The Karrer Regiment

The Karrer Regiment was founded in 1719 by Franz Adam Karrer, a Swiss officer in the service of the king of France. It began as a battalion of three companies and 600 men employed by the marine ministry which planned to use it to garrison Port Louis in Louisiana ... A written contract ("capitulation") set down the terms of the agreement between the ministry and Karrer who promised to maintain a certain number of officers and men in exchange for money and other benefits and privileges. The terms of the original contract were occasionally revised but its basic characteristics did not change ... Karrer had full control over the internal affairs of the regiment: he was responsible for choosing the officers, recruiting the men and providing them with pay, uniforms, food and equipment. He could offer prospective recruits whatever wages, period of engagement and other conditions he thought fit, although he was to follow the usages of other Swiss troops. In return, Karrer would receive 16 livres per month for each soldier as well as additional payments to cover recruiting expenses. The regiment was to be kept separate from French troops; the men would be drilled and disciplined only by their own officers and would even be judged by Swiss officers according to Swiss custom if they were accused of a crime. It was as a group that the Karrer regiment served the king of France; its individual members owed no direct allegiance to France and, in theory, had contact with French authorities only through their colonel ...

Some aspects of this special status were straight forward and uncontroversial ...

The Karrer regiment's independence in justice, discipline and military formalities caused a number of problems. On the subject of justice, the capitulations specified only that it should be administered on the same basis as in other Swiss troops employed by the king of France. Ir. practice this meant that Swiss soldiers accused of military crimes such as desertion were tried by a court-martial composed exclusively of officers from their own regiment. The formal procedures of the Swiss court-martials seem to have been the same as those followed by the French. The Karrer detachment's autonomy in matters of ordinary criminal justice was rather more ambiguous. A case that arose five years after the Swiss first arrived at Isle Royale seemed to establish their independence of the regular courts of law. In 1727 a butcher named Dupré laid charges. With the Superior Council against sergeant Leopold Reintender who had beaten and severely wounded him ... The council began criminal proceedings against the sergeant but soon received a protest from de Merveilleux, the Swiss commandant, who claimed the right to try the accused. Unsure of its authority in this regard, the Superior Council suspended proceedings and requested guidance from Versailles. The Minister of Marine replied that de Merveilleux was perfectly justified in demanding to hear the case himself. As a general rule, he continued, Swiss soldiers accused of crimes should always be turned over to their own officers for trial. In the case of a dispute between a Swiss soldier and a French civilian, the soldier must be imprisoned and interrogated by a Swiss officer while the frenchman is interrogated by, and held in the prison of, the appropriate civilian judge ...

This precedent established, the French authorities left the Swiss Officers in charge of their jurisdiction, at least until the 1740s. As A result, the archival sources, all of them French, tell us nothing about how the Swiss exercised their judicial privileges. There is, however, one statement made in 1742 by the commissaire-ordonnateur, Bigot, who argued that the special legal position of the Swiss was "un grand abus" since the officers invariably acquitted soldiers accused of theft, no matter how overwhelming the evidence of their guilt ... This statement was made in a context that gave Bigot no interest in minimizing the abusive nature of such autonomy. The governor had recently quarrelled with the commander of the Karrer detachment and Swiss privileges generally were coming under heavy attack. The minister had ordered that Swiss who injured civilians or stole should be tried by ordinary courts of the colony and Bigot accordingly handed over three Karrer soldiers, accused of stealing cod from a fisherman, to the "baillage" court for trial ... The situation seems to have been somewhat confused in the heat of the dispute but the minister's final orders to Bigot in 1743 were to undermine Swiss judicial privileges by allowing the officers to try only minor cases while turning over Swiss soldiers accused of serious crimes to the civilian courts. At the same time, he was to avoid direct confrontation and make it appear that nothing was being changed even though, the minister might have added, this policy violated the "capitulations ...

Swiss privileges in the areas of military discipline and ceremony were more often the subject of open conflict than was the Karrer regiment's judicial autonomy. In 1727 St. Ovide referred to a "petite difficulty" he experienced with the Swiss officers who refused to lead their troops in the Corpus-Christi procession ... No further incidents seem to have occurred until after the arrival of Captain Cailly as commanding officer of the Karrer detachment in 1731. Cailly, who had earlier killed a cousin of Governor St. Ovide in a duel at Santo Domingo, does not seem to have enjoyed a close personal relationship with the governor as his predecessor, Merveilleux, had ... Soon after he began his service in the colony, a minor dispute arose over the style of drumming to be used when Swiss officers were mounting guard. The minister supported Cailly in this case and, despite St. Ovide's objections, ordered that the Swiss fashion of drumming be used when a guard was commanded by a Swiss officer ...

It was not until after St. Ovide's death in the early 1740s, when Duquesnel was commanding officer at Isle Royale, that the most serious disputes between Cailly and the French authorities occurred. Duquesnel attempted to reduce Swiss autonomy by increasing the control of the town major over the discipline of the foreign troops. He would not let Swiss soldiers live outside the barracks or return to their quarters late as they had done in the past with the permission of their officers. Duquesnel also began the practice of having a Swiss sergeant check the barracks-rooms after retreat and report to the sergeant of the guard; informing him if any men were absent ... These measures could perhaps be justified as matters of security and therefore responsibilities of the major, but they irritated Cailly and led him to insist strenuously on his regimental privileges. Furthermore, Duquesnel and the civilian "commissaire des troupes" began hearing complaints from the Swiss soldiers against their officers. Cailly, who was apparently exploiting his men and keeping them in the colony after the terms of their enlistment had expired, denounced this as another affront to the privileges of his nation ...

It was in this context that matters came to a head in September, 1741 when three deserters, two of them French and one Swiss, were court-martialed and executed. The French and Swiss were tried separately but, when Duquesnel ordered the entire grrison assembled to witness the execution of the French soldiers, Cailly forbade the Swiss drummers to signal the general assembly. It was customary for all the men in a garrison to be gathered together to witness executions but it is not clear whether the Swiss had attended these spectacles in the past. In any case, Cailly refused to allow his men to obey a direct order from the garrison commander and Duquesnel, claiming that Cailly had previously threatened violent action, considered this a serious revolt ... Maurepas, the Minister of Marine, was equally outraged when he learned of the incident and he ordered Cailly retired from the service immediately. He informed Duquesnel that the major was indeed authorized to see that the Swiss returned to their quarters on time. That officer was also to command their movements at reviews and prescribe their battle order ... Whatever the rights and wrongs of a particular case might be, the Swiss were not to be treated as an independent unit and their officers must be subordinate to the French commanant ...

Soon after Cailly's confrontation with Duquesnel he was replaced by Gabriel Schonherr (or "Chener," as the French usually misspelled his name). Schonherr had not been at Louisbourg long before he ordered the Swiss sergeants to discontinue the practice of reporting each night to the guardhouse. Duquesnel was disturbed by this unilateral action of which he had not even been informed in advance ("... cela sent l'esprit de Revolte"), but once the incident had passed he seems to have had relatively harmonious relations with Cailly's successor ..

[Source: Allan Greer, The Soldiers of Isle Royale, 1720-1745, Unpublished Report H E 08 (Fortress of Louisbourg, 1976]