determined to quit “this life of idleness” (my trans.). ⁶⁷ To his mother, Edmond asked that she plead for him in this his “last and great struggle with adversity,” adding that if he did not succeed, he would quit the army and try to make his living in a more peaceful career. ⁶⁸ The reason that Edmond was again throwing himself on his father’s mercy, after having vowed never to do so again, was that he was in greater debt than ever. He had signed three bills as security to allow his best friend Shortt to withdraw £50 from the account of his father’s agent. Edmond claimed that Shortt would have otherwise been forced to resign from the army. He subsequently learned, however, that the man he had lived with for several years—and for whom he had risked so much by agreeing to serve as his second in a duel—was, in fact, a swindler. Rather than being a wealthy gentleman, as claimed, Shortt’s father was a penniless Irish clergymen, with the result that all three bills were protested, leaving Edmond responsible for the debt. To make matters considerably worse, he had also acted as security for two other officers who had defaulted on a £200 debt. Colonel Brooke had come to his rescue by agreeing to act as his security, in turn, but there was one final problem. The original contractor for his small Jalandhar house had abandoned the project after demanding and receiving a £50 advance. The house had subsequently been completed at nearly double the original estimate and, before his regiment moved, Edmond had been forced to sell it a £100 loss. Although the contract with his regiment had yet to expire, Edmond was now setting his sites on Turkey where Britain was engaged in the Crimean War. He was therefore asking his father for a £200 loan to enable him to clear his debts and go to the Crimean Peninsula. ⁶⁹

To bolster his case, Edmond insisted that he had kept his promise to “ne plus faire des follies” and added that he was leaving India with a good pension and strong letters of recommendation from Adjutants-General Markham (who he had not seen in three years) and Tucker who he had met in the British post at Simla. ⁷⁰ He had already sent copies of the letters written by Markham to Generals Raglan, Cathcart, and Airey in Crimea. One letter attested that he was “a good French soldier and an active and intelligent young fellow,” and another that he was “a young Canadian, active good soldier, and a very nice young fellow.” ⁷¹ Edmond claimed that if he did not succeed in Turkey, he would resign his commission and repay all his debts, ⁷² but in the meantime, he had enough money to reach Bombay (Mumbai) by boat, from where he planned to join the Twenty-second Regiment before it sailed to Turkey. While still in India, Edmond pleaded with his father not to write too severe a letter to him, despite his right to be angry, for if he were to receive it during battle it would be too discouraging. ⁷³ Clearly, then, Edmond had proven to be a good soldier during his five years in India, but he remained somewhat immature in his judgments, and he was not advancing through the ranks quickly enough to satisfy his ambitions.

The Trenches of Sebastopol

In alliance with France, Britain declared war on Russia after it destroyed the entire Turkish fleet in 1854. The concern was not only that Russia’s territorial designs on Turkey threatened the balance of power in Europe but that the surge in Russian naval strength on the Black Sea would challenge British maritime supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean. ⁷⁴ Although no Canadian regiment participated, there was considerable enthusiasm in English Canada for the war effort. ⁷⁵ That enthusiasm was not shared in French Canada, however, despite the fact that France was the senior partner in what Napoleon III claimed was the defense of Roman Catholicism against the expansion of Russian Orthodoxy. ⁷⁶ In fact, Edmond Joly appears to have been the sole French-speaking Canadian to have fought in the Crimean War. ⁷⁷ According to the biographical sketch written by his father, Edmond was on his way home for two years’ leave of absence in order to restore his health when, upon arriving at Malta, “a strong desire to serve his country in the Crimea, brought him to the walls of Sebastopol.” ⁷⁸ The true story was rather different. Aside from the fact that Edmond never mentioned serving “his country,” whatever that term may have meant to a colonial more at home in France than in Britain, Edmond had not been on his way to Canada, as we have seen, and he had made it quite clear that he had volunteered only in order to speed his promotion from the rank of lieutenant. Furthermore, far from being supportive of Edmond’s somewhat impulsive decision, Pierre-Gustave’s nervously anticipated letter had—in Edmond’s words—accused him of being “a liar, a thief almost, and finally a coward!!” (my trans.) ⁷⁹

Writing from the British-controlled Red Sea port of Aden on March 27, 1857, Edmond promised to demonstrate—without resorting to “ces belles phrases” that his father had accused him of—just how unfairly he had been treated. He asked, first, whether the two colonels of his regiment—Markham and Brooke—would have acted as securities for his bill on Baring Brothers for £200 if they believed him to be a swindler and a cheat. And second, if he was “un lache” (coward) as his father claimed, would he within fifteen or twenty days be at the battle site where masses of soldiers were dying every day? Trembling with emotion (in his words), the young Joly swore by the death that he might soon meet and by his “most sacred word of honor” (my trans.), ⁸⁰ that never since the day he had left home had he committed an act not worthy of a man of honor. After arriving in Alexandria ten days later, Edmond added a postscript to his passionate letter, bidding goodbye to his father with the words: “may you soon have changed your opinion of me when learning one day that to my beautiful phrases and promises I can add action, and may you one day regret having accused me of dishonoring your name” (my trans.). ⁸¹

