Under the Shadow of Defeat: The War of 1870-71 in French Memory

Under the Shadow of Defeat The War of 1870–71 in French Memory

Karine Varley

Under the Shadow of Defeat

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Under the Shadow of Defeat The War of 1870–71 in French Memory Karine Varley

© Karine Varley 2008 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–00519–8 hardback ISBN-10: 0–230–00519–5 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents

List of Illustrations

vii

List of Acronyms

ix

Acknowledgements

x

Introduction

1

1 Political Fallout Patriotic transfiguration Republicans and Catholics Defeat, decadence, and decline

25 26 41 44

2 The Cult of the Dead Burying the war dead Ideas of sacrifice

56 58 63

3 Taboos The cult of the army Legacies of the Second Empire The Paris Commune Algeria and the colonies

77 80 84 93 97

4 Memories for the Masses Forms and functions Pilgrimages and tourism Museums

104 105 112 121

5 Legacies of l’ann´ee terrible Monument to the defence of Paris Nationalist memories

129 139 144

6 Martyrdom and Resistance Myths of martyrdom Resistance identities

152 153 165 v

vi Contents

7 The Lost Provinces Representing Alsace-Lorraine Revanche

175 178 191

8 Arming the Nation Army and republic Garibaldi

203 205 220

Conclusion

227

Notes

235

Bibliography

272

Index

292

List of Illustrations

I.1 Map of battle and commemoration sites 1.1 Antonin Merci´e, Gloria Victis, Mus´ee du Petit Palais, Paris (1874) 2.1 Ossuary in P`ere Lachaise Cemetery, Paris 2.2 War graves at Floing (Ardennes) 3.1 On´esyme-Aristide Croisy, Monument aux morts de Sedan, Sedan (1893–1897) 3.2 Monument aux Chasseurs d’Afrique, Floing (Ardennes) (1910) 3.3 Inscription on the Monument aux Chasseurs d’Afrique 3.4 Monument aux morts de la Commune, Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris 4.1 Monument aux morts de Briouze, Briouze (Orne) 4.2 Monument aux morts de Villers-sur-Mer, Villers-sur-Mer (Calvados) 4.3 Monument aux morts de Fauquembergues, Fauquembergues (Pas-de-Calais) 4.4 Battlefields around Woerth (Bas-Rhin) 4.5 Maison de la derni`ere cartouche, Bazeilles 5.1 Ossuary at Champigny-sur-Marne 5.2 Ernest Barrias, La d´efense de Paris, Courbevoie, now La D´efense, Paris (1878–1883) 6.1 Monument aux morts de Bazeilles, Bazeilles (1875) 6.2 List of the civilian victims in Bazeilles 6.3 Ossuary at Bazeilles 7.1 Louis Bogino, Monument national de Mars-la-Tour, Mars-la-Tour (Meurthe-et-Moselle) (1875) 7.2 Monument aux morts de Belfort, Belfort 7.3 Auguste Bartholdi, Lion de Belfort, Belfort (1872–1880) 7.4 Antonin Merci´e, Quand Mˆeme, Belfort (1878–1883) 7.5 Auguste Bartholdi, Monument aux trois si`eges, Belfort (1904–1908) 7.6 Auguste Bartholdi, Lion de Belfort, Place DenfertRochereau, Paris (1880) vii

19 28 61 62 86 92 93 97 109 110 111 115 123 138 141 160 161 162 182 184 185 186 187 188

viii List of Illustrations

7.7 7.8 7.9 8.1 8.2

Bavarian ossuary, Woerth (Bas-Rhin) French war grave, Woerth (Bas-Rhin) Reconstructed monument at Wissembourg (Bas-Rhin) Paul Cabet, La r´esistance, Dijon (replica, 1880) Etienne Pagny, Monument aux enfants du Rhˆone, Lyon (1878–1887)

188 189 199 207 215

List of Acronyms

ADC ADMM ADR ADTB AMB AMD AML AN AP AVS

Archives D´epartementales de la Cˆ ote-d’Or Archives D´epartementales de Meurthe et Moselle Archives D´epartementales du Rhˆ one Archives D´epartementales du Territoire de Belfort Archives Municipales de Belfort Archives Municipales de Dijon Archives Municipales de Lyon Archives Nationales Archives de Paris Archives de la Ville de Sedan

ix

Acknowledgements

My first debt of gratitude is to the various funding bodies that have enabled me to undertake research for this book. I am, above all, grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for awarding me a Postgraduate Studentship and a Study Visit Abroad Grant. The University of London Central Research Fund, Royal Historical Society, and Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland also generously funded research trips. Many archivists have provided assistance and guidance, taking interest in my work and allowing me to work beyond the sometimes restrictive working hours. My thanks therefore to the staff of the Archives Nationales, Archives de la Ville de Sedan, Archives D´epartementales de Meurthe et Moselle, Archives D´epartementales du Territoire de Belfort, Archives Municipales de Belfort, Archives Municipales de Dijon, Archives D´epartementales de la Cˆ ote-d’Or, Archives D´epartementales du Rhˆ one, Archives Municipales de Lyon, Archives de Paris, and the Mus´ee Rodin. I am particularly grateful to Pam Pilbeam, who as my PhD supervisor provided advice, criticism, and consistent enthusiasm for my research. Robert Tombs, Rebecca Spang, Robert Aldrich, and Bertrand Taithe provided helpful suggestions at various stages of writing. I have presented most of the material in this book and have benefited from the comments offered by colleagues at conferences for the Society for the Study of French History, Society of Dixneuvi´emistes, Society for French Historical Studies, as well as the Modern French History Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, and the Third Republic and Modern History Seminars at Edinburgh. Many people have helped over the past few years; I would like to thank colleagues at Edinburgh, Durham, and Royal Holloway, and in particular Alex Goodall, Brian Hannon, Jenny Macleod, Jim McMillan, Emre Ozer, Jill Stephenson, Emily Taylor, Daniel Thomson, Richard Thomson, Alex Windscheffel, Ren´e Wolf, and Julian Wright. Lawrence Black helped to make sense of my argument, Daniel Martin helped to sift out the boring parts, x

Acknowledgements

xi

and special thanks to Mike Froggatt for bringing food and humour to the final stages of writing. Finally, not forgetting an honourable mention for my sister Cendrine, my parents also have now become experts in tracking down Franco-Prussian War memorials. Now, perhaps, their holidays need no longer be determined by the events of 1870–1871.

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Introduction

It is one of the paradoxes of nineteenth-century France that while most of the country would have preferred to forget the Franco-Prussian War, it gave rise to one of the greatest waves of commemorative activity the nation had ever seen. Within only 7 years of the war ending, over 457 memorials had been erected, and for over 40 years, crowds of many thousands faithfully honoured the anniversaries of the defeat; their rituals of remembrance recalled and reconfigured the sombre hours of war, glorifying the fallen and ensuring their sacrifices were not forgotten.1 Such was the outpouring of commemorative activity that in 1899 one journalist complained that there were more German corpses in French paintings relating to the war than there had ever been lying on the battlefields.2 For the experience of the conflict had seemed truly cataclysmic and crushing, representing for many the greatest military defeat in history.3 If Bismarck had been looking for an occasion to launch war against France, France in turn had been looking to cut a rising Prussia down to size. Instead, France quickly found itself internationally isolated and militarily chastened. Relations between the two powers had long been tense, especially following the defeat of Austria in 1866 which allowed Prussia to consolidate its position with the creation of a North German Confederation and left France without any of the territorial gains it had hoped to gain from neutrality. The dispute over the Spanish succession in July 1870 therefore merely brought matters to a head. While Napoleon III had constructed his regime around glorious myths of Napoleon I, by 1868 the Second Empire was undergoing a process of liberal reform. It therefore fell to the liberal Emile Ollivier to deal with the diplomatic crisis. With French political opinion demanding decisive action, especially after Bismarck’s provocative manipulation of what became known as 1

2 Under the Shadow of Defeat

the ‘Ems Telegram’, war was declared on 19 July 1870. Few in France doubted that the war would see a rapid French victory, the Prussian army being considered to be little match for the experienced imperial army. In reality, however, Prussia had embraced the military and technological developments of recent years to produce an efficient, effective fighting force. By contrast, changes to the French army had been cut short by the untimely death of the reformist Marshal Niel in 1869 and by concerns about the potential financial and political costs of proposed measures. Thus within a few days of the outbreak of war, French forces were forced onto the defensive, suffering heavy losses, and beginning a catalogue of disasters with major defeats at Wissembourg on 4 August, Woerth on 6 August, and Mars-la-Tour on 16 August. By the end of the month, the French army had been pushed back to the two cities that were to symbolize the ruin of the Second Empire: Metz and Sedan. At Metz, Marshal Bazaine allowed his men to become encircled, only to surrender two months later along with 137,000 men of the Army of the Rhine. The battle at Sedan on 1 September was a disaster waiting to happen; encircled, exhausted, and demoralized French forces faced an enemy twice as numerous. Physically drained by his ongoing ill-health, and having lost all hope of victory, Napoleon III surrendered 83,000 men, 6000 horses, and himself. News of the defeat at Sedan brought insurrection in Paris, the overthrow of the Second Empire, and the proclamation of a republican Government of National Defence. The Orleanist General Trochu was appointed to head the government on the basis of his standing in the army, the radical L´eon Gambetta assumed control of the Interior Ministry, and the moderate republican Jules Favre took charge of Foreign Affairs. The veteran politician Adolphe Thiers, who been at the forefront of the liberal opposition to the Second Empire, declined office, but undertook a tour of the major European capitals in a vain attempt to secure support for the new regime’s war effort. On 6 September, the Government of National Defence issued a proclamation announcing that it would consider peace, but that it would surrender not one inch of French soil. With Bismarck continuing to demand Alsace-Lorraine, however, it was clear that the war had assumed a greater significance than simply a conflict of interests. German nationalist sentiment gained strength from military success, and in response, many on the French left began to call for guerre a` outrance. The change of regime brought a new patriotic enthusiasm and a reorganization of the nation’s fighting forces. In a conscious attempt to recall glorious myths of the revolutionary armies,

Introduction

3

the government sought to make a virtue of necessity. With much of the army out of action at Sedan and Metz, the government attempted to create a nation in arms with a reformed National Guard joining other irregular forces in a defensive effort that cut across political and religious divisions. Within days of the defeat at Sedan, German forces began to march towards Paris, managing to surround it by 19 September and beginning a siege that was to last until 26 January 1871. Fearing isolation from the rest of the country, the newly formed government sent a delegation to Tours to act as a link between the besieged capital and the provinces. But as conditions in Paris worsened, the extreme left became increasingly impatient and agitated at the failure to break out of the impasse. A failed sortie from Le Bourget on 30 October, the surrender of Dijon the following day, and Bazaine’s surrender of Metz provoked fresh unrest as radical national guards temporarily held members of the government hostage with demands for the proclamation of a commune. Many still held out hope that Gambetta, who had escaped the capital by balloon on 8 October, would bring relief from the provinces. But despite success at Coulmiers bringing the temporary liberation of Orl´eans on 9 November and the resilience of Colonel Denfert-Rochereau’s men under siege for three months at Belfort, on the whole, the provincial war effort brought only further defeat and deadlock, culminating in the collapse of General Bourbaki’s forces near the Swiss border on 26 January. With food supplies in Paris almost exhausted, on 26 January 1871, the French government finally agreed to a cease-fire. The following day, it entered negotiations for an armistice that would end the fighting everywhere except in the eastern regions of Bourgogne and FrancheComt´e, where combat continued until 13 February. The peace divided the country; in the National Assembly elections held on 8 February, many war-weary provincial areas voted for monarchists endorsing peace, while some of the major cities, including Paris, registered significant support for left-wing candidates who were calling for the war to continue. In the preliminary peace terms, signed on 26 February, Germany demanded the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, indemnities of 5 billion francs with continued occupation of eastern areas as a guarantee of payment, and to add insult to injury to Parisians, a victory parade down the ChampsElys´ees. The following week, the National Assembly voted a series of measures that deepened the poverty of workers, small shopkeepers, and artisans, ending daily pay for National Guards and requiring wartime debts to be settled immediately. The government’s decision to relocate to Versailles, rather than return to the capital, fuelled suspicions that

4 Under the Shadow of Defeat

reactionary rural elements were deliberately targeting republican and left-wing Paris. Thus when on 18 March Thiers ordered the army to seize cannon held by the National Guard at Montmartre, many interpreted the move as an act of provocation. Having spent much of the siege calling for guerre a` outrance and feeling threatened by an apparently hostile new government, socialists and other extreme left figures backed by radicalized guardsmen, artisans, and workers rose up to proclaim a new Paris Commune. Had the fighting ended at Sedan with the defeat of Napoleon III in September 1870, it might have been written off as the collapse of the Second Empire, but because the war had resumed under the republican Government of National Defence, it became a defeat not only of the regime but of the nation as well. The defeat cast a dark shadow over France’s political and cultural development, mingling with memories of the Paris Commune to enter the national consciousness as l’ann´ee terrible. And after the humiliation and anger came soul-searching and a widespread conviction that something must have been fundamentally rotten at the very core of the nation. The fall of the Second Empire, the discrediting defeat of the fledgling Republic, and the collapse of the Commune produced a political vacuum, leaving the future of France effectively for the taking. As Ernest Renan observed, the experiences of l’ann´ee terrible destroyed many of the legends at the heart of French political culture: that of the glorious Empire was banished by the routing of Napoleon III, that of the nation in arms was exploded by Gambetta, while that of the Terror was ‘parodied’ in the Paris Commune.4 In the consequent vacuum, issues of identity became real political questions and memory became a real political weapon; it was a matter of defining what had gone wrong with the nation and it was a time when every political, cultural, religious, and social group competed to offer their own panacea. As time passed, the Third Republic became consolidated, the economy recovered and then faltered, foreign policy turned towards colonial expansion, and literature, art, and music developed in new directions, memories of the defeat became increasingly difficult to position. After all, amidst the confidence of the Belle Epoque, there was little desire to remember the sombre days of l’ann´ee terrible. The reality was, of course, that as successive crises revealed, questions about the political identity of France had not been resolved, and indeed memories of the war continued to pervade and shape the development of the nation. The problematic relationship between the present and the reconfigured, re-merging and ever-present past, particularly in times of difficulty, lies at the heart of

