Athanase Charles Marie Charette de la Contrie was born on September 3, 1832 in Nantes, France. His grandfather was Charles X the last king of France and his great-uncle, General Charette, was shot in Nantes on 29 March 1795, during the rising of the Vendee. His mother, Louise, Countess de Vierzon, was the daughter of the Duc de Berry and Amy Brown Freeman. As the Duchesse de Berry was at that time in hiding at Nantes, and Charette's father was being sought by the police, the child's birth was concealed; he was secretly taken from Nantes on 17 September and was registered in the commune of Sainte-Reine as born on 18 September. Unwilling, by reason of his legitimist antecedents, to serve in France under Louis Philippe, young Charette, in 1846, entered the Military Academy of Turin; he left in 1848 to avoid serving Piedmont, the revolutionary policy of that kingdom being evident to him.
Military career
In 1852 the Duke of Modena, the brother-in-law of the Comte de Chambord, appointed Charette sub-lieutenant in an Austrian regiment stationed in the duchy. Duke Francis V was not only ruler of Modena but was also an Austrian archduke and the Jacobite successor to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland. Duke Francis was a most exemplary ruler who, with his own hands, tended to and served the victims of cholera that broke out in his duchy when the Piedmontese revolutionary army invaded. The Piedmontese annexed and incorporated Modena into the new, anti-Catholic Italy. Charette was thereby, compelled to relinquish regimental service as, once again, he did not wish to serve in a revolutionary army. In May, 1860, when two of his brothers, like him eager to fight the Italian revolutionaries, offered their services to the King of Naples, he went to Rome and placed himself at the service of Pius IX, who had commissioned Lamoricière to organize an army for the defence of the Papal States. Charette was appointed captain of the first company of the Franco-Belgian Volunteers, known after 1861 as the Pontifical Zouaves, and was wounded at the Battle of Castelfidardo. After the taking of Rome by the Piedmontese, Charette negotiated with Gambetta for the employment of the French Zouaves in the service of France against Germany; he was permitted to organize them as "Volunteers of the West". Wounded at Loigny, Charette was made prisoner; but he escaped, and on 14 January 1871, the Provisional Government of France made him a general. He was elected to the National Assembly by the Department of Bouches-du-Rhône, but resigned without taking his seat. Thiers proposed his entering the French army with his Zouaves, but Charette declared his intention of remaining at the pope's disposal. On 15 August 1871, his Zouaves were mustered out of the French army. Retiring into private life, Charette passed his last thirty years serving the cause of religion and hoping for the restoration of the monarchy.