Edmond arrived at the British supply base of Balaclava on the Crimean peninsula on April 28, ⁸² a little less than three weeks after the beginning of what is referred to as the Second Bombardment of the nearby Russian naval base of Sebastopol. The winter had been harsh, and the British, in particular, had been ill-prepared, with the result that they had suffered heavy losses from disease. ⁸³ Edmond was well aware of the Allies’ weaknesses, for he wrote that the prospect of taking Sebastopol was becoming more and more remote, above all due to the “sad state of demoralization” (my trans.) that the French army had succumbed to: “they have lost all their gaiety and almost their courage” (my trans.). ⁸⁴ Despite the wishes of British Commander-in-Chief Lord Raglan, the French had decided to postpone the assault until the arrival of reinforcements, and on May 7 (the day of Edmond’s letter), they aborted an allied expedition that would have cut off the Russian supply lines. ⁸⁵ In contrast to their French counterparts, Edmond wrote, the British soldiers had become “the enraged, demanding with loud cries to be led to the assault so as to be finished in one way or another” (my trans.). ⁸⁶ In fact, he added, they had become veritable savages, never giving quarter and treating without pity even those who offered to surrender. Their officers were unable to restrain them. ⁸⁷ Edmond’s genteel sensibility notwithstanding, his tone was more admiring of this behavior than it was disapproving.

As for his own prospects, Edmond complained that even though he was the longest serving lieutenant in the Third Infantry Regiment, as a volunteer he had been placed at the bottom of the list. He had presented his credentials to Lord Raglan as well as to Quartermaster General Airey, ⁸⁸ who said he knew his father, but they had made no promises. Bitterly disappointed, Edmond wrote that they did not seem to be particularly interested in an officer who had volunteered to have himself killed if only they would provide the means to do so. In fact, he was so angry after leaving Lord Raglan that he had felt tempted to walk in front of the walls of Sebastopol “pour me finir.” It was abundantly clear, Edmond continued, that to advance in the English system, one had to be a noble or have friends in very high places (thereby overlooking his readiness to take advantage of his own family connections). But vexing though it was to see boys with two years of experience become captains, even without purchase, rather than quit Crimea he was determined to make those in charge pay attention to him. ⁸⁹

Ten days later, on May 17, Edmond wrote yet another lengthy letter to his brother, having moved from Balaclava to nearby Sebastopol where he had spent the previous two days on trench duty. There he experienced his first real taste of excitement, writing that on the first night, the Russians had made a sortie against his unit around 11:00 o’clock. Finding himself under a screen of bombs, bullets, balls, and projectiles of all kinds, he had asked himself, “what the devil ever induced me to come into this hole.” Among the large number of men killed or wounded were three officers. Edmond admitted that his heart had been beating so loudly that he could hear it and that he had bitten a hole in the pipe he was smoking. The second night, soon after entering the trenches, a bullet from the Malakoff tower had struck a man close by, covering Edmond with brain matter, intestines, and blood. And during the day, a bomb had struck a parapet, bounced into the air, and landed on his knee. Fortunately for him, it did not explode and he simply found it a bit painful to walk. Edmond claimed that he was becoming inured to the steady Russian firepower during the days, but nights were more disagreeable because all was in complete darkness. He believed that he had on his conscience the wounding or killing of an enemy soldier who had appeared in the corner of an embrasure, but he excused himself by reasoning that he and his fellow soldiers were exposed to the same danger, not to mention being motivated by a desire to avenge their fallen comrades. To make matters worse, ten of the 600 men in the regiment had died of cholera within the previous three days. In short, Edmond wrote, everyone was disgusted with their dangerous and useless service in the trenches, and wishing for an assault to put it to an end, for the more they waited the more Sebastopol was becoming impregnable. ⁹⁰

Five days later, on May 23, Edmond was able to report that the French had finally launched an attack against the Russians but with the loss of 2,000 men as a consequence. ⁹¹ The French authorities had a tight control over information, as Edmond noted, but not so the British, and he was able to add that with the rise in temperature, cholera had struck several divisions of the British Army. ⁹² Furthermore, the Allies’ work in front of Sebastopol was barely advancing while the Russians were indefatigable, and every morning, one could see new entrenchments that they had elevated during the night. He was not exaggerating, for Crimean War historian Orlando Figes claims that the Russians “developed their earthworks and trenches on a more sophisticated level than ever before seen in the history of siege warfare.” ⁹³ In Edmond’s opinion, no other attempt would be made to take Sebastopol for the time being, the allied authorities having finally realized that it was first necessary to cut off all supplies and aid. He concluded in this letter to his French aunt that everyone was still disappointed that the emperor was not coming, and, as for peace, “no one here expects it” (my trans.). ⁹⁴