Introduction

5

French political culture in the period under focus in this study. The catastrophes of 1870–1871 served as powerful mobilizing forces for domestic reform, while the pain of separation from Alsace-Lorraine served as emotive forces for revanche. Thus far from wishing to suppress or dull the potency of painful memories, many in France were driven to perpetuate their acuity. In order to account for the afterlife of the Franco-Prussian War in French political culture, we need to turn to the now vast body of scholarship on memory. In recent years, it has become customary to address both the notion of memory and historians’ current preoccupation with it as concerns are raised about its conceptual rigour.5 Memories of shared experience, whether on national, local, or other levels, necessitate an understanding of how individual and collective recollections relate to one another. One starting point might be the Durkheimian concept of society as a group of individuals with a collective conscience; following this rationale, collective memory exists as more than merely the sum of individual memories. As a student of Durkheim, Maurice Halbwachs came to exercise a defining influence upon many historians several decades later by developing a concept of collective memory in which individual memories require confirmation and can only derive meaning in relation to the groups in which they belong.6 Thus following Halbwachs, memories are understood as becoming at once homogenized as individual recollections become contextualized and shaped by the collectivity, and pluralistic as each individual belongs to several groups at any given moment. For the political, social, and cultural historian, such an approach is helpful, bringing coherence and complexity to the process of the formation of collective memories within societies, but it also risks losing sight of the individual. Indeed, David Lowenthal observes that ultimately memory is both personal in derivation and individual in perspective.7 More recently, Susan Crane has argued for the relocation of the individual within concepts of collective memory which otherwise lack a ‘central remembering body’.8 The relationship between individual and collective memories thus remains methodologically and conceptually problematic. Of particular interest to this book are the concepts of memory that emphasize its subjective, changing, and self-serving nature. For groups use collective memory to define their identities and to stake claims to political, cultural, or social legitimacy. Collective memory is often manipulated, being at once multiple and collective; it does not aim to preserve the past but to mould it so as to shape the present.9 By nature it is hegemonic and absolute, unable and unwilling to accommodate

6 Under the Shadow of Defeat

alternative memories which it discards as illegitimate.10 As has been widely acknowledged, therefore, the study of collective memory involves the study of power. The elimination of inconsistent, opposing, or competing ideas means that it also involves examining what is ‘forgotten’ as much as what is remembered. The swings of remembering and forgetting are unique to humans because animals are naturally programmed to forget, and indeed according to Freudian thinking, people do not even forget, but rather bury memories deep within their subconscious.11 Following Nietzsche, it might also be argued that forgetting is necessary to bring meaning and order to memory; more often than not, however, what groups choose to consign to obscurity is determined by motivations of power. The functioning of memory within society has been the focus of much recent scholarship, especially since the groundbreaking work of Pierre Nora and Yosef Yarushalmi arguing that memory is primitive in character and inherently opposed to modern historical consciousness.12 The industrial age caused rupture with past practices and values, creating a sense of uncertainty, instability, and loss. For Nora, this combined with the critical, analytical imperatives of the historical discipline to produce a devastating assault on memory. It therefore became necessary to create lieux de m´emoire, or realms of memory, which Nora defines as ‘any significant entity, whether material or non-material in nature, which, by dint of human work or the work of time has become a symbolic element of the memorial heritage of any community’, because memory no longer emerges spontaneously.13 While Nora’s work remains influential, more recent scholarship has sought to question the sharpness of his distinction between history and memory, arguing that in reality it is not so complete or rigid, and the relationship is not always so antagonistic.14 If the professionalization of history in the nineteenth century brought a suspicion of memory, developments in the twentieth century led to the re-emergence of memory as an area of public and scholarly interest. One explanation that has been proposed for the current concern about memory is that it is a delayed symptom of the shock of modernity, aggravated by the legacy of the Holocaust. Thus Saul Friedl¨ander argues that during the 1960s, the repressed trauma of the Holocaust returned, rippling out and drawing historians into engaging with memory in almost every period and area of research.15 More broadly within society, the rise in public fascination with memory has also been related to the emergence of identity politics in recent decades, a trend witnessed across the industrialized world.16

Introduction

7

One of the areas to witness perhaps the greatest growth in scholarly and public interest has been the memory of war. Remembrance of past conflicts encompasses the construction of symbols, the enactment of rituals, and the journey to sacred sites with the aims of mourning, recalling, and recasting shared experiences or expressing gratitude for the sacrifice of others. For Jay Winter and Antoine Prost, the transformation in attitudes occurred during the 1960s and was part of a wider shift in the relationship between academic history and public interest in the past. It was in part a product of the expansion of universities, the opening of archives relating to the First World War, the publication of war memoirs, the impact of television documentaries, and the subsequent shift in the nature of the audience for historical scholarship. Thereafter, wars could no longer be approached solely from the perspective of the high command and instead attention turned to the experiences of rank and file soldiers and civilians. In consequence, Winter and Prost argue, history and memory effectively became reconnected.17 The study of how war has been remembered in France stands at a nexus between a broad rise in interest in memory, the transformation in approaches to the study of conflict, and the importance of the past in French political culture. Scholars of French history owe a particular debt to Pierre Nora for bringing a new approach to the exploration of republican and national identity in modern France. Having initially set out to identify the main centres of memory in the early volumes of La R´epublique and La nation, Nora expanded his approach for Les France to explore latent or hidden aspects of national memory. As Patrick Hutton observes, what was especially innovative in the approach adopted by contributing scholars was that they proceeded from the present backwards, constructing the nation in the manner of a genealogist.18 What emerges is that whether as a source of legitimacy or contestation, the myths, memory, and legacy of the Revolution of 1789 ensure that representations of the past lie at the heart of French political culture. Nora’s work on the role of memory in constructions of the French nation is particularly pertinent to this book. For Nora argues that after the defeat of 1870, the historians of the Third Republic, ‘speaking half as soldiers, half as priests’, developed a homogeneous sense of the nation which attempted to synthesize notions of France and the Republic.19 Within this cohesive concept, diversity functioned as a unifying force, but with the collapse of the Third Republic came the disintegration of the ‘state-centred national synthesis’.20 In part, Nora’s picture of a divided modern-day France is a consequence of the approach taken in Lieux de m´emoire in which the broad

8 Under the Shadow of Defeat

sweep of French history is divided into narrow separate narratives, each encapsulated in sites of memory that often appear to be scarcely linked.21 Moreover, with his contention that concepts of the nation collapsed into conflict with the fall of the Third Republic, Nora appears to look back to a period of consensus that never really existed.22 In reality, as the study of memories of the Franco-Prussian War highlights, national ideas were always politically divided and geographically fragmented. As Daniel Sherman observes, Nora interprets First World War remembrance as the highpoint of the commemorative activity that was developed to consolidate the ideals of the Third Republic. Such unity and cohesion has, however, since been replaced with narrow and fragmented self-interest. Arriving at his analysis by drawing on the conclusions of Agulhon’s work on visual representations of Marianne and Prost’s exploration of First World War memorials, Nora puts forward an argument that fits with scholarship emphasizing French unity and national sentiment over the course of the conflict. While such work helps to provide explanations for the strength of the French commitment to the war effort, as Sherman argues, the coherence identified by Nora should not obscure the divisions within French society.23 By contrast, Robert Gildea’s pioneering study of the importance of memory in French political culture highlights division. With rival notions of French identity revolving around concepts of republicanism, Catholicism, Bonapartism, revolution, and national grandeur, Gildea paints a complex, shifting, and often, contradictory picture. As such, Confino argues, Gildea fails to give sufficient weight to the factors binding the nation together.24 Like Nora, Gildea’s overall argument is in part a consequence of his approach, which treats memory very much in political terms. Another groundbreaking study of France’s problematic confrontation with the past by Henry Rousso seems to suffer from similar difficulties, Confino observes. Rousso’s exploration of the traumatic afterlife of the Second World War in France, which he terms the ‘Vichy Syndrome’, stresses division, following a wider trend in which the study of memory tends towards becoming merely another branch of political history.25 The historians of social memory, James Fentress and Chris Wickham, argue that in the development of nations, the bourgeoisie have typically dominated the construction and manipulation of representations of the past. Motivated by desires to legitimize their position of dominance over society and government, middle class elites have created teleological narratives in opposition to popular social memory. Because bourgeois elites are largely responsible for defining what might be considered significant

Introduction

9

historical developments, their concepts of history may not necessarily correspond with what other social groups choose to remember.26 Indeed, Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan choose not to use the term ‘collective memory’ because they consider it to be determined by political and social elites; instead they refer to ‘collective remembrance’ which they understand in more democratic terms as a combination of social narratives.27 Part of the problem with the approach taken by Gildea and Rousso is their almost exclusive focus upon intellectual and political elites. Thus as Confino argues, Rousso in particular advances a problematic separation between the development and the reception of a dominant memory in which the wider public appear as passive recipients whose true reactions are difficult to access. Approaching memory from the perspective of how it evolves in response to its reception enables the creation of a more complex picture of political, social, and cultural forces.28 Recent scholarship on how wars are remembered has developed from the early cultural approaches of Paul Fussel and Samuel Hynes to become dominated by the methodologies adopted by George Mosse and Jay Winter. Mosse locates war memorials within a political, conservative cult of the fallen, which legitimized sacrifice and loss for the good of the nation.29 His conclusions have been challenged, however, by Rudy Koshar who argues that Mosse’s ‘myth of the war experience’ places too much emphasis on distortion, whereas in reality representations of modern war were moulded to strengthen notions of heroism rooted in culturally entrenched sacrificial discourse.30 Winter, by contrast, argues for a greater appreciation of the psychological processes of mourning, and the ritual significance of memorials in enabling communities and individuals to come to terms with loss.31 If Mosse sees war remembrance as part of a cycle of preparation for future conflict, like Prost, Winter argues that after the First World War many veterans embraced commemoration so that future generations would learn not to repeat their mistakes.32 These two perspectives are in part a reflection of disciplinary differences, with Mosse’s approach stemming from the influence of political science, and Winter’s outlook resulting from the influences of anthropology. Both have, however, been criticized for understating the role of individual memory and its interaction with collective memory; they have been said to overstate the extent to which elites can manipulate public identities, and place insufficient emphasis on the origins and social functions of commemorative acts.33 The process by which war remembrance transfers from being primarily motivated by mourning to being more overtly driven by political considerations is complex and the two stages are neither separate nor

10 Under the Shadow of Defeat

sequential. For Yves Helias, however, the act of erecting war memorials serves to deconstruct death, laying to rest its trauma and rendering it abstract in meaning.34 From there, the transition to the political realm becomes easier as the dead become symbols of national and other values. For Alex King, by contrast, war commemoration is inherently political because the process of constructing memorials involves debate at every level, and indeed during and after the unveiling ceremonies communities seek to interpret and endow them with meaning.35 During the twentieth century, while local and private initiatives persisted, the imperatives of burying the dead shifted war commemoration into the realm of the state; in consequence, as well as establishing the necessary apparatuses to implement their duties, governments have used museums, archives, and official histories to transmit their own justifying narratives.36 After the carnage of the First World War, in particular, many states considered it imperative to direct mourning into what they deemed to be safe avenues to ensure that the legitimacy of the past and any future war was not undermined. Recent scholarship on memories of the First World War in France has focused upon aspects of political, social, and cultural relationships to develop a deeper understanding of the Third Republic. The tensions between the Catholic Church and the Republic and how they were mediated through visions of the nation in war commemorations have been a particularly fruitful avenue of research. Thus Antoine Prost identifies the emergence of a republican cult of the dead after the First World War; filling the void left by the separation of Church and state, loyalty to the Republic through four years of hardship manifested itself in the development of a new kind of ‘civic religion’.37 At the same time, however, Prost’s influential examination of the veterans of the First World War reveals that their patriotic faithfulness to the Republic often translated into pacifist opposition to future conflict.38 By contrast, Annette Becker draws attention to Christian patriotism, arguing that Catholicism was particularly suited to the elevation of war into a sacred experience. Indeed, Becker argues that popular Catholicism and deeply ingrained Catholic sacrificial discourse fed into beliefs that war offered the opportunity for martyrdom and expiation.39 The Church was thus central to the construction of national ossuaries as symbols of consolation for a sacrifice which had not been in vain.40 The ways in which war commemoration played out the upheavals in gender relations, particularly in terms of fears of emasculation, and how they helped to re-establish prewar norms have been explored by Daniel J. Sherman. Because mourning was presented as a tribute by women to men, it carried political meaning

Introduction

11

as a symbol of adjustment and change after the wartime turmoil.41 Such scholarship on the commemoration of the First World War in France has thus shed new light upon the shape of the Third Republic in the interwar period. The problem remains, however, that much of the research on how wars are remembered deals with twentieth-century conflicts. With the exception of the American Civil War, whose enduring afterlife shaped politics, culture, and society in the North and South, there has been little engagement with the memory of conflicts prior to 1914.42 The First World War inaugurated a radically different encounter with war, necessitating new expressions of grief and new frames of expression with which to come to terms with the enormity of the experience. The study of how twentieth-century conflicts have been remembered can therefore have only limited application to the examination of earlier wars. Even scholarship dealing with the broader subject of memory often begins from a twentieth-century perspective, dealing with notions of trauma, repression, and forgetting in terms of confrontation with the enormity of the devastation and loss. There is a tendency to interpret war commemoration as part of a process of coming to terms with grief; thus war memorials are considered to act as substitutes for soldiers’ graves, and names are regarded as symbolic replacements for bodies.43 Yet in the context of the late nineteenth century, when mortality rates for poorer communities remained relatively high and when many would not normally have been able to afford permanent or individual resting places for their dead, families were not generally accustomed to practices of mourning centring upon graves. If the experiences of combat were brutal, they did not serve to undermine the legitimacy of war on any significant level; it took the rise of socialist internationalism and the experiences of the First World War for that to happen. And unlike after 1918, there was not a sense that existing cultural discourse was inadequate for expressing the sufferings of war; indeed it is significant that the Franco-Prussian War inspired no new movement in any artistic sphere. Any application of the analytical frameworks of scholarship on memories of twentieth-century wars therefore needs to be approached with caution. Nevertheless, it is clear that the rituals, language, creation of sacred places, and objects that developed through the commemoration of the Franco-Prussian War helped to lay the foundations for the practices of remembrance for the First World War. To date, however, there has been no overall study of how the Franco-Prussian War was remembered in France, no detailed investigation into the origins of the acts of remembrance, limited analysis comparing recollections in more than

