REH wrote:
Several years ago when we came to do a conference for Mike and
Sally, in Nova Scotia, we visited Louisburg. They spoke of two
things. Poison water from the sewage and how it kept the MicMac
out of the town for more than a few hours of trading. The French
only drank wine. The other was the smell of human excrement which
the troops wore. The actors in the re-enactment actually had a
perfume that smelled of excrement that they wore to work for the
tourists. I can tell you it was effective.
I'd never heard any of that, neither the historical part nor the
reenactment part.
Was it the case that the 18th c. French troops *intentionally*
perfumed themselves with excrement in order to be more fearsome to
the MicMac? Or was it a matter general absence of hygiene? I've read
accounts of turds in the corridors of Versailles in Louis XIV's reign,
presumably because of courtiers' desire to remain in and around the right
salons rather than to traipse off to some distant house of office.
One wouldn't expect the colonial troops to be more fastidious than the
courtiers.
I once spent a week at Louisbourg [1] teaching a metal-raising
workshop for the restoration & maintainance crew but it was near the
end of the season and they closed the museum part just as I was
finishing up in the backstage workshop. So I only had about half an
hour one day to tour the restoration, didn't encounter any of the
uniformed troops. (Although there was a lovely red fox walking calmly
down the middle of the street.)
[1] Just looked it up. Neither of us spelled it right. The spelling
was officially changed to the original "Louisbourg" in 1966.
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
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