Nearly a month later, on June 18, the Allies attacked the Malakoff redoubt and the Great Redan to its immediate south, only to be repulsed with heavy losses. ⁹⁵ Of the 150 British officers engaged, Edmond wrote, fourteen had been killed and seventy-five wounded. He neglected to add that the British had lost approximately 1,000 regular soldiers, but he did claim accurately that the French lost about six times that number. He also wrote, accurately again, that the reason the Allies had lost was not due to Russian military superiority but to a series of allied miscommunications and counter orders. ⁹⁶

As for his own role in the bloody battle, Edmond wrote that upon hearing the cannonade, he had left the hospital where he had been recovering from fever. ⁹⁷ He had now transferred to the Eighty-eighth Regiment, known as the Connaught Rangers, and that evening, he was sent to the trenches where all night he had fulfilled the disagreeable task of sending advanced sentinels to the open plain between his position and the Redan. Edmond’s battalion was the first in reserve during the attack, and its role was to fire upon the Redan embrasures. He had two narrow escapes, the first one when a shell sheared off the arm of the captain he was standing beside, killing two artillerymen close by. Not having slept the previous night, and feeling weakened by his fever, Edmond fell asleep in a trench at midday, only to have a bomb land on the parapet above him. As a result, he was covered by two feet of soil, though left “healthy and safe” (my trans.). ⁹⁸

Edmond closed this letter to his brother by stating that if he had received one from their father, he might know what to do next, but he believed that a prolonged and lengthy siege was very likely in the offing and that cholera would be endemic in the extreme heat. He would have very much liked to see the fall of Sebastopol (which finally took place in September), but he was beginning to share the opinion of those who told him that he had been tempting fate by going to Crimea without having been called by duty to do so. The experience had not turned him against the “metier” of war itself, he added, “but what disgusts me is to see the useless manner in which we lose our poor soldiers” (my trans.). ⁹⁹ A Russian officer had told one of his friends that “your soldiers are lions but your leaders are assess!” (my trans.), and a disillusioned Edmond added: “I make no commentary, judge for yourself” (my trans.). ¹⁰⁰

Ten days later, Edmond—who was again ill with dysentery—finally received the long-awaited letter from his father. It was dated May 19 and clearly set Edmond’s mind somewhat at ease. The doctors had advised that he leave the front, Edmond wrote, but because of his father’s feelings toward him, he had been indifferent to his fate. The medical board was now sending him to England, however, and he hoped to be with his family in Canada by the end of the following month. He added that the only consolation on leaving Crimea was that, even if he had not greatly distinguished himself there, the simple act of serving voluntarily would benefit him later. ¹⁰¹ Another consolation, no doubt, was that he had finally had the opportunity to demonstrate his bravery in combat to his father.

Paris Interlude

By early August 1855, Edmond was in London where he was confined to bed with “rather violent bilious attacks.” ¹⁰² Quite possibly suffering as well from the psychological trauma of trench warfare, he spent much of the following fifteen-month period with his family in Canada, finally returning to London in early November 1856 in order to resume his military career. Because General Markham was now dead, Edmond wrote, it was necessary to cultivate a relationship with some other well-connected figure. With that aim in mind, he met a titled acquaintance of his father who, after offering him an honorary membership in his club, promised to speak to the adjutant general on his behalf. The Thirty-second Regiment, of which he was still a member, had recently been transferred to Lucknow in order to replace the fifty-second, which—according to Edmond—had lost seventy to eighty men a week to cholera. Indeed, he wrote, it was one of the worst stations in India, after Lahore. ¹⁰³ Furthermore, Edmond informed his father, he would prefer to be a clerk in some office rather than vegetate as a lieutenant in India where young men with two or three years’ less service had passed him by. Although there was now the option in the British Army to be promoted without purchase, the problem was that there were eight lieutenants in the Thirty-second Regiment with more seniority. There was still the option of the purchase list, but it required a payment of £1,100 for the rank of captain. ¹⁰⁴ Edmond attempted to negotiate a loan for that amount from Barings but without success until he agreed to insure his life to them and to repay the loan at 6 percent interest within six months. Although he anticipated the usual disapproval of his father, Pierre-Gustave was instead spurred to take out the loan in his own name. ¹⁰⁵