12 Under the Shadow of Defeat

one location, and little work combining an analysis of memories of 1870–1871 in art, literature, and politics. At best, the existing scholarship on memories of the Franco-Prussian War offers a fragmented picture, and while it is widely acknowledged that the defeat had a significant effect upon France, the precise nature of its impact has not been fully explored. The disastrous Franco-Prussian War sparked introspection, with fears of a diminished world status, persistent apprehension about Germany, and anxiety about national decadence. The shadow of the defeat is perhaps so obvious, however, that scholarship on the political developments of the early Third Republic has tended to make assumptions about the significance of its impact rather than to explore the precise nature of it. That the memory of l’ann´ee terrible lay behind republican desires to strengthen national sentiment and identification with the regime is thus largely presumed as the starting point of political reform and is therefore not examined in terms of exercising any long-term or evolving influence upon policy.44 Opposing interpretations of the defeat and the Commune offered by the Catholic Church have been analysed by Raymond Jonas as part of a wider study of how the revival of the cult of the Sacred Heart affected the struggle between republican and Catholic ideals and symbols.45 Perhaps one of the most obvious manifestations of memories of the war was the notion of revanche and the recovery of the lost provinces of Alsace-Lorraine. Yet it is now generally acknowledged that while revenge may have been a popular fantasy, it was never a realistic foreign policy objective, being virtually forgotten even among nationalists by the late 1880s and scarcely mentioned in the press.46 The emergence of new kinds of nationalism has been the subject of considerable scholarly interest, as debate revolves around the precise nature and timing of the shift from republican universalist ideals to inward-looking exclusionist and often anti-republican thinking. If the transformation was a consequence of long-term trends and the impact of political developments in the 1880s and 1890s, the experiences of the war nonetheless aggravated fears of national decline and degeneration.47 Research into French preparation for the First World War therefore addresses the enduring memories of the Franco-Prussian War in terms of conscripts’ motivations and morale as well as military strategy.48 Like any examination of the impact of the Franco-Prussian War upon French intellectuals, this book is greatly indebted to Claude Digeon’s foundational study. Ascribing the key protagonists a range of responses determined in part by generational divisions, Digeon describes a loss of idealism, a fear of decline, an inferiority complex in relation to

Introduction

13

Germany, a sense of critical detachment by those too young to bear any responsibility for the disaster, and a feeling of indignation among those disillusioned with the lack of progress in recovering from the defeat.49 In more recent years, art historians have turned their attention to representations of the Franco-Prussian War in painting, highlighting in particular the persistence of nationalist memories. Thus Franc¸ois Robichon argues that war-related art assisted the development of nationalist sentiment by helping to heal the wounds of the defeat; as time passed, however, it proved progressively more difficult for artists to combat waning public interest in 1870 within a thriving genre of military painting.50 As part of a wider examination of the significance of visual culture in the early Third Republic, Richard Thomson argues that through images of the war and representations of other patriotic subjects, support for revanche manifested itself in wider terms than has previously been considered by historians focusing upon non-pictorial evidence.51 In his groundbreaking analysis of the memorials of the First World War published as part of Nora’s Lieux de m´emoire series, Antoine Prost asserts that ‘the defeat of 1871 did not lend itself to commemoration as easily as the victory of 1918’.52 This book suggests, however, that the unprecedented interest in remembering the Franco-Prussian War was triggered precisely because of the nature of the French defeat. Prost claims that ‘they were not built in the throes of national mourning, but twenty or thirty years later, after the Boulangist episode and at the beginning of the twentieth century’.53 In reality, over 350 war memorials were erected between 1871 and 1878. Prost goes on to argue that the construction of war memorials ‘did not involve the nation as a whole or its official representatives at either the local or the national level’.54 This book demonstrates that the state constructed many funerary memorials above military tombs, and subsidized those monuments it deemed to be of sufficient artistic merit. The erection of every war memorial necessitated the approval of municipal and departmental authorities, and indeed the vast majority received municipal or departmental funding. Finally, Prost contends that Franco-Prussian War memorials ‘expressed the views of that segment of the public that nursed thoughts of revenge’.55 In reality, it would appear that revanchism was just one motivating factor, with domestic political concerns often taking precedence. The commemoration of the Franco-Prussian War was not the main focus of Prost’s analysis, but since then several articles have shed light on the subject, with particular focus upon the relationship between local and national identities. Indeed, June Hargrove has explored the

14 Under the Shadow of Defeat

transfiguration of the defeat through the iconography of glory, resistance, and revenge in Franco-Prussian War memorials. While most monuments were conceived at a local level, Hargrove concludes that they provided an essential connection with developing concepts of nationhood.56 In a fascinating article on republican commemorations in Saint-Quentin (Aisne), David Troyansky addresses the ‘fusion of national history and local memory’ in the town’s construction of monuments to the Franco-Prussian War and the siege of 1557. He provides an insight into the evolution of public memories and the relationship between local and national politics in war commemorations.57 For Annette Becker, the contemporaneous emergence of war commemoration in post-1870 France and post-Civil War America was a consequence rather than a cause of a developing sense of nationhood. As well as signalling growing national sentiment, the construction of war memorials heralded the transition towards a reconciled United States and a universally accepted French Republic.58 In his analysis of the role of visual symbols in the spread of republicanism, Maurice Agulhon places monuments at the frontline of the battle over the consolidation of the Third Republic. The struggles over representations of Marianne were part of a wider conflict between concepts of republicanism and the nation; thus Agulhon notes that the construction of Franco-Prussian War memorials coincided with a focus in art and politics upon the relationship between France and the Republic.59 The relationship between local and national memories lies at the heart of this book. National memory is often considered to be an extension of national identity; if, following Benedict Anderson, the latter is an expression of an ‘imagined community’ whose members are largely unknown to one another, the former is a shared recollection among those who are also largely unknown to each other but who perceive a common past.60 The development of national memories has also been linked by John Gillis with the rise of national commemorations.61 Festivals marking the Revolution of 1789 signalled the first truly national commemorations in Europe; the ritual re-enactments, unveiling of statues, parades, and popular entertainment encouraged the participation of all social classes in local events designed to engage communities in the patriotic and republican life of the nation. Their reappearance on the calendar of the Republic in 1880, along with official patronage and a coherent concept of the Revolution centred on the symbolism of 14 July, facilitated expressions of a national memory, even if many in the country did not adhere to it.

Introduction

15

The same cannot be said for memories of the Franco-Prussian War. While commemorative ceremonies often resembled 14 July festivals, with parades, brass bands, and gymnastics displays, they lacked the same cohesion. The politically, geographically, and temporally fragmented nature of the war commemorations also stands in marked contrast with the more unified acts of remembrance witnessed after 1918. The designation of Armistice Day as a public holiday provided a national focus by which to remember the two world wars. By contrast, Franco-Prussian War commemorations were spread throughout the months of August to January, with each town, city, and department marking its own anniversaries. The comparative absence of government involvement, from the construction of war memorials to attendance at ceremonies, deprived commemorations of the centralizing influences of the state. The federal structure of the nationalist Ligue des Patriotes, the Souvenir Franc¸ais, and veterans’ associations meant that private organizations were not able to provide any real national perspective either. After the First World War, France gained a focus for national mourning in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. An equivalent anonymous neutral symbol was lacking after 1870. With no focal point for remembrance in the country’s calendar, no governmental or private organization elaborating a unified vision of the conflict, and no national monument, there could be no truly national commemoration of the Franco-Prussian War. Local war commemorations thus filled the void left by the absence of national acts of remembrance. Most were the product of mayoral and municipal council initiative with the participation of clergymen, veterans, and community leaders. Instead of portraying the war as a whole, civic and regional pride dictated a glorification of local experience. The battle for France was therefore reduced to the battle for a town or region. The feeling was particularly acute in areas which had been forced to mount their own wartime resistance against overwhelming odds. With the bulk of troops having been concentrated around the capital or in northern and eastern campaigns, many cities had defended themselves with a mere handful of local sedentary National Guards, firemen, francstireurs, and civilian volunteers. This did not necessarily undermine the legitimacy of the national defence; indeed towns frequently stressed the extent of their wartime suffering in order to demonstrate their contribution to the French war effort. Thus recollections of the war and their translation into the rituals of remembrance were mediated through communities’ identification with the national struggle. This book is therefore also situated within the context of debates about the development of the nation sparked by Eugen Weber’s concept of

16 Under the Shadow of Defeat

the transformation of ‘peasants into Frenchmen’ in the late nineteenth century. Challenging earlier assumptions about the cohesiveness of the nation following the Revolution of 1789, Weber highlights France’s disparate nature, its diverse regional cultures, at least 80 dialects, its strongly rooted local economies, and pronounced differences in urban and rural life, to argue that it took the republican reforms of the 1880s to develop widespread identification with the nation.62 Weber does not ascribe any particular significance to the Franco-Prussian War, but more recently, St´ephane Audoin-Rouzeau has demonstrated that over the course of the conflict antipathy towards Germany increased, bringing a sense of shared national experience. Overall, however, Audoin-Rouzeau concludes that while the war helped to develop national sentiment, it remained fragile, unevenly spread, and inconsistent.63 In some respects, relationships between local and national memories of the FrancoPrussian War mirror a pattern observed in Germany in the same period. In contrast with Eric Hobsbawm’s ‘top-down’ approach to the development of national values in the late nineteenth century, Alon Confino describes how German festivals to mark Sedan Day involved communities internalizing the nation state by transforming it into a local experience, giving an abstract concept a more tangible character.64 Because the fighting, the occupation, and the loss of soldiers affected local communities, and because commemorative acts originated at municipal or departmental level, this book will suggest that the national war could only ever be expressed as a local experience. At the same time, however, recalling the wartime efforts of a town or department and affirming enduring patriotic devotion served to bring communities closer to hitherto distant notions of France. Therein lay one of the principal effects of war remembrance. Government reforms in education, the army, transport, and culture may have encouraged participation and identification with the nation, but remembering the war encouraged people to imagine sacrificing their lives for it. In the annexed provinces of Alsace-Lorraine, the relationship between local and national memories was more complex. Several studies have highlighted the emergence of an Alsatian identity that developed in response to the lengthy period of separation from France and the realities of the provinces’ political status within the German Reich.65 In annexed areas of Lorraine, Franc¸ois Roth suggests that the memory of 1870–1871 remained the principal reference point for French and German-speaking communities.66 Annette Maas has examined efforts to construct local and national memories around Metz, drawing attention to the surprising levels of co-operation between the former enemies resulting from a

Introduction

17

shared respect for the dead. Yet war commemorations remained painful for French-speaking communities because they were reminders of the defeat and annexation, while the location of new borders in the middle of the battlefields served to intensify the oppositional character of national memories.67 Memories of the war not only magnified and crystallized political, religious, and social disagreements, but also served to reduce the conflict into a series of distinct local skirmishes. The selection of incidents to formulate a vision of the war as a whole did not, therefore, involve a trauma-induced repression of memory. Events that were not remembered were ignored but not repressed, and indeed could be recalled at will to strengthen a particular claim. Thus Catholic clergymen frequently conjured up memories of defeat and civil war to remind the nation of God’s desire to punish France for its sinful moral and political degeneracy. There could therefore be little possibility that even the most sombre episodes in the war would be effaced from public memory. The plurality and absence of any single dominant memory ensured that while recollections of the Franco-Prussian War were often awkward and uncomfortable, they could not be purposely ‘forgotten’ as aspects of the Second World War apparently were.68 The post-1871 cult of the army did not prefigure the post-1945 resistantialist myth in providing a secure shelter from unpleasant truths. Nor did the publication of Emile Zola’s La d´ebˆacle shatter patriotic illusions about the Franco-Prussian War as Marcel Ophuls’ film Le chagrin et la piti´e is said to have done for the Second World War. Rival memories of 1870– 1871 coexisted, albeit with unease, because what was unmentionable in one political and cultural milieu was seized upon and manipulated in another. This book explores the processes by which memories of the FrancoPrussian War were constructed, articulated, contested, and altered in political debates, commemorative rituals, museum collections, pilgrimages to sacred sites, art, literature, and war memorials. Considerable attention is paid to the construction of war memorials as processes of mediation between the demands of mayors, municipal councils, Prefects, central government, the press, veterans, religious leaders, and local communities. Unveiling and annual commemorative ceremonies also occupy a central position in this study. Speeches provided narrative form for the memories conveyed in monuments, manipulating recollections of the war to fulfil political functions. Attendance figures, reactions to speeches, and the nature of participating organizations also provide indications of public responses to such commemorative acts. Rather than