Edmond could still not be promoted, however, until there was a vacancy on the purchase list. Although it was now illegal, ¹⁰⁶ the common practice for retiring officers was to sell their commissions, and one of the captains in Edmond’s regiment was willing to do so for £500. ¹⁰⁷ Edmond offered to pay the officer £400 within the next three months, and—after Barings refused to grant him a loan for that amount—he asked his brother to borrow the money for him in Canada. In return, he promised that as soon as he was made captain, he would repay it at £80 per year in addition to the £30 to £50 per year that their father might choose to give him as an allowance. He still hoped that their father would be his security for a loan from Barings or Fox, but he was beginning to feel that to him he was “a scoundrel, or all that was most ignoble” (my trans.). ¹⁰⁸ Needless to say, this was rather a rather unfair comment given the £1,100 bank loan that Pierre-Gustave had already agreed to for his son’s promotion. Rather than waiting for a response to his letter, Edmond attempted to avoid paying off the retiring captain by convincing the reluctant military secretary, with the help of a letter from the Duke of Cambridge, to forward his petition to fill the recent vacancy on the nonpurchasers’ list (while still paying the £1,100). Crossing from one queue to the other, not to mention jumping ahead on the nonpurchasers’ list, was quite unlikely to be accepted, but Edmond remained as undaunted as ever, privately expressing the hope that he would learn upon landing in Calcutta that, by one means or the other, he had been elevated to the rank of captain. ¹⁰⁹

In the meantime, the young lieutenant was still owed some leave time, so in December 1856, he left the London that he detested for Paris where he had an entrée into high society through a maternal aunt who had married the only son of the prominent American statesman, William Bingham. ¹¹⁰ Always ready to take advantage of any opportunity for promotion, Edmond had his aunt deploy “all her diplomacy and influence” to have him awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honour. In addition, prior to leaving London, he had asked the colonel of the Eighty-eighth Regiment to recommend him for a Victoria Cross, the medal that had been initiated with the Crimean War. ¹¹¹ Both attempts failed, not surprisingly, but Edmond’s status as a Crimean veteran did stand him in good stead at the emperor’s court, as we shall see.

The single surviving volume of Edmond’s journal opens with a lengthy retrospective account of his rather exciting experiences socializing with the aristocratic elite of Paris. He wrote that among the male members he befriended were Baron Lejeune, an equerry of the emperor; Jules Bégé, an auditor of the Conseil d’Etat and “charming young man with 600,000 francs a year” who “gave me his horses to ride and bestowed many a compliment upon me for my equestrian capacities;” and Cabau de Mony, “a nice young man with an income of 40,000 francs” who “entertained us agreeably in dinner parties with pretty women—the best to be found in the shape of Parisian ‘demi-mondaines’.” Some of the people Edmond met were introduced by his cousin Alfred Alléon who had taken him to social gatherings such as the secret restaurant dinners hosted by Countess Ragini, “one of the fashionable women of last winter.” Edmond was also invited to the countess’s Sunday “at homes” where, because her character was not “of the best as regards respectability and virtue,” few ladies were present. Nevertheless, Edmond wrote, “all the higher classes of men with respect to rank or reputation—be it diplomatic or scientific—were to be found there. Excellent music was always played, by real artists, Italians all of them.” There was also high-stakes gambling, but Edmond focused his attention upon Princess Godry de Bossano who he described as “pretty enough, but dreadfully coquettish.” His self-proclaimed aim while in Paris was to find a wealthy wife, for property and marriage obviously offered an easier route to independent manhood and high social status than did the army, particularly for a colonial. Unfortunately for Edmond, even though the young princess belonged to one of Spain’s oldest families—the Princes de la Paix—he learned that she was “absolutely portionless,” making marriage to her out of the question.

More culturally elevated than Countess Ragini’s gatherings were the Countess de Lastic’s Tuesday evening receptions, attended as they were by “wits of the day, poets, musicians, etc.” Edmond wrote that he went to these events specifically to meet Count de Jurisey’s charming young daughter, with whom he was in love. Unfortunately, once again, she had no dowry, and Madame de Lastic warned him that a gentleman with a fortune of three million francs was “making love to her.” After advising that, as he could not have the young woman, he should not “spoil her position,” the countess offered to find Edmond a suitable replacement. She chose a seventeen-year-old recent graduate from a convent who would have an annual rental income of 500,000 francs upon marriage. The countess even pressed Edmond to make a commitment before meeting his prospective bride, but when he learned that the orphaned girl’s uncle and co-guardian was demanding one-fifth of her fortune in return for her hand, an offended Edmond “sent them all to the devil.” ¹¹²

Edmond’s romanticism did not preclude sexual dalliances, however, the first one being with a wealthy widow named Madame Smallwood, “who made love to me and always wanted to drive me home in her carriage.” A second widow, Madame Blackburn, who was “rather a common French woman, but still very good looking and very wealthy,” sent him anonymous notes such as the one offering him “‘an opportunity of admiring the ankles of Madame Ugald, acting in Psyché this evening at the Opéra Comique. Side Box No. 29’.”