18 Under the Shadow of Defeat

simply analysing the iconography and imagery employed in war memorials, this book focuses upon the debates that surrounded their selection and interpretation. The often problematic correlation between the messages that organizing committees wished to convey and what sculptors designed and produced is often overlooked, yet it is through this relationship that meanings were conveyed and construed. Consideration also needs to be given to the spheres in which sculptors operated; with reference points in art as well as politics, their work needs to be unpicked in broad cultural terms, drawing upon the methods of art and non-art historians. A central argument of this book is that the war dead lay at the heart of ideas on the regeneration of France. The post-1871 cult of the fallen placed unprecedented emphasis on the mass of common soldiers, invoking their patriotic self-sacrifice to lift and unify the nation after its collapse. Recollections produced politically and socially divisive perspectives on the nation; by focusing on how communities remembered the conflict in specific local settings, this book identifies how memories developed, evolved, and collided with one another. This book therefore aims to explore the connections between the local episodes and the construction of wider, multiple, and often conflicting national narratives. No one town or region can be said to have constituted a ‘typical’ example because differences in the nature of the fighting, the combat forces involved, and civilian responses produced a wide variety of wartime experiences. The sites chosen for closer examination have therefore been selected for representing different facets of the memory of the conflict. Sedan became a symbol of imperial collapse and humiliation, while the neighbouring village of Bazeilles was remembered for German brutality and French resilience. Mars-la-Tour, located close to the new frontier with Germany, became a focus for memories of the lost provinces, while Belfort, which emerged victorious from its siege, offered an image of hope for future victory in more favourable circumstances (Figure I.1). The fighting around Dijon came to be regarded as exemplifying republican theories of a nation in arms, bringing into sharp relief the clashes between republican and conservative perspectives on the war. In Paris, meanwhile, memories of the war were viewed through the prism of recollections of the Commune and civil war that followed. Other examples are drawn from throughout the country, but this book concentrates primarily upon those areas within the theatre of combat which directly experienced the full impact of the short but devastating conflict. As well as exploring the relationships between local, national, political, social, and cultural recollections, this book explores how memories

Introduction

19

Sedan Bazeilles Metz Mars-la-Tour Wissembourg Châlons-sur-Marne Champigny-sur-Marne Nancy

Paris

Loigny Châteaudun Orléans

Tours

Belfort Dijon

Lyon

Nice Toulouse

Ajaccio

Figure I.1

Map of battle and commemoration sites

changed with the passage of time. In this respect, it might be compared with Henry Rousso’s approach to the evolution of memories of the Second World War in the period since 1945. Diagnosing France’s traumatic confrontation with its recent past as a ‘Vichy Syndrome’, Rousso identifies several chronological phases in the disorder corresponding with rises and falls in the temperature of the crisis. While the shape of the

20 Under the Shadow of Defeat

‘Syndrome’ is largely determined by its constituent elements, the heat of the controversy largely depends upon the impact of wider national and international political developments. Rousso adopts an ‘event-oriented’ approach with the aim of bringing to light the tensions in representations of the past, while also seeking to explore the conflicts between ‘voluntarist’ and latent or implicit memories. His perspective is national, even though the actual experiences of the war differed widely across France. It is not the intention of this book to suggest that there was any kind of ‘Franco-Prussian War Syndrome’ in part because treating a nation, especially one as fragmented as late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century France, as an individual with the same psychological behaviour poses many problems.69 Nevertheless, Rousso’s approach may be adopted to construct a broad overview of the evolving character of memories of the Franco-Prussian War. Indeed, just as Rousso argues that memories of the Second World War were shaped by the tensions that led to the creation of the Vichy regime itself, so this book suggests that recollections of the Franco-Prussian War were influenced by the conflicts that led to the crises of l’ann´ee terrible. We might also tentatively adopt Rousso’s contention that if memory was ‘unwell’, perhaps the main ‘body’ of French society remained ‘healthy’.70 Consideration must also be given to Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s analysis of the unfolding patterns of reaction to defeat which employs similar psychological terms of reference. Concentrating primarily upon postCivil War America, France after 1871, and Germany following its collapse in the First World War, Schivelbusch identifies a series of common responses to defeat. Beginning with despair at their loss, nations quickly move on to experience feelings of jubilation as the regimes responsible for the collapse are overthrown and turned into scapegoats. The next phase sees nations entering a dreamlike, delusional state, during which there may be internal instability as populations grapple with hopes and disappointments. When victors impose harsh peace terms, the prevailing mood of optimism quickly changes and any sense of the enemy having delivered the people from a hated regime disappears to be replaced with a sense of betrayal and a reaction against revolutionary elements who are deemed to have been disloyal to their country. The enemy’s success is then unpicked and portrayed as illegitimate and unjust; the loser is therefore the moral victor and has the right and duty to exact revenge. While preparing itself for future war, the losing nation reconstructs its selfconfidence with the notion that it is intellectually superior to its enemy and that its setback is merely a temporary aberration in an otherwise rarely broken narrative of historical greatness.71

Introduction

21

Rousso argues that memories of the occupation and the Vichy regime were repressed by a dominant ‘resistantialist’ myth but the traumas of the war nonetheless periodically manifested themselves in the political, intellectual, and cultural life of post-1945 France. As government and other organizations sought to create their own memories of the war to serve particular ends, so the contradictions in their narratives became clear. Using so-called ‘vectors’ of memory, that is to say the ‘carriers’ of consciously constructed representations of the past, Rousso traces the ways in which ideas on the occupation and Vichy develop at varying rates. Under this model, memories are constituted in a complex process whereby elements are created, then modified, and in turn react to one another; where different ‘vectors’ converge, they can be considered to provide an indication of the general mood of the country.72 The public are the recipients of the messages conveyed by the ‘vectors’ of memory, modifying them in due course by their responses which Rousso measures by opinion polls, book sales, and box office sales.73 The approach taken in this book differs from that adopted by Rousso by suggesting that there was greater fluidity, adaptation, and change in the development of memories of the Franco-Prussian War than is proposed in the ‘Vichy Syndrome’ model. While prevailing myths about the war effort may have been articulated through political rhetoric, popular patriotic literature, art, the press, and other forms of expression, they never constituted a cohesive, dominant, or ‘repressive’ public memory. Indeed, an examination of the debates surrounding war commemorations at municipal and departmental levels reveals the importance of local memories in the creation of national narratives. Public responses to commemorations, fundraising for the erection of war memorials, reactions to museum collections, pilgrimages to the ‘sacred’ sites of 1870, sales of patriotic literature, and critical and popular acclaim of warrelated paintings meant that in the process of constructing memories, communities were never simply ‘recipients’, passive or otherwise. Memories expressed in artistic, literary, commemorative, and other spheres created a complex, ever-evolving, and conflicting set of ideas that in turn shaped political culture. If writers, artists, intellectuals, and local, social, religious, and political communities responded to developments such as the government’s rejection of revanche, in return they saturated the environment in which politicians had to operate by regularly articulating their memories of the war. Thus as well as operating in response to the concrete realities of the domestic and diplomatic legacies of the war, political thinking was both consciously and unconsciously shaped by the distortions of competing memories.

22 Under the Shadow of Defeat

In the broadest national political terms, memories of the FrancoPrussian War can be described as evolving in five stages. The first lasted from 1871 to 1873 and marked the period when France was under occupation and still reeling from the suppression of the Paris Commune. During this period, the monarchist-dominated National Assembly sought to manipulate public interpretations of the causes of the disasters with a series of heavily anti-republican parliamentary enquiries and the scapegoating of Marshal Bazaine. This initial phase ended with the evacuation of German occupying forces and the resignation of Thiers from the presidency. In the years 1873 to 1878, the Government of Moral Order marked the left out as the chief political enemy, fearing a revival of the Commune and pursuing cautious diplomatic relations with Germany. The republican consolidation of power marked the beginning of a new stage lasting until 1887. It was a time of frustrated optimism as popular aspirations for revenge were rejected in favour of the pursuit of grandeur through colonial expansion. Deeming the defeat to have been caused by a lack of identification with the nation, republican reforms were spurred on by memories of the war. A fresh phase in the evolution of public memories of the war came with the rise of Boulanger and the politicization of the Ligue des Patriotes as frustration with the Opportunist government boiled over into a new kind of nationalism that refocused attention on fears of French decline, incorporating elements of the disillusioned left and monarchist and Bonapartist right. If memories of the war were not at the forefront of public discourse, they had nonetheless become so deeply entrenched in political culture that they constituted a critical factor in the development of the controversy of the Dreyfus Affair and debates surrounding the character of the Republic. The Moroccan crisis of 1905 brought another phase in the evolution of public memories and the emergence of a new generation of intellectuals who helped to revive public interest in memories of the war and in particular Alsace-Lorraine. If revanche was not a primary political, military, or public goal as France entered the First World War, recollections of France’s previous encounter with Germany were undoubtedly still very much present. In broad quantitative terms, trends in commemorative activity followed a different pattern. In the period between 1871 and 1873, that is to say before legislation on the burial of the war dead, a wave of memorial building and funerary ceremonies spread across the nation, concentrated particularly in the areas directly affected by the war. The years 1873 to 1878 were marked by the state’s burial of all fallen soldiers on French territory which in turn triggered the construction of a further series

Introduction

23

of locally initiated and funded monuments. Diplomatic tensions with Germany problematized expressions of revanche or bellicose nationalism, while the Government of Moral Order’s clamp-down on creeping radicalism hindered the glorification of republican concepts of the nation in arms. As commemorative acts involved grappling with what the nation had been fighting for, memories of the war at once shaped and were shaped by debates over the relationship between concepts of France and concepts of the Republic. The fall of the Government of Moral Order brought a fresh wave of memorial construction as many local communities were swept under a tide of patriotic enthusiasm for the new regime. The emphasis therefore changed from mourning to articulating political messages as communities began to fear a drift towards forgetting among the younger generations. The political fault lines shifted; revenge was not a prime concern as tensions arose between radical and moderate republican memories of the war and expressions of Catholic patriotism. The early 1900s inaugurated a new phase in the construction of war memorials, inspired partly by the effects of the Dreyfus Affair, the nationalist revival, and fears of the rise of socialist internationalism, but the often lengthy delays between the commission and unveiling of monuments creates difficulties in identifying any clear trends. Attendance at the commemorations in the Paris region and at the memorial at Mars-la-Tour in Lorraine appears to have risen and fallen in response to national political and diplomatic developments. In the suburbs of the capital, crowds gathering for funerary services remained between 3000 and 6000 from the early 1870s until the late 1890s, being apparently scarcely affected by the rise of Boulangism. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the siege raised attendance rates significantly to around 20,000, but it was the onset of the Dreyfus Affair that had the greatest effect, increasing crowd sizes to between 10,000 and 30,000 in 1898 and 1899. Public enthusiasm waned, however, and did not even pick up with the onset of the Moroccan crisis of 1905. It was only on the eve of war in 1913 that attendance figures for commemorations at Champigny reached 10,000 again. In the commemorations at Mars-la-Tour, crowd sizes were more sensitive to diplomatic developments, rising to 10,000 in 1889 and 1890 during the peak of Boulanger’s revanchist popularity, and peaking at 25,000 in 1891 as France reached an agreement with Russia to end years of diplomatic isolation.74 The twenty-fifth anniversary of the battle raised attendance figures to 25,000 once again as just across the border the German government held major victory celebrations. The Dreyfus Affair appears to have had little effect on declining crowd sizes, and it was only international tensions that revived levels of attendance

24 Under the Shadow of Defeat

to around 20,000 in 1910. Elsewhere, however, local factors appear to have been more decisive, with fewer clear trends in the influence of domestic political or diplomatic developments. By integrating visual and literary representations into a wider analysis of public recollections, this book will propose a picture in which memories were determined less by their form than by their substance and context. Images of the war were in constant evolution at every level, being shaped by a complex set of political, social, and cultural factors operating at different strengths and paces at any given time. It is these opposing, contradictory, and changing qualities that characterized and problematized French memories of the Franco-Prussian War.

1 Political Fallout

At first glance, there might appear no greater symbol of a post-1871 collective amnesia than the fact that only two years after the defeat, the new President of the Republic was none other than the commander of the Army of Chˆalons at Sedan, Marshal MacMahon. Despite his significant role in the disasters of 31 August and 1 September 1870 and Froeschwiller on 4–6 August 1870, MacMahon was chosen by royalists to replace the deposed Thiers. Bearing legitimist credentials and having a proven record of loyalty to the state, regardless of the political regime, MacMahon appeared to monarchists to be a safe pair of hands while the issue of the restoration remained unsettled. Yet his selection was also largely a measure of the perceived trustworthiness of a former soldier; in a climate of uncertainty, the army was seen as a source of stability and a guardian of honour. Placing the army at the heart of the national revival might appear a paradoxical response to one of the most crushing military collapses in French history, and has prompted some historians to suggest that there was a widespread denial of the defeat.1 It is not hard to ascertain the origins of such a contention. The post-war period saw a massive, almost obsessive, outpouring of patriotic representations of the conflict. Almost every area of cultural activity was mobilized to provide comforting explanations for the defeat that would serve to regenerate the nation.2 Fantasies of revanche, the transfiguration of humiliating defeat into moral victory, the National Assembly’s exoneration of the army, and the scapegoating of the ‘traitor’ Marshal Bazaine, who effectively ended any hopes of success by surrendering Metz almost without a fight, all serve to reinforce the impression of a national self-delusion that only began to crumble with the rise of anti-militarism and the Dreyfus Affair. 25

26 Under the Shadow of Defeat

A more nuanced approach, however, reveals the self-conscious nature of the patriotic transfiguration, and the political imperatives behind the cult of the army. Myths surrounding the national defence coexisted with profound intellectual questioning about the causes of the defeat and reforms to almost every area of government activity. Claims of superior French intellect and moral conduct were expressed alongside fears of national decadence and degeneration. The experiences of the Paris Commune and civil war were fundamental in changing perceptions of the army from a symbol of chaotic collapse to an instrument of social order. MacMahon’s candidacy for the presidency was thus viewed in terms of his successful command of the army against Communard forces and his ability in monarchist eyes to act as a bulwark against the rising republican electoral support. If the trial of Bazaine provided the nation with an easy scapegoat for the defeat, his conviction represented only a further nail in the coffin for Bonapartism; it did not satisfy monarchist desires to pin responsibility upon their greatest political threat, the republicans. The fallout of the war was thus wide-ranging, fundamentally altering French political culture into the twentieth century as well as attitudes towards the army.

Patriotic transfiguration The defeat of 1871 seemed like Waterloo all over again. After 1815, military artists such as Nicolas Charlet and Hippolyte Bellanger transformed defeat into triumph, restoring French pride in images of heroic defiance.3 In a similar manner, the Salon of 1872 was packed with images portraying a nation whose honour remained intact. Thus Le mobilis´e by L´eon Perrault depicted a dead soldier lying faced down in the snow still holding his gun while his wife sat beside him, inconsolable in her grief; now was the time for mourning, it seemed to say, but his death would be avenged by his young son, who appeared to promise revenge as he looked directly out of the canvas at the audience. Anguish at the loss of Alsace-Lorraine was a particularly popular theme in paintings such as L’Alsace! by Gustave Dor´e, in which an allegory of the lost province clutched a tricolour flag. Using white gouache against a black background for Alsace, and red and blue for the flag, the picture was striking in its message and its appearance. Alsace may have been under German rule, it suggested, but she remained resolutely French. A tone of defiance emerged in the Salon of 1873 with the appearance of Alphonse de Neuville’s La derni`ere cartouche immortalizing the heroic defence of Bazeilles by men who preferred death

Political Fallout 27

to surrender. Hailed by critics and audiences for lifting the nation’s spirits, it came to be the most famous and popular visual representation of the resistance. Indeed, Olivier Pichat writing in L’Ordre de Paris observed that in the painting ‘one feels the heart of the motherland beating’, while A. de Pontmartin commented that ‘it possesses a moral value, because it reacts against the feeling of humiliation, of discouragement, and sterile rage’.4 The following year, Antonin Merci´e’s Gloria Victis produced a similar response, becoming the bronze equivalent of de Neuville’s painting (Figure 1.1). The winged figure carrying a dying solder in her arms provided solace for national loss, but it also gave strength by defiantly insisting that there was glory in defeat.5 In the period between 1871 and 1914, military painting gained considerable popularity, overshadowing contemporaneous movements such as impressionism for a public eager to consume images of patriotism and heroism. Reproductions in the illustrated press, postcards, and prints furthered the dissemination of paintings relating to the war and the recovering army, at once responding to and fuelling a market for images of patriotism. De Neuville and Edouard Detaille dominated the field, exercising in the critic Jules Richard’s words an almost ‘tyrannical influence’, even after the death of the former in 1885.6 They were far from alone, of course, in a genre of painting that included Paul-Alexandre Protais, Paul Dominique Philippoteaux, Etienne Prosper Berne-Bellecour, Henry Louis Dupray, Paul Grolleron, Pierre Georges Jeanniot, Lucien Pierre Sergent, Paul Emile L´eon Perboyre, Emile Boutigny, Ernest Jean Delahaye, and Eug`ene Chaperon, among many others. Indeed, Franc¸ois Robichon estimates that around 2500 military paintings were exhibited in the Salons before 1914.7 Military art received a further boost under Boulanger’s tenure as war minister when paintings were commissioned to raise morale within regiments by displaying heroic past episodes.8 Of course, artists seeking to exhibit their work in the Salons operated within diplomatic, political, and commercial constraints that hindered their choice of subject and form of presentation. As such, by the 1880s, many paintings fell back upon unchallenging stereotypes, representing the war in episodes without reference to any specific events or locations, and depicting soldiers in unrealistic dramatized postures. In response to claims that they were obscuring the realities of the defeat, artists maintained that they were constrained by public refusals to be confronted with the cruel truth.9 Despite a general acceptance that artists had duties towards the national revival, however, such concessions to public sensitivities were unmasked by some critics as facile attempts

28 Under the Shadow of Defeat

Figure 1.1 Antonin Merci´e, Gloria Victis, Mus´ee du Petit Palais, Paris (1874)

to crowd-please and to disarm potential detractors.10 Moreover, appeals to patriotic emotion not only resulted in second-grade works of art that have now largely been forgotten, but also obstructed analysis of the causes of the defeat. Some artists including Detaille did seek to depict the brutal realities of the conflict, but political dissections were rare among a group of artists who sought either to glorify French military exploits or to portray the horrors of modern warfare.

Political Fallout 29

Popular literature also sought to avoid stirring political controversies, presenting the war as a test of moral strength. As with military art, literature portrayed real and fictional tales of glory rather than the wider picture of collapse, transforming the war into an adventure story with francs-tireurs as the intrepid heroes. Spies, barbaric Germans, and precociously patriotic children filled the pages of novels carrying jarringly inappropriate titles such as Les aventures curieuses et extraordinares d’un franc-tireur and Aventures d’une jeune fille pendant le si`ege et sous la Commune.11 Ultimately, they aimed to deny the legitimacy of the German victory and to demonstrate that France had a right to seek justice. Revenge and the repossession of Alsace-Lorraine were thus played out in a variety of forms. Sometimes the characters conceived of revanche on a very personal level; Siebecker in La grange aux Schwobs and E. Richebourg in Les francs-tireurs de Paris described acts of revenge for the murder of parents by German soldiers.12 Sometimes it took on elements of fantasy as in Jules Verne’s Les cinq cents millions de la B´egum. Sometimes, as in Victor de Laprade’s poem A la terre de France, it was simply a way to demonstrate devotion to France.13 Yet whatever form the revenge might take, the end results were always the same: France vindicated and pride in the nation restored. Whereas a younger generation writing at the turn of the century in the context of the nationalist revival expressed angry impatience at the failure to recover the lost provinces, in the initial decades after the defeat, patriotic authors conveyed uplifting, satisfying messages. Verne’s Les cinq cents millions de la B´egum published in 1887 exemplifies a light-hearted approach to revanche that neither envisaged nor encouraged its realization. Set in the 1870s, the story pits French humanity and science against mechanized German belligerency, with an intellectually, physically, and morally vigorous Alsatian hero, Marcel Bruckmann. Replete with references to the rivalry between the two nations, the book’s villain, Professor Schultze, works at the University of Jena, and is first encountered writing an article on the hereditary degeneration of the French people.14 Schultze establishes a new steel-mining city with the sole purpose of manufacturing cannon to rival those of Krupp.15 Hidden from everyone, Schultze invents the ultimate cannon; using carbonic acid shells, it is capable of destroying all life within a 30 metre radius. Its target is France-Ville, which has been established in hygienic conditions by Dr Sarrasin to improve the strength and bravery of the French race. The story ends with Marcel outwitting Schultze who becomes a victim of his own invention; French victory is thus achieved not through war but through intellectual and moral superiority.

30 Under the Shadow of Defeat

By the turn of the century, the tone of nationalist literature had changed significantly, conveying frustration and implicit criticism of the foreign and domestic policies of the Third Republic. No longer seeking to comfort a humiliated and insecure nation, writers were not so much interested in analysing the causes of the defeat as they were in identifying those who had failed to deliver restitution. Attention thus returned to the lost provinces, as nationalist authors attempted to stir French consciences with images of the enduring stoicism of the people of Alsace-Lorraine. Trite in nature and sentimental in tone, novels by the likes of Maurice Barr`es and Ren´e Bazin made martyrs of the people of Alsace-Lorraine and egotists of the people of France. They aimed to leave French readers feeling dissatisfied, guilty, and angry, but they did not seek to refocus attention on the war itself. More concerned with shaping memories of the defeat, such nationalist literature ultimately also helped to divert attention away from its causes. The full implications of the collapse were further obfuscated by the sheer volume of minutely detailed memoirs published after the war. Most army chiefs and generals wrote lengthy accounts in order to exonerate themselves from culpability; characterized by mind-numbing levels of precision, war veterans and the wider public provided a ready, if sometimes uncritical market for them.16 Historians only compounded the problem. Believing that they also had a duty to assist the national revival, Ernest Lavisse, Albert Sorel, Arthur Chuquet, and Gabriel Hanotaux represented the war as simply another episode in a wider and ongoing narrative of Franco-German rivalry.17 With the Revolution of 1789 representing a high point of national glory, l’ann´ee terrible was made to appear as nothing more than a temporary aberration. To such ends, the historian and nationalist deputy Henri Michel proposed conducting an enquiry into the Prussian invasion; his objective was not analysis, but rather the creation of a comprehensive list of every act of French resistance.18 At times it must have seemed as though patriotic transfigurations of the defeat permeated every area of cultural life. The republican consolidation of power ushered a wave of reforms designed to instil patriotism within the population. In schools, the Ferry administration ordered 20,000 copies of D´eroul`ede’s Chants du soldat so that children could recite the patriotic poetry of revanche.19 Maps of France were introduced into classrooms so that pupils would develop a sense of national belonging; they featured Alsace-Lorraine shaded in a different colour to Germany to sustain hopes that the annexation was only temporary. The school textbook, Le Tour de la France par deux enfants, in which two boys

Political Fallout 31

from Lorraine secretly cross the German border into France in search of their families, became central to the new emphasis on patriotic civic instruction.20 Gymnastics became compulsory in schools in 1880, while in July 1882 the government introduced school battalions to improve the physical fitness of the nation’s future soldiers.21 Not only did the extension of military service increase public connections with the army but recreational gymnastics, rugby, rifle, and military education societies sprang up across the nation, their members seeking to reverse the physical and skills deficiencies of French soldiers in 1870.22 Even the Tour de France, which began in 1903, perpetuated revanchist memories of the war. During the period 1906–1911, the race crossed into AlsaceLorraine, allowing spectators the opportunity to voice their feelings on the annexation as they lined the route singing the Marseillaise.23 Younger family members, meanwhile, could read about the heroic cavalry charges of 1870 in children’s illustrated newspapers or re-enact the war with a more positive outcome using tin soldiers wearing the uniforms of 1870.24 Music hall performances often harked back to the war and to aspirations of revanche, with song sheets easily available to purchase from street vendors.25 There could be little escape on holiday either; tourists were encouraged to forego the pleasures of the seaside in favour of a fortifying trip to the battlefields of 1870–1871.26 For some historians, the military parade at Longchamps on 29 June 1871 symbolizes the magnitude of French delusions.27 Headed by MacMahon, the army marched for 4 hours before crowds of around 9000, foreign diplomats, around 300 deputies, and an emotional Thiers. Newspapers reported the event as a tremendously uplifting boost for the nation, nothing less than the beginning of the national recovery: Le Temps described souls re-animating, Le Figaro noted that France had re-found its army, while Le Petit Journal impulsively announced a return to good fortunes.28 Coming a mere six months since the war had ended, at a time when eastern areas remained under German occupation, the parade appears somewhat premature and inappropriate, inaugurating a cult of the army that seemed bizarrely impervious to its recent collapse. Yet such interpretations result from separating memories of the war from memories of the Paris Commune. Indeed, the parade took place only one month after the semaine sanglante; the army at Longchamps was thus not the army that had been routed by Germany, but rather the Army of Versailles that had successfully defeated the insurgency. Representing liberation for some in the capital and suppression for others, its appearance signalled the need for reconciliation between the French people and their army.29 No longer solely regarded in the light of its

32 Under the Shadow of Defeat

performance on the battlefield, the army’s role in re-establishing political and social order meant that it had become a fundamental aspect of right and moderate left visions of national reconstruction. There is thus little question that patriotic representations of the war and anti-German sentiment were widespread. Yet major reforms to almost every area of state activity stemmed precisely from an appreciation of the magnitude of the collapse. Cultural representations of the war may have signalled a preference for avoiding painful memories of the defeat, but patriotic words and images could offer only a thin veneer of national unity. At best, they revealed that seen through the prism of 1870, visions of Germany inspired greater consensus than visions of France. For after the pain and anger came not only patriotic myth-making but soul-searching and the hunt for scapegoats. Articulating his views on the nation in 1882, Ernest Renan argued that memories of wartime losses would help forge a new sense of national unity because ‘collective suffering unites more than joy’.30 In reality, with almost everyone concluding that such a rapid and total collapse implied something deeply rotten at the core of the nation, hopes of unity could be little more than wishful thinking. There can scarcely be clearer evidence of the bitterness, cynicism, and immediacy of the political fallout of the defeat than the National Assembly enquiries launched in the summer of 1871. Initiated by the monarchist majority elected to bring peace, enquiries into the actions of the Government of National Defence, the surrender of fortified towns, and the events of 18 March 1871 sought to discredit republican and Bonapartist handling of the war and to vindicate the army’s conduct. At Thiers’ insistence, the National Assembly extended its remit to include the actions of army chiefs; thinking in terms of the national revival, his aim was to ensure that they were seen to be above reproach in both the war and the suppression of the Paris Commune.31 Ostensibly established to report on the Government of National Defence, the National Assembly commission operated more like a court of law, crossexamining witnesses as if they were the accused.32 Gathering testimonies from many of the key military and civilian figures associated with the post-Sedan phase of the war, the enquiry unequivocally sought to establish the culpability of the Government of National Defence. Ascribing republicans political rather than national motivations, the commission aimed to present the army as having been undermined by civilian interference. It sought to suggest that orders had been issued by ministers rather than generals, and that the army had been blamed for the mistakes of politicians.33 If during the war power had been in the hands