What Edmond referred to as his “great adventure,” however, took place through his military connections. While he was in London, a colonel of the Guards had given him a letter of introduction to Lord Cowley, the British ambassador to Paris, requesting that he be introduced to court. At one of Lady Cowley’s evening receptions, he met the Countess de Castiglione, “the charming, the delightful, the divine, whom men loved to distraction and rightly too,” and who was rumored to be the emperor’s mistress. But more exciting to Edmond was the letter he received from the embassy “requesting me to be at 1 p.m. in full dress at the Tuileries in order to be introduced to their Majesties.” At the event were approximately 100 officers of all ranks and from all the countries of Europe, for this was the time when—in the words of a recent biography of Napoleon III—the emperor had “raised France to a new position of power, prestige, and international respect.” ¹¹³ The collection of various uniforms, Edmond wrote, “was really a beautiful sight,” and the “Thirty ladies or so, of all nationalities, wearing plumes and trains, put the finishing touch to this picture.” Edmond also noted that the Empress Eugénie was wearing “a green hat with white feathers, a cashmere shawl, a green velvet dress and straw-colored gloves.” Moving around the semicircle with her husband, she engaged Edmond in what he claimed was “a long conversation,” discerning from his medal that he had fought in Crimea. She also expressed surprise that he spoke French so well to which Edmond replied: “I am almost French, and I have been educated in France.” After the empress bowed to him, the worshipful Edmond picked up a small white feather that had fallen from her hat and hid it in his belt. The fact that the ladies in waiting smiled at this, he suggested, might well explain the sequel of his adventure.

Three or four days later, Edmond received an invitation to a small evening reception held at court for the Prince of Prussia. “Dress, for the occasion,” Edmond wrote, “consisted of a white tie, ordinary black dress and waistcoat with satin or cloth trowsers, silk stockings and pumps.” He added that “Dressed up in that way, I felt, for the first time in my life, that I must look rather clumsy and ridiculous, especially as I am rather thin in the calves and had not had time to have them properly stuffed.” Self-conscious or not, Edmond danced with a number of the ladies, and when four couples including the emperor and empress started a cotillion, the empress held out her hand to him. They then waltzed three times around the large drawing room, Edmond wrote, “with all the eyes of the Court set on me, clasping the hand and the waist of an Empress, feeling her breast beat against mine, her breath fanning my cheeks, my lips so close to those universally admired pair that I could have touched them.”

Three weeks later, Edmond was again invited to the Tuileries, this time to a dress ball with full uniform being compulsory. There was a dense crowd, but Edmond pushed his way to the location of the imperial thrones, winning an almost imperceptible smile and nod from the empress. Whether or not it was an attempt to arouse the jealousy of her womanizing husband, ¹¹⁴ there followed a brief flirtation through the medium of one of Eugénie’s chamberlains. First, Edmond was asked in her name to form a quadrille of lancers which was “the craze of the day.” Once the dance was over, the chamberlain was sent to ask for his card. Madame Ragini suggested to Edmond that the empress wanted his name in order to invite him to one of her intimate receptions held in her personal apartments, “‘or else,’ she would say, with a mischievous smile, ‘she finds you to her taste’.” Unfortunately for him, Edmond did not heed Ragini’s insistence that he say nothing about what had taken place. Instead, he confided in his cousin Alfred who then told a friend who passed the story on to Lejeune, the equerry. From there, it spread to the court, which—Edmond assumed—was the reason he was not invited back to the Tuileries. Disillusioned with high society, he wrote, he then turned to “the ‘demi-monde’, a new word of Alexandre Dumas fils to represent the world of loose morals.”

Edmond apparently cut quite a figure in that world. From the theater, there was “the famous Osy, who, one evening, at the Opera masked-ball earnestly offered me 1,000 francs to please her.” There was also “Durand, a very pretty woman of the Palais Royale,” and Marie Laval, the “illegitimate” wife of a wealthy Russian prince who had an annual income of 5 million francs. “In consequence,” Edmond added, “Marie extorted all the money she could from him. As for me, I only gave her bunches of violets.” Then, there was “La Raimbault who used to write me letters full of pure and virtuous love.” The diary also mentions several other women, but even that list was not exhaustive for the indefatigable Edmond wrote: “I pass over a good many acquaintances to come to the last. She was a pretty little woman of twenty—almost an honest girl—and very affectionate. In short she is the only one for whom I have really cared.” Her name was Aglaë, and Edmond claimed that his first music composition was a waltz in her memory. ¹¹⁵ Romantic as this gesture may have been, he had obviously given up all thoughts of marriage and become disenchanted with the Parisian social scene.

Edmond later claimed that he had been informed by “un haut personnage d’État,” that he had made the emperor jealous, and that he might even be ordered to leave Paris. ¹¹⁶ Implausible as that may have been, he did have one final and rather revealing encounter with the empress while he was riding in the Bois de Boulonge. He wrote that as she passed close by in her carriage, he stopped his horse and stared at her because he was “frightfully angry,” and “I wanted to insult this poor Empress in return for the false expectation she had made me entertain. During that evening of the second ball, and all through the night, I had been building castles in the air. I could already see myself decorated, through her influence, with the Star of the Legion of Honour, which I was trying to obtain with the help of Prince Poniatowski, a friend of my aunt Bingham. I was already wondering, in the case she should offer me to become one of her equerries, whether I was to accept it. In short I had a quantity of dreams, each one more charming than the preceding.” Edmond may have had some exciting experiences in the army as well as in Paris, then, but emotionally in some respects, he was still an insecure youth. Furthermore, his Paris adventure made it clearer than ever that he would never be satisfied with a conventional bourgeois manhood.

The Road to Lucknow

Edmond was originally supposed to be with his regiment in India by March 20, 1857, but the army’s medical board had allowed him to delay the start of his voyage until April 14, meaning that he would not arrive before August. To his brother, Edmond wrote that he feared their father would not be pleased by his application for the delay, but he reasoned that his life might be saved by avoiding the cholera season in India. Furthermore, if a war were to break out with Persia, he would arrive in good health rather than having vegetated for a summer in the Indian furnace. ¹¹⁷ The reason Edmond had given his father, however, was that he was hoping to find someone wealthy to marry and, if he succeeded, he would quit the army. In short, he assured Pierre-Gustave, “Mes amusements sont donc fort serieux.” ¹¹⁸

What Edmond did not tell his father was that he had decided to travel by the longest route, namely around the Cape of Good Hope rather than via Egypt, in order to arrive as late as possible. He also confided to his journal that, “after my four months’ stay in Paris I really need a thorough rest and a quiet life.” As part of his self-improvement regime aboard the Lord Raglan, an unwieldy ship that was loaded with 300 tons of iron, Edmond had set himself three tasks, that is, “to learn to draw properly, to learn German, and to get rid of this habit of biting my nails. This last thing seems easy enough, but I consider it as the most difficult of the three.” Finally, he had brought along a concertina “to supply the place of the missing piano,” as well as “a fair number of books and pipes and a good stock of tobacco.” His hope was to “while away almost agreeably these three or four long months on the ocean, though I do hate so travelling on the sea.”

One of his tasks, Edmond wrote on May 13, had been organizing the large bundles of his family’s letters that he had been keeping since 1850. He explained: “I am choosing the most substantial as the most worthy of being treasured up. As for the others, I am committing them to the custody of the whales, porpoises and other saltwater fish, but not without having carefully read them with much pleasure for the last time.” Revealing that his deference to his father was sincere and not simply based upon financial need, he added: “I shall keep almost all of father’s letters, for in every one of them I find some passages which can only be of great profit to me.” Edmond wrote again about his family on June 11, claiming that “I think often of Canada, of my dear parents and of the way they spend their time at Point Platon. How many times these thoughts come to me when lying down on the poop, in the magnificent tropical evenings, I smoke my pipe in the moonlight! Do they think of me? Oh yes, surely, they do!” ¹¹⁹

Finally, a few days later, Edmond began to show increased signs of emotional maturity, for he wrote:

Strangely enough, though I am an ignorant, I am making myself useful to the public for the first time perhaps in my life. Mr. Walker is learning English and I correct his exercise. Mr. Lindsay is learning French and I do him the same service. He is also learning the manual exercise under my tuition. The captain has half a dozen old guns. He takes one and I drill him. He studies military art in my books and I give him the required explanations. These two gentlemen study Hindustani and I must be there to help them. The German girls are also learning English under my tuition—in short I never dreamt I could make myself so useful.

Having finally passed through the rough seas, the Lord Raglan began to make rapid progress during what Edmond described on July 15 as “lovely weather.” Noting that “I would never have thought I would be so impatient to be in India again,” he added: “I also very often think of all the letters awaiting me when I get there. Am I a Captain? If father has been kind enough to advance me those £400, I must be promoted by now in England through Patterson, who was to give up his office three months after April 10th.” And there was also the other option, his application to the military secretary, but Edmond added wisely, “I am not very sure about that.”

Twelve days later, on July 27, preparations began to be made for arrival in Calcutta. Edmond wrote that he looked forward to shaving off his long beard, which made him look “aged and solemn,” yet he had mixed feelings about being back on the subcontinent after two and a half years absence, for he wrote: “I cannot believe I am going to relapse again into this uniform and monotonous life of India.” His concern about boredom ended a few days later, however, when they encountered a German ship sailing from Bombay (Mumbai). Edmond wrote:

The news they gave us is that the war in Persia and China has nearly come to an end. But they informed us of something much more serious, which is that a general insurrection has broken out in India. The seat of the revolt is Delhi. Many of the native regiments have rebelled and we are being driven back in the direction of Calcutta and Bombay…And what about my poor 32nd? What are they doing? They are in the heart of the revolt and I am not at my post. This annoys me considerably, but after all this is no fault of mine. ¹²⁰

When Edmond resumed his journal two weeks later, on August 20, he began with a gory description of the mutiny:

Everything is in terrible confusion but of seventy-five or seventy-seven Sepoy regiments three only have remained true to us; all the others have rebelled and in many instances have killed their officers. People are afraid my poor regiment in Lucknow is exterminated; all the women, who, by way of precaution had been sent to Cawnpore [Kanpur] have been massacred, but before being put to death they were obliged to endure the most abominable insults and atrocities which Chinese or Red Indians could not have committed. A few ladies were dragged along the streets of Delhi, bound naked to some carts, and, on paying a rupee, those rascals were allowed to do what they liked with them for an hour. Then, when they all were satiated they cut off the limbs of these poor creatures one by one and finally blew them up by introducing bottles full of powder into their bodies. How simply atrocious! ¹²²

Because of its dangers, the authorities refused to grant Edmond permission to take the overland route, but he wrote on September 10 that, seeing how determined he was, the brigade major (one of his friends) promised to settle the matter with the general after Edmond had departed. The day before doing so, Edmond was summoned to meet Lord Elgin who was the commander of the large military and naval force that, as a result of the mutiny, had been diverted to India while en route to China. ¹²⁶ Elgin had recently served as governor-general of the Province of Canada, and, in Edmond’s words, he “welcomed me very amiably, inquiring many times about Canada and all my family.” After attempting to dissuade Edmond from leaving Calcutta, Elgin promised to “have a few words written in my favor to General Outram” whose army was to march to Cawnpore where it would join that of Havelock before proceeding to Lucknow. ¹²⁷ The young Joly’s high-placed connections led to an invitation to meet Lord Canning, the governor-general of India, but he was forced to decline because he was setting out on his journey the following day.

After taking the 150-mile train ride from Calcutta to Raniganj, Edmond continued his journey northward by mail coach but not before “some officers came to me, warning me for the hundredth time at least, that the road was impassable, that before I had gone twenty miles I should meet the rebels, and that, if I were not murdered, I would be obliged to come back, etc.” But he was not to be dissuaded, reasoning that, if murdered, “people would see at least that it was not by lack of courage I had been absent from my Regiment.”

In the small village of Burce, Edmond met a dozen officers who, with a hundred Sikh soldiers, had barricaded themselves in anticipation of an attack by a regiment that had recently joined the mutiny. After spending the day with them, and “in spite of their entreaties,” he resumed his journey, only to discover that the officer in charge of the Sasaram post had retreated toward Benares (Varanasi) with his 150 soldiers. Edmond pressed on, however, passing between the ruined walls of Sasaram during the night. Finally, the following morning at daybreak, he arrived at Benares on the banks of the Ganges where, for only the third time in ten days, he was able to have a full night’s sleep. There he learned that the captaincy he had set his sights on had been sold to the man next in line behind him. He claimed in a letter to his father, however, that it might be for the best because the likelihood that many of his comrades had been killed at Lucknow meant that he could well be promoted without having to pay. Rather than waiting to march with Outram’s force from Benares to join Havelock in Allahabad, the ever-impatient Edmond was eager to proceed, and Outram generously supplied him with a government coach and post-horses as well as an escort of two Highlanders from the Seventy-eighth Regiment. Edmond concluded his letter to his father by writing that it was upon entering a campaign that a soldier most desired letters, yet since leaving Canada nearly a year ago, he had received only one short letter from him and two from his mother, though his brother had written several times. ¹²⁸

Edmond arrived in Allahabad just in time, for Havelock’s army was to set out for Cawnpore the next day. As well as being given a cavalry horse and the means of conveying his luggage, Edmond was invited by the quartermaster general to share his tent and join his small mess of three, including the adjutant general and the advocate general. A very pleased Edmond wrote in his journal: “I think I was in good company!” The march proved to be a challenging one, however, for three soldiers of the Ninetieth Regiment died of cholera at the first stop. Edmond was unwell, himself, writing that “All day long I had a splitting headache, for I had overstrained myself by spending all those days without any sleep.”

When Edmond asked Havelock if could be his orderly, the general’s patience began to wear thin. He answered that he did not need Edmond for the time being but that he would employ him at Cawnpore. Disappointed yet again, Edmond wrote: “I took leave of him feeling rather cross; he had been almost rude to me, refusing to read my letters from Markham, telling me he had no time. The march of that night I spent by walking alone and thinking rather sadly how little I had been encouraged and rewarded during all the time I had served in the Army.” Still undaunted, however, he added that “I consoled myself by vowing I would make up for it at Lucknow.”