Political Fallout 33

of republicans, the commission afforded their aggrieved opponents the opportunity to hold them to account. Freycinet thus came under particularly harsh scrutiny, having to face questions from General Aurelle de Paladines, with whom he had clashed on numerous occasions during the war. Having been made the scapegoat for the loss of Orl´eans on 4 December 1870, Aurelle was keen to shift the blame onto Freycinet, whom he accused of having been responsible for numerous errors and having acted as though he were commander-in-chief.34 Members of the commission asked leading questions, then interrupted, commented upon, and disagreed with witnesses; thus even when republicans were able to state their cases, their published depositions only strengthened the case for their guilt. Summing up the views of the commission, the Comte de Ress´eguier portrayed public opinion as being wholly in tune with monarchist perspectives. Fresh from their success at the polls, the monarchists sought to stress their electoral mandate while highlighting the republicans’ absence of democratic legitimacy during the war. Thus the Comte de Ress´eguier argued that the public believed that the defeat had been caused by the subordination of military to civilian authorities that Gambetta’s objectives had been to defend the Republic rather than the nation, and that political radicalism had contributed significantly to the disorganization of the war effort.35 The enquiry’s final report corroborated the monarchist interpretation, concluding that the republican Government of National Defence did not have the necessary authority to lead the country in war.36 At the outbreak of hostilities, France was weaker than Prussia in terms of formation, recruitment, and mobilization, but the commission argued that morale within the army had nonetheless been good. Things started to go wrong with the arrival of the republican Government of National Defence; the public mood degenerated with ‘demagogic ideas’, while military discipline disintegrated with the influence of ‘revolutionary party ideas’.37 The government both misread and disregarded popular opinion, the commission continued. It mistakenly believed that the country opposed peace and then arrogantly pursued its own agenda.38 ‘Public opinion [ . . . ] did not grant anyone the right to act as if the nation did not exist, and as if the country could be ignored without consultation’, the report concluded.39 The commission’s findings represented an aggressive political tactic by monarchists to lay responsibility for the scale of the defeat and the severity of the peace terms firmly on republican shoulders. Despite its manifestly partisan nature, the ten-volume report carried not inconsiderable weight as the official verdict on the war. With the elections of

34 Under the Shadow of Defeat

8 February 1871 signalling a vote for peace rather than for monarchism per se, Legitimists and Orleanists wanted to capitalize on their freedom from association with the disasters of l’ann´ee terrible. If a royalist restoration was ultimately unrealizable, it nonetheless seemed possible in the early 1870s. It therefore also made sense for Legitimists and Orleanists to use the war to expose the political bankruptcy of the Second Empire and fledgling Republic such that monarchism would emerge as the panacea. Most of the commission’s work was undertaken in November and December 1872, when the need to press home the monarchist message about the war was becoming increasingly important. If the elections of 8 February 1871 had returned a significant monarchist majority, the elections of 2 July 1871 brought an even more emphatic endorsement of republican candidates. The right were thus on the defensive, fearing republican inroads into rural monarchist strongholds and the dangers of Gambetta’s increasingly popular radicalism. The commission was also working in the context of debates on the reform of the army and the lessons that needed to be learned from the failures of 1870– 1871. It was thus clear from the earliest days of the peacetime Republic that interpretations of the war would lie at the heart of political debate and discourse. Using their domination of the government and National Assembly, monarchists capitalized on their position to use a parliamentary enquiry and the trial of Bazaine to manipulate assessments of l’ann´ee terrible for their own political advantage. In the hunt for scapegoats for the defeat, there could be no easier solution than to load responsibility on the shoulders of Marshal Bazaine. Commander of the Army of the Rhine, Bazaine allowed himself to become encircled in Metz from 20 August until 27 October during which time he become involved in plots to overturn the republican government and negotiations with the enemy, only to capitulate without a fight, surrendering 137,000 men. Aside from taking the Army of the Rhine out of combat, Bazaine’s actions freed up German forces and enabled them to place greater pressure on besieged Paris and the Army of the Loire. Whether his conduct constituted treason has, however, remained a subject of debate ever since. The most recent assessments have concluded that Bazaine was guilty of incompetence but was not a traitor. Michael Howard argues that Bazaine erred in two respects: he failed to take advantage of his army’s strength and support from MacMahon in August 1870, and he failed to maintain a resistance that would have distracted enemy resources from the siege of Paris.40 Generals Edmond Ruby and Jean Regnault seek a partial rehabilitation, maintaining that Bazaine was not guilty of betrayal.41 While Geffrey Wawro does not directly address the

Political Fallout 35

issue, he reasons that the question was primarily one of a squandered military asset.42 The question of treason revolves around whether Bazaine’s antirepublican machinations led him to place politics above the nation and to forget his duties as a soldier and commander. Gambetta was the first to publicly brand Bazaine a traitor in a controversial but calculated proclamation designed to rescue public morale and transform humiliation into indignation.43 He sought to ensure that there could be no question of the political implications of Bazaine’s actions; clearing the army of any responsibility, he declared that the defeats of Sedan and Metz were ‘sinister epilogues to the military coup of December 1852’.44 Such tactics were designed to discredit the Second Empire by suggesting that it was illegitimate and inherently injurious to the nation. Because republicans regarded the war in terms of the nation in arms and the Government of National Defence as the only genuine defender of French interests, they reasoned that action designed to undermine the post4 September war effort constituted treason. For monarchists, however, the question was more complex. As the parliamentary enquiry made clear, monarchists did not regard the Government of National Defence as a legitimate authority, claiming that it lacked a democratic mandate to lead the country. If Bazaine argued that he was motivated by his rejection of the legality of the republican regime, monarchists might attack his actions, but they could scarcely criticize his reasons. For them, the issue could therefore only revolve around establishing a consistency in Bazaine’s dereliction of military duty regardless of the political regime. In 1871 the National Assembly established an enquiry into the surrender of around 20 fortified towns headed by Marshal Baraguay d’Hilliers. Among those singled out for criticism were Lieutenant-Colonel Massaroli, who commanded the defence of Longwy, and Captain Leroy, who was responsible for Marsal.45 Early in 1872, the commission charged with investigating Bazaine headed by General S´er´e de Rivi`eres unveiled its findings, concluding that he was indeed guilty of treason. Yet Bazaine refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing and insisted on being tried by court martial instead. Initially, Thiers was reluctant to proceed, but reflecting upon the matter in terms of the national revival, he conceded that a trial might have its political uses, especially if it was ‘designed to vindicate a noble army’.46 By the time the trial had begun, however, Thiers had been replaced by MacMahon. Inaugurating a period of ‘moral order’, MacMahon’s presidency may have rested on opposition to encroaching republicanism but Bazaine’s court martial still served political purposes. As a former soldier, MacMahon was keen to re-establish

36 Under the Shadow of Defeat

the honour of the army; as a victim of Bazaine’s inaction and deception in August 1870, he was undoubtedly also keen to re-establish his own war record. The report by General S´er´e de Rivi`eres on which the trial was based confirmed many of the findings of the parliamentary commission into the actions of the Government of National Defence. It found that despite the initial setbacks caused by slow mobilization, morale within the army had been good, and the troops placed under the command of Bazaine had been capable of achieving victory. By mid-August Bazaine had already abandoned offensive tactics, and he misled MacMahon and Napoleon III about his position and preparedness to move from his positions. The commission therefore concluded that he did not fulfil his duties towards the Second Empire; the false intelligence he imparted resulted in the disaster of Sedan, and thus ‘the marshal assumed a large part of the responsibility for the catastrophe’.47 A critical point in establishing whether Bazaine had committed treason was whether he had accepted the establishment of a new government following the revolution of 4 September 1870. The commission reported that he had, and that upon receiving the news, he had made appropriate announcements to his men and had awaited new orders.48 When a fake envoy arrived at Metz claiming to represent Empress Eugenie, however, Bazaine had unhesitatingly entered into negotiations with him, despite previously having recognized the Government of National Defence, and despite knowing about the envoy’s links with the German enemy. The report therefore declared that he had been guilty of engaging in ‘political intrigue, with the intention of overturning the new government’.49 He had made no attempt to break out of Metz, the commission reported, he had offered to surrender even though that would have freed up enemy forces, and he had disregarded the fact that overthrowing the government would have led to civil war.50 Among all the disasters suffered by France, that at Metz was the greatest, the commission claimed, for it ended all hopes of victory; the continuation of the war thereafter was merely for the sake of restoring national honour.51 The public trial lasted from 25 September to 10 December 1873, involving 365 witnesses and a 3-day long speech for the prosecution. It attracted considerable public attention, with proceedings being reproduced in the press. The seniority of the accused caused difficulties in the constitution of the court martial, resulting in a primarily Orleanist set of judges headed by the younger son of Louis-Philippe, the Duc d’Aumale. While the greatest political threat to the right may at this stage have come from republicanism, especially after the death of Napoleon III in

Political Fallout 37

January 1873, the trial bore all the hallmarks of monarchism judging Bonapartism.52 Over the course of the proceedings, Bazaine maintained his loyalty towards the Second Empire and indeed chose not to mount a vigorous self-defence in order to protect the legacy of Napoleon III from further political attacks. The court martial returned a guilty verdict and duly condemned him to death but it accompanied the sentence with a plea for clemency, the Duc d’Aumale citing Bazaine’s long and heroic service prior to 1870.53 Perhaps influenced by public opinion or his own views on the matter, MacMahon resolved not to grant Bazaine the full pardon requested by the jury, deciding instead to commute the death sentence to 20 years imprisonment.54 Despite the emphatic nature of the guilty verdict and the case built up against Bazaine, the calls for pardon that accompanied his sentencing add fuel to suggestions that the purpose of the trial was to create a symbolic scapegoat. Indeed, General du Barail, War Minister at the time of the court martial, acknowledged that France needed an ‘expiatory victim who would take the weight of all the misfortunes and who would allow our pride to load everything onto him’.55 Moltke went further, arguing that it represented a kind of an arrogant self-delusion caused by the ‘national vanity of the French, which demanded a ‘‘traitor’’ to account for the defeat’.56 If the scapegoating of Bazaine was really part of a strategy to replace images of disaster with myths of French grandeur, then it might have been expected that the nation would have been able to move forward with little need for reform. In reality, however, all shades of opinion gained political advantage from undertaking extensive postmortems into the defeat. To have loaded all responsibility for the defeat onto the shoulders of Bazaine would have been to suggest that there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the shape of the nation. It might therefore be reasoned that the scapegoating of Bazaine functioned on a much narrower level. The question that must therefore be raised is whether Bazaine was used to shoulder the blame that would otherwise have been placed upon the Bonapartist regime. Indeed, as Robert Brown observes, the case against Bazaine was construed in such a manner as to ascribe him a greater share of responsibility for Sedan than either of the army’s commanders, Marshal MacMahon or General Wimpffen. Ostensibly because he was wounded on the morning of the battle, MacMahon was excluded from the enquiry; however, his success at the head of the Army of Versailles had undoubtedly contributed towards re-establishing his reputation. Wimpffen, meanwhile, escaped with only minor criticisms. If Napoleon III was ultimately responsible for the surrender of 1 September

38 Under the Shadow of Defeat

1870, his subsequent exile was deemed sufficient reason to necessitate no further judicial action.57 Thus only Bazaine was held to account for the twin disasters of Sedan and Metz. The failure to try Napoleon III in absentia suggests that while there were calls for the commission to investigate Bazaine’s political machinations, the aim was not to pass judgement on the Second Empire. It was rather that Bazaine’s personal political deviations had to be cast as the cause of his military duplicity so that the rest of the army high command, many of whom were also Bonapartists, could be exonerated from responsibility for the collapse. Throughout the course of the war there were accusations that the nation’s soldiers had been betrayed by their commanders and that the defeat owed a good deal to their incompetence and inflexibility. In the aftermath of the Paris Commune, however, such claims became threatening to moderate republican and monarchist notions of the new role of the army as guarantor of the political and social order. If Bazaine were made to shoulder the responsibility of the defeat, the remainder of the high command could emerge untainted as a force for national revival. It was, however, a delicate line to tread. Those further to the left had an interest in casting a wide net of responsibility to catch as many of those associated with the Second Empire as possible. Despite efforts to paint an image of personal ambition, the strategy depended upon the public distinguishing between Bazaine and other commanders. The legitimist newspaper L’Univers did not believe that it would work, arguing that the conviction would create an image in the public mind that all French generals had conspired to secure the defeat of the Government of National Defence.58 Thus monarchists risked falling prey to the public backlash against Bazaine and being tarred with the same brush as Bonapartists by virtue of their opposition to the Republic. There was also a danger that the trial and conviction might open the floodgates to criticisms of other generals such as Trochu, whom the left also charged with immobilism and defeatism. In the context of the post-Commune political climate, however, this was a strategy the right and moderate left were willing to risk. According to the calculations of Franc¸ois B´edarida, one-third of all generals in the mid-1870s held Bonapartist sympathies; if the army were to occupy a central position in the national revival, the reputation of these men would have to be cleared from any associations with the failures of the Second Empire.59 Loading responsibility onto the already publicly vilified Bazaine must have seemed like the easiest and most appealing solution. Taken together, the Bazaine trial and the parliamentary enquiry into the actions of the Government of National Defence concluded that the

Political Fallout 39

army’s performance and morale had been significantly undermined by the actions of Bazaine and by the influences of revolutionary political ideas. Yet the political motives behind such findings were evident, and did not constitute anything like a definitive explanation for the defeat. Indeed, even while the two parliamentary enquiries were investigating the Government of National Defence and the capitulation of fortified towns, a third commission was engaged in assessing the reforms necessary to remedy the army’s wartime failings. With legislation covering recruitment, length of service, and structure, it was clear that if the army was deemed to have performed to the best of its abilities during the conflict, its failure was not considered to have been due solely to the malign influences of Bazaine and republican politicians. Notwithstanding affirmations of a glorious French defeat, there emerged a widespread belief that any future national revival would depend upon drawing lessons from Prussian methods. Some observers such as Fustel de Coulanges went so far as to argue that to defeat Germany, it would be necessary to imitate it.60 Many believed that the key to Prussian success lay in its schools, universities, and military establishments. Because the army had successfully defeated the Commune and was now regarded by conservatives and moderate republicans as crucial to the maintenance of political and social order, some deputies were reluctant to concede that it required fundamental reform; many did, however, attribute the German victory to its universal conscription, suggesting that France should adopt a similar model.61 At the outbreak of war, Germany had been able to mobilize over 1 million men, whereas France had scarcely been able to muster 400,000. While French troops were more experienced, with around half having served between 7 and 21 years by 1870, this was to prove no match for the sheer force of German numbers.62 The main opposition to the adoption of the Prussian system came from Thiers, however, who argued that regional recruitment and organization would prove detrimental to republican and national sentiment, while a large army would threaten political stability.63 With members of the National Assembly commission calling for two or three years’ military service, and Thiers demanding seven or eight, five was adopted as a compromise in 1872. But Thiers’ resignation from the presidency enabled MacMahon to prevail over the law of 24 July 1873, resulting in the introduction of a series of measures modelled on the Prussian system.64 The Prussian model was just one way in which memories of 1870– 1871 influenced the development of the army. Indeed, after the war, many other European nations undertook reforms to their armies in the