Edmond’s spirits rose when he was ordered the following night to join a dozen Sikhs and three fellow officers on horseback with the aim of taking a local village by surprise in order to arrest the chief. The strategy was that the cavalry of four would gallop around the village to stop anyone from fleeing, then the captain would march in with his Sikhs and conduct a search. With 1,500 inhabitants, the village proved to be much larger than assumed, however, and Edmond wrote that people began “fleeing away like an army of ants, by all possible issues in a hustling crowd of men, women, and children, the women being the majority.” When he spotted a village notable escaping across the countryside, he gave chase and disarmed him, reasoning that “he looked and was clothed like a Sepoy. He must therefore have been a deserter and murderer.” Much to Edmond’s disgust, however, the presumed sepoy was released because he was found to be in possession of passports in good order. The fact that he left without asking for the return of his blood-stained tulwar was proof of his guilt, Edmond wrote, adding that “I keep the Sepoy’s sword as a souvenir of this expedition.”

Edmond’s diary ends at this point, but after Outram’s army joined that of Havelock at Cawnpore, the combined force of over 3,000 set out for Lucknow on September 19. Edmond wrote to his brother the following day that the passage across the Ganges had been contested and that he had discharged his revolver twice “with some success.” He added that he would be perfectly happy had he not received a letter from their father three days earlier expressing anger about his comment that “My father looks upon me as a scoundrel, etc.” (my trans.). ¹²⁹ As a result, Pierre-Gustave had written “that there is now little sympathy between us, it is evident—your principles are completely different from mine and from those that I sought to give you—your total lack of instruction revolts me—your egoism and your fatuity hurt me” (my trans.). ¹³⁰ Stating that “you cannot understand how much this letter has discouraged and saddened me” (my trans.), Edmond confided to his brother that to write to their father again would be to admit to his accusation of hypocrisy. Nevertheless, he would love him until the last day of his own life, and in these times, it is not worth much. ¹³¹

On a more positive note, Edmond also informed his brother that he was taking with him some bottles of wine for the men of his regiment, upon their deliverance, as well as two bottles of champagne for the few women who had escaped from the rebels. ¹³² That, however, is where his correspondence ends. The army reached the city of Lucknow five days later, on September 25, then advanced through its heavily defended narrow lanes where most of the approximately 800 British soldiers who were killed or mortally wounded in the assault met their fate. ¹³³ Among them was the bold young Edmond Joly, who would die of his wounds four days later. ¹³⁴ The brief biography written by his father for a publication titled “Celebrated Canadians” claims that Edmond had written him a letter from the military encampment outside Lucknow in which he stated that he could hear the booming of the defenders’ guns, and adding, “I will soon see my brave regiment, and that day will be the most glorious one of my life, perhaps it will be my last.” Given what Edmond had written to his brother, it seems quite possible that their guilt-ridden father simply fabricated these words. In any case, there is no such letter in Edmond’s file, but in a rather belated demonstration of paternal pride, the biography concluded: “The glorious end of Edmond Joly’s career shows what energy, courage and devotion he was possessed of, and what might have been expected from him by his country and his friends, had he not been cut off at the age of twenty-four.” ¹³⁵ Judging from Pierre-Gustave’s last letter to his son, his own expectations had not been high, but Edmond could at least die with the confidence that his heroism would finally earn his father’s pride in him. Whether by error or not, it is somehow fitting that on the Indian Mutiny Medal that was issued in 1858, Edmond Joly is listed as a captain. ¹³⁶

Conclusion

Edmond de Lotbinière Joly’s letters, memoir, and journal provide us with an intimate view of one young colonial officer’s experiences and emotions during the eventful 1850s. The manliness that Joly aspired to may not have been that of the much-studied middle class, but the fact remains that the old patrician elite was still influential in Europe as well as North America. ¹³⁷ Just as Michael Paris has argued that the medieval code of the warrior lived on within Britain’s aristocratic military class, ¹³⁸ so does the example of Edmond Joly reveal that the military ethos of the traditional French-Canadian elite had not been entirely extinguished by the British Conquest. As was doubtless the case for most non-British members of Britain’s colonial army, what had led Edmond to enlist was clearly his class identity rather than an identification with the British Empire. ¹³⁹ Edmond shared a sense of racial superiority with the British soldiers in India, but not the evangelical and colonializing zeal that motivated many of the officers who were stationed there. ¹⁴⁰ In fact, there is no mention of religious practice, spiritual belief, or even prayer under fire in any of Edmond’s writing, and he was more emotionally tied to France than to England. His goal was simply to follow in the footsteps of his aristocratic maternal ancestors, thereby earning the approbation and respect of his family, and in particular his demanding father. The British Army offered an ideal opportunity to demonstrate his honorable manliness, for Hurl-Eamon observes that its soldiers were “enveloped in an alternative masculinity with a distinct military character,” one that fostered heroic endeavor and aggressive maleness. ¹⁴¹ The tragic irony was that even though the bourgeois Calvinist Pierre-Gustave Joly had supported his rather impulsive son’s military career, he was clearly not impressed by the financial irresponsibility and libertine masculinity that characterized young men who belonged to, or aspired to, the aristocratic elite. In one sense, then, the central theme of Edmond Joly’s short but eventful life was the clash between the cultural values of the old aristocracy and those of the emerging middle class.