40 Under the Shadow of Defeat

hope of replicating Prussian success. Debate also revolved around the validity of the concept of the nation in arms. If in republican eyes, the inflexibility, errors, and defeatism of elements of the regular army had been targets for criticism, the experiences of the Commune swung the condemnation in the opposite direction. As Gerd Krumeich observes, even Gambetta and Freycinet conceded that the wartime experiment had failed, abandoning their earlier ideas in favour of a liberal-conservative approach to army structure.65 Indeed, in his war memoirs, Freycinet argued that only a reduction in the length of service to two years, a reinforcement of discipline, and improved instruction would remedy the army’s failings of 1870–1871.66 Yet whereas conservatives and moderate republicans saw military service as a means of strengthening social order against revolutionary threats, many on the left maintained that conscription should serve to create a politically conscious population. Thus Freycinet thought in terms of how military training could create mature citizens, while Denfert-Rochereau argued for civic education to develop a sense of loyalty to the nation rather than to the survival of the political regime as had been the case in 1870, 1814, and 1815.67 In this sense, if the spontaneous e´ lan of the masses had proven to be an inadequate and even dangerous response to the discipline, organization, and efficiency of German armies, the concept of the nation in arms retained elements of credibility when it came to the long-term consolidation of the Republic. The steady expansion of conscription in the decades after the defeat has led Richard Challener to conclude that by 1914 France had effectively become a nation in arms. The legislation of 1872 provided for 500,000 men in service in peacetime; by 1900 reforms increased the numbers to 600,000, while by 1913 the figure had reached over 800,000. If war were to break out, the 1872 reforms provided for 1,250,000 men under arms, while by 1914, there were a total of 3,500,000.68 Such significant increases were due in part to steady progress in the left’s prized goal of the abolition of exemptions which was finally achieved in 1905. Yet there was also widespread recognition that German success owed much to Clauswitzian and Napoleonic ideas of mass warfare. Many military theorists and officers maintained that France needed to follow the German example because in future, war would be total.69 The experiences of the Commune and the willingness of the army to embrace new thinking served effectively to insulate officers from republicanizing assaults until the Dreyfus Affair. The reforms of 1889 reduced the length of service to three years, but in 1905 it was cut to two years. Those on the political left had long held that professional armies were inherently antithetical

Political Fallout 41

to democracy and republicanism; the Dreyfus Affair fuelled their claims and gave them the opportunity to act. Thus the law of 1905 sought substantially to reduce the role of France’s professional army and to substitute it with a mass, trained reservist force. This army of reservists would approximate a nation in arms as soldiers would be regarded as citizens, their main task being to defend the nation rather than to wage wars of conquest.70 It took the threats posed by an increased German army and international tensions to reverse earlier reliance on reservists in favour of raising military service to three years once again in 1913.

Republicans and Catholics The events of l’ann´ee terrible revived old antagonisms between the Catholic Church and the Republic. With the defeat being diagnosed by the Church as God’s punishment for France’s moral decline and its betrayal of the Pope, and interpreted by republicans in terms of the absence of political identification with the nation, the period after 1870 has sometimes been characterized along the lines of a reinvigorated war of two Frances. The notion that a Catholic, monarchist, socially hierarchical vision of France that looked back to the Ancien R´egime stood diametrically opposed to a revolutionary, republican, and even anti-clerical concept of the nation was a staple of political discourse in the 1870s and a source of historiographical debate thereafter. With the defeat, the Paris Commune, and the civil war, emotions ran high, and both sides sought to magnify their differences. Indeed, as early as August 1870, the ultramontane writer Louis Veuillot reflected upon the war as a struggle against an internal rather than an external enemy, arguing that ‘if there is a France of Voltaire, there is a France of Christ which will find itself and will win’.71 The cessation of hostilities did little to heal the divisions and in 1872 the republican Charles Renouvier observed that, if anything, the gulf between the two Frances was increasing, such that they had almost nothing in common.72 Yet the source of the debate lay much deeper than mere disagreements over l’ann´ee terrible; at stake was nothing less than the future shape of the nation. The Catholic Church articulated a very clear theological explanation for the recent misfortunes; it defined republican experiments as a betrayal of the nation’s divinely ordained mission as eldest daughter of the Church and an assault on the very heart of French national identity. Whereas republicans traced their vision of the nation back to the Revolution of 1789, Catholics traced theirs back to the fifth century. Many Catholics believed that the baptism of Clovis and thus also of

42 Under the Shadow of Defeat

the Franc kingdom at Reims represented the foundation of the French nation. Thus not only was Catholicism the religion of the sovereign for over 1300 years, but it was a defining element in the creation of the nation as well.73 It was not simply longevity that tied the Church and French nation together, however. There was a widely held view that like Israel, France had been divinely selected to perform God’s will and that any deviation from this vocation would incur due punishment. Thus in the eyes of the Catholic Church, cataclysmic events such as wars and revolutions were not the products of shifting political and social forces but God’s punishment for national infidelity.74 The Catholic Church was further emboldened in its condemnation of the excesses of French republicanism by a Europe-wide revival in fortunes. The new Catholicism that emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century was characterized by its confident assertions of piety and by its shifting focus of religious practice. Driven from below by the popular beliefs of the grassroots, the Church came to embrace mass pilgrimage, the cult of local saints, and the belief in miracles and apparitions.75 Many priests became concerned about the spontaneous and emotive nature of the new popular piety, fearing a challenge to clerical authority. Yet such practices and beliefs, combined with modern infrastructures, enabled the Church to mobilize unprecedented numbers of followers and to rival the capacities of secular democratic organizations. The Church further strengthened its position within the new Catholicism with a reassertion of Papal authority that culminated in the Syllabus of Errors of 1864 and the proclamation of the doctrine of Papal Infallibility in 1870. Ultramontane Catholicism was particularly despised by republicans, and the fact that Catholic school students volunteered to join the Papal Zouaves during the Italian Wars fuelled claims that Catholicism did not serve the interests of the French nation.76 But the Church was now on the offensive, armed with a radicalized agenda and feeling emboldened by its popular revival. If republican claims over the character of the nation were rooted in much more recent French history, they nonetheless derived strength from highlighting the suddenness of the revolutionary rupture with the Church. In shifting at least the theoretical bases of political authority from notions of a divinely ordained monarchy towards the sovereignty of the people, republicans laid claim to a more deeply rooted concept of the nation. Having been called upon to defend the revolution in the call to arms of 1792, the French people were no longer subjects but citizens who had earned themselves a stake in the French nation. And whereas Catholics saw shared faith as a unifying element in French national

Political Fallout 43

identity, anti-clerical republicans used the nation to develop a set of transcendent beliefs in opposition to those offered by the Church.77 The experiences and memories of l’ann´ee terrible exacerbated the divisions, driving a wedge between the two sides. Many Catholics interpreted the withdrawal of French troops from Rome as a betrayal of the Pope and the reason for God’s abandonment of France. They saw the disasters that followed as a reminder of the intertwining destinies of France and Rome.78 Despite dispatching two French regiments to assist Pius IX’s retention of the Papal States in 1849, France under Napoleon III had had an ambiguous and inconsistent policy towards Rome. In 1859 he sent French troops to support the Piedmontese army in the war against Austria, aiding Prime Minister Cavour’s wider ambitions for Italian unification that included annexation of the Papal States. At the same time, needing to retain the support of French Catholics, Napoleon III assured the Pope that he would not allow Rome to fall to the nationalists. After the fall of the Second Empire, however, the new Republic withdrew the French garrison, allowing Italian forces finally to claim the Papal States for a united Italy, while Pius IX declared himself a prisoner in the Vatican. As early as 14 August 1870, Veuillot noted in his diary that Prussia had inflicted defeat not on the battlefields of Wissembourg or Reichshoffen but rather at Rome, for that was where the nation would have to pay for all the sins it had committed since the Revolution of 1789.79 The defeat, the Paris Commune, and the religious revival combined to produce an outpouring of atonement in the 1870s. Even as the war was being waged, the Catholic Church was unequivocal in moralizing and theologizing over the disaster. Preaching in Nantes on 4 September 1870, Bishop Fournier sought not to console but to convince the nation of its guilt.80 It was a message repeated by many clergymen at every available opportunity. At a funeral service for the fallen in 1872, Abbot Besson chose not to comfort but to remind widows, families, and veterans that that God had sought to punish the nation, ‘exercising His powers of just vengeance [ . . . ] through terrible disasters’.81 The moralizing tone of post-war Catholic discourse was a measure of the Ultramontane victory over more liberal Gallican elements of the Church. The proclamation of a Republic on 4 September 1870 had witnessed efforts by the leading Gallican Archbishop Darboy to seek closer relations with the Government of National Defence. Having been initially supportive of the war effort, however, the Church gradually lost belief in the possibility of French victory and by December 1870 many had turned their backs on the military campaign to wish for peace and a monarchist restoration instead. For the Assumptionist Order of P`ere Emmanuel d’Alzon,

44 Under the Shadow of Defeat

after years of decadence and secularism, only an act of penance at Lourdes could begin to repair the damage. Making a defiant gesture against republicanism, pilgrimages to Lourdes gathered thousands together in Marian devotion at once to reaffirm their loyalty towards the Pope and to express their hopes for a Bourbon restoration.82 The quest for atonement also saw a revival of the cult of the Sacred Heart that offered a moral and political alternative to the disasters of l’ann´ee terrible. Viewing the crisis as punishment for the Revolution of 1789, the excesses of the Second Empire, and France’s abandonment of the Pope in 1870, the Bishop Fournier of Nantes led dioceses throughout the country in devoting themselves to the cult of the Sacred Heart, vowing to build churches if God spared them from invasion. Following the defeat and the Communes of Paris and Lyon, however, the promised churches became at once votive offerings of contrition and symbolic bulwarks against anti-clericalism.83 The cult of the Sacred Heart was also closely associated with counter-revolutionary politics, having famously served as an emblem of the Royal Army of Vend´ee, and enjoying the support of the Comte de Chambord after 1870. Thus as Abbot Besson observed, in the eyes of the Church, 1870–1871 was not the ‘terrible year’ but the ‘year of expiation and grace’.84

Defeat, decadence, and decline It was not simply the disasters of l’ann´ee terrible but the way the nation responded to them that provoked scrutiny by French intellectuals and writers. While France had suffered defeats before, that of 1870–1871 seemed greater in magnitude and significance because unlike earlier in the century, the army had collapsed under the weight of only one military power. The indifference of elements of the population towards the war effort, the indiscipline of many soldiers, the defeatism of some generals, the political disunity in the face of the enemy, and of course the Commune and civil war that followed, led many intellectuals to observe that the causes of the defeat lay much deeper than mere illpreparation for conflict. The waning popularity of the Second Empire and its spectacular implosion at Sedan made it an easy target, yet one which failed to satisfy deeper analysis. While politicians and clergymen were quick to offer their thoughts on the nation’s ills, they were also faced with the realities of reconstruction, the demands of the ballot box, and the impact of the Commune. With the right and moderate left keen to re-establish order, the 1870s saw self-conscious efforts to insist

Political Fallout 45

upon national greatness precisely because it appeared to have been so resolutely shattered. Many writers and intellectuals interpreted such strategies as symptomatic of the national decay. As early as 1855 Arthur de Gobineau had concluded that the French ‘race’ was in decline in his Essai sur l’in´egalit´e des races humaines, although his writings went largely unnoticed until the war. On witnessing the collapse first-hand after deserting his diplomatic posting in Rio de Janeiro, Gobineau felt vindicated. He argued that while indiscipline had been widespread within the army and rural and urban populations had been little inclined to support the resistance, the nation was too weak to admit it. Thus, he reasoned, the French people turned to easier explanations of betrayal by their leaders and the dishonest and brutal character of the German enemy.85 The liberal Protestant writer Comte Ag´enor de Gasparin analysed the long- and short-term implications of the defeat in La France. Nos fautes, nos perils, notre avenir, which was published shortly before his death in 1871. Like Gobineau, he attacked France’s tendency to reassure itself of its own superiority and its consequent inability to concede or explain defeat other than by attributing it to treachery, arguing that looking forward to future triumphs and revenge was merely another manifestation of avoidance.86 Such characteristics were peculiarly French, Gasparin maintained, but at the same time, he suggested that the delusion was self-conscious, for he did not believe that one intelligent observer could consider that the defeat was due to mistakes, accidents, and the betrayal of a handful of individuals such as Bazaine.87 For Renan, one of France’s leading intellectuals and historians whose scientistic explorations of Christianity had provoked uproar among Catholics and Protestants in the 1850s and 1860s, the trend towards blaming previous regimes, especially the Second Empire, represented merely facile evasion of the reality.88 He believed that the first step towards recovery was contrition, repentance for past transgressions, and then remedying past faults.89 The historian and philosopher Hippolyte Taine was so affected by the experiences of l’ann´ee terrible that he turned his attention to France’s history and joined calls for the causes of the collapse to be fully exposed, arguing that ‘our duty to everyone will be to write articles, hold conferences [ . . . ] to uncover and publicly confess our mistakes, to show in our faults the causes of our reverses’.90 Even if we concede that there were important political expediencies for giving the war a patriotic gloss, there remain questions as to whether the post-1871 insistence upon French greatness betokened a deeper inability to deal with the implications of defeat. Indeed, as Robert Gildea observes,

46 Under the Shadow of Defeat

a string of military collapses and invasions over the past 200 years may have produced an insistence upon French greatness because the reality was too painful to deal with. To such ends, two of the strategies that were employed involved burying defeats in a wider narrative of national glory and placing responsibility upon previous regimes.91 Yet if historians succeeded in constructing a convincing case of long-term continuity in Franco-German rivalry and aberration in French grandeur, their efforts were nonetheless deliberate, harking back to notions that the intellectual and cultural elite had a patriotic duty to direct their efforts towards the national recovery.92 Those writers, theorists, and historians who considered their roles in different terms, however, constructed a narrative of national decay and degeneration. The totality of the new kind of warfare, the calls for another lev´ee en masse, and the influences of Social Darwinist thinking contributed towards heightening a sense of the war as test of the strength of the nation. Defeat thus came to be interpreted as a sign of political and social malaise, and since France had been militarily supreme earlier in the century, the collapse of 1870–1871 was viewed by many in terms of national decline. In Les origines de la France contemporaine, Taine undertook to explain the events of l’ann´ee terrible with reference to the broad sweep of French history, arguing that after every age of greatness came a period of decline: the Ancien R´egime was followed by 1789, the Revolution by 18 Brumaire, the First Empire by Waterloo, and the fledgling Republic by the events of 1871.93 In his search for the roots of French decline, Renan concluded that everything had started to go wrong with the execution of the king.94 Writing in the heat of the crisis, his idealistic images of Germany shattered, and without a full understanding of the relationship between the Commune and the more moderate republicanism of Gambetta, Renan hastily concluded that the new Republic would meet the same end as its predecessors.95 Arguing that the removal of Germanic influences during the Middle Ages had resulted in pacifism, he believed that French military spirit had been weakened as the nation turned its attention to social problems, the acquisition of wealth, and industrial progress.96 Gobineau concurred that the defeat was a manifestation of decline, but argued that it was caused by a national vanity that emerged with the indulgence of Louis XIV and grew with European admiration for all things French.97 Like Renan, Gobineau blamed bourgeois materialism and the weak influence of the nobility, but above all, he condemned what he described as the decadent, unchecked bureaucracy that lay at the heart of the French state.98 For Gasparin, meanwhile, recent events on the battlefield were a mere distraction. In reality, he argued, France

Political Fallout 47

had lost its position as a European power through long-term intellectual and moral decline.99 While revanche was a popular idea among the public in the aftermath of the war, many writers feared that it would pull France away from necessary reform. Indeed, as Gasparin argued, victory against Germany would extinguish the mobilizing force of national humiliation and contrition, serving to perpetuate delusional beliefs that defeat was not a measure of long-term problems. Thus true revenge would come not on the battlefield but through reorganization and revival.100 While those arguing for fundamental reform tended to be critics or opponents of the new Republic, many writers including Edgar Quinet, Jules Michelet, Hugo, Renouvier, Taine, and Renan blamed Catholicism for the disasters of l’ann´ee terrible.101 In part ascribing the German victory to Protestantism while also assailing the Catholic Church for weakening national sentiment, the likes of Quinet, a veteran of the Second Republic and renowned liberal anti-clerical historian, set out to reclaim interpretations of 1870–1871 from the dominance of Catholic moralizing discourse.102 Many of the fundamental tenets of republicanism such as centralization and universal suffrage were deemed by Catholics to have been responsible for the decline, while individualism was credited with producing excessive materialism and national weakness.103 If l’ann´ee terrible reinforced the republican beliefs of George Sand, Quinet, and Hugo, it had a very different effect upon many other writers.104 The defeat caused many to question the values of revolutionary universalism; while other European powers had built up their strength, France appeared to have fallen behind and become weakened. With Renan calling for an inward-looking focus upon the French nation and Taine arguing that republican universalism was antithetical to the interests of the nation, the seeds for a new kind of nationalism were sown.105 In the period after the defeat of 1870–1871, French political culture became saturated with introspection and fears of diminished national standing; yet the connection between these reactions and the transformation of nationalism is complex and contested. Indeed, Zeev Sternhell argues that the shape of fin-de-si`ecle nationalism was not determined by responses to the defeat; it was rather that 1870–1871 provided the conditions for pre-existing tendencies to emerge and flourish. While La r´eforme intellectuelle et morale may have recorded Renan’s thoughts on the causes of the collapse, Sternhell observes that his views on the fundamental problems facing France had scarcely changed from those he had expressed in Revue des deux mondes in 1869.106 Sternhell casts doubt upon assumptions that Barr`es’ nationalism resulted from his childhood

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memories of the war in Lorraine, citing his early distaste for the insularity of the Ligue des Patriotes as evidence that it developed from domestic political developments beginning with the Boulanger affair.107 Robert Soucy also queries the impact the defeat had upon Barr`es’ subsequent political development, arguing that it took many years for his antiGermanism and racism to emerge.108 Thus at the heart of debates over the changing face of late nineteenth-century nationalism lies a problematic relationship between responses to the defeat and the political developments of the 1880s and 1890s. In Raoul Girardet’s estimation, it was Ferry’s policy of colonial expansion in the early 1880s that produced a clash between inward-looking and expansionist nationalism.109 More broadly, however, the failure to recover Alsace-Lorraine, disappointment over the lack of social reform, and financial and corruption scandals at the heart of government led to growing dissatisfaction with the moderate Republic in the 1880s and 1890s. Through the composite elements of the movement allying itself to Boulanger, critiques of the Opportunist government widened into a rejection of aspects of republicanism that were deemed incompatible with the interests of the nation. Yet if Boulangism facilitated the conclusion that domestic political and constitutional reforms were a prerequisite for the reassertion of French grandeur in foreign policy, the transformation in nationalist thinking drew upon much deeper ideological tensions within republicanism. Alongside the universalism that lay at the heart of republican thinking came a sense of French superiority as the nation sought to spread revolutionary ideals and defend itself from ‘inferior’ external influences.110 The Revolutionary Wars tempered universalism with calls for the defence of the nation against external enemies. Because the nation was founded upon concepts of the sovereignty of the people in opposition to notions of monarchical authority, and because foreign armies had sought the restoration of the throne and the suppression of the new regime, the defence of the nation became equated with the defence of the revolution. With the rise of the International in the 1860s and its subsequent connections with the Commune, however, universalism came to be associated with internationalism and theories of working class fraternity. While the Paris Commune may have begun as a patriotic expression of opposition to the armistice, the ensuing civil war changed the parameters of the debate. Its brutal divisiveness, aggravating pre-existing cleavages in the social and political fabric, heightened the sense of national weakness at a time when enemy forces were still on French territory. As the reconstituted regular army was pitted against insurgent forces, it seemed to assume a role of

Political Fallout 49

re-establishing honour at a time of extreme crisis. Blanquist portrayal of the Commune’s meaning and significance helped further to ensure that moderate republicans and the right interpreted it not in terms of a continuation of the national defence but in terms of the pursuit of international social revolution. In consequence, if prior to 1871 concepts of popular sovereignty had been a force for national unity, in the period thereafter, such elements of far-left republicanism came to appear more like a force for division. Insofar as the experiences of l’ann´ee terrible shaped the ideological development of nationalism, it was through the combination of the humiliation of defeat, the implications of socialist internationalism, and the divisions of civil war. The rejection of universalism was, of course, also influenced by the meeting of the Second International in 1889 which shifted elements of the left still further away from their traditional focus on the nation and consolidated the right’s move to defend its cause instead. The Boulangist movement involved the right in mass politics for the first time and engaged petit bourgeois former radical republicans, but through Boulanger nationalism emerged as a powerful force precisely because growing disillusionment with the moderate Republic fed upon wider fears of national decline. If revenge had never been a realistic option, its rejection in favour of colonial expansion seemed like a symbol of enduring French weakness in the face of the enemy. Boulanger’s popular stand against Germany as War Minister during the Schnaebel´e incident of 1887 served to heighten such beliefs. On 21 April 1887, the police superintendent for the railway station in the frontier town of Pagny-sur-Moselle, Guillaume Schnaebel´e, was arrested for unlawful incursion into German territory and espionage after responding to an invitation to cross the border from one of his German counterparts. The French press reacted furiously, claiming Schnaebel´e was a victim of a German trap. To the alarm of almost all in government, Boulanger proposed to issue Germany an ultimatum for Schnaebel´e’s release. In view of the potentially grave diplomatic consequences of such bellicose pronouncements, Boulanger was swiftly dismissed from office. The key to the matter was that the defeat of 1870–1871 had made concepts of decline seem credible. Pseudo-scientific notions of racial degeneration that were prevalent across Europe appeared to provide explanations for the scale of the French collapse and added fuel to fears of harmful external influences.111 A falling birth rate further heightened the sense of waning physical energy and the impossibility of defeating a growing German population in any future conflict. Social change, especially for women, alcoholism, and drug abuse prompted cries of moral

50 Under the Shadow of Defeat

decay, while developments in art, music, literature, and theatre seemed to push old boundaries in the direction of ‘decadence’.112 If Europe as a whole approached the fin de si`ecle in a spirit of unease, the sense was considerably more acute in France. For amongst the wider crises, there remained the fact that l’ann´ee terrible had raised questions about the very heart of French political culture, most notably the legitimacy and legacy of the fundamental tenets of the Revolution of 1789. While Ferry’s government pursued a policy of stable diplomatic relations with Germany, Paul D´eroul`ede began to establish himself as a troublesome political force. Perhaps more than any other single figure, D´eroul`ede personified the changing face of nationalism in the period after 1870. At the same time, however, he was equally strongly associated with a resolute insistence on upholding memories of the defeat as a force for revanche and domestic reform. Out of anger at Ferry’s decision to scrap the fledgling Commission de l’´education militaire which D´eroul`ede had hoped would nurture revanchism, the Ligue des Patriotes was born as an inherently anti-Opportunist extra-parliamentary organization. Following rapprochement with Germany over affairs in Egypt in 1884, D´eroul`ede joined monarchists and radicals in denouncing Opportunist foreign policy as a betrayal of Alsace-Lorraine. Yet the real transformation in the Ligue’s leading spokesman involved a more profound reassessment of the tenets of republicanism. According to D´eroul`ede, the transformation occurred as a moment of revelation at the commemorations for the battle of Buzenval in 1886. The ceremony was disrupted by the arrival of freethinkers brandishing red flags and shouting Communard slogans. Had D´eroul`ede not vociferously objected to their implicit attempt to appropriate patriotism in the name of the Commune, he would, he believed, have implied acquiescence in a kind of nationalism wholly at odds with his own. Insofar as a cohesive ideology can be ascribed to the Commune, its visions of social reform and internationalism pitted it against two of the symbols most dear to D´eroul`ede’s own concept of the French nation: the flag and the army.113 Reflecting upon the episode at Buzenval in 1902, D´eroul`ede recalled how he ‘understood for the first time the state of anarchy into which we had fallen; and I declared for the first time that before liberating Alsace and Lorraine, we would have to liberate France’.114 Therein lies D´eroul`ede’s significance for the evolution of French nationalism. The defeat and the failure of the government to launch a war of revenge led D´eroul`ede to cast doubt upon the legitimacy of revolutionary universalism and to blame it for the national decline.115 As Sternhell observes, D´eroul`ede’s rejection of the bourgeois parliamentary Republic for having failed to restore French greatness

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saw him develop a new kind of nationalism that was anti-liberal and anti-parliamentary in character.116 If some of the intellectuals who had lived through l’ann´ee terrible turned their focus inwards towards the causes of the disasters, their reactions were neither uniform nor replicated across the generations. Born in 1862, Maurice Barr`es’ understanding of the political implications of 1870–1871 only developed in the period thereafter. Unlike D´eroul`ede who witnessed first-hand the ravages of the Commune, Barr`es’ early political thinking was not marked by fear of far-left internationalism. Indeed, his approach was initially socialist in inspiration, viewing social reform as the key to unity and upholding concepts of universalism as a source of national strength.117 Sternhell therefore concludes that Barr`es’ nationalism was more influenced by subsequent political developments than by l’ann´ee terrible as it was only at the turn of the century that the impact of 1870–1871 hit him with full force.118 Yet it should also be recognized that Barr`es belonged to a generation who had never known French greatness; he was thus not afflicted with the same sense of decline as many of his older contemporaries and did not harbour the same inherent fear of foreign influences.119 It took the experiences of Boulangism, the rise of socialist internationalism, and the economic crises of the 1880s and 1890s to compel Barr`es to reject the parliamentary system as inherently damaging to national unity and to oppose foreign economic competition and international finance as harmful to French workers. Reflecting upon the significance of the Dreyfus Affair, Barr`es observed that it was merely a sign of the deeper ills facing the nation.120 Whereas in the past, France had drawn strength from its unity, Barr`es concluded that in more recent decades it had become weakened by internal divisions.121 At the heart of the problem, Barr`es believed, lay the fact that earlier generations of intellectuals and politicians had achieved so little since 1871 as indeed only Taine and Renan had directed their attention towards ‘repairing France by understanding the causes of its decadence’.122 Like others of his generation, Barr`es was educated by teachers who had been profoundly affected by l’ann´ee terrible; if he was slightly too old to have read the patriotic school textbooks or joined school battalions, he had nonetheless grown up surrounded by myths of a glorious defeat and popular revanchism. Even where soul-searching had produced reform, political rivalries and residual fears of Communard extremism had left many fundamental problems unresolved. As a native of Lorraine, Barr`es was also acutely aware that inertia had failed to recover the lost provinces. The subsequent evolution of his political thinking saw him turn inwards to develop concepts of the French nation that were not only

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exclusive in character but were hostile towards external forces. Considering French identity to be rooted in the soil and the dead, he reasoned that there could be no universal truths and no concessions to internationalism. Thus through the political developments of the 1880s and 1890s, Barr`es arrived at conclusions that shared many similarities with those derived by intellectuals a generation earlier. He came to make common cause with D´eroul`ede in repudiating some of the fundamental tenets of republicanism in the name of nationalism. Like Barr`es, Maurras interpreted the Dreyfus Affair as a consequence rather than a cause of national decay; yet whereas Barr`es eventually came to blame aspects of the revolutionary heritage, Maurras started out from a position of opposition to republican thinking. Inspired by Renan from an early age, Maurras rejected the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity inherited from the Revolution of 1789; the civilized order of the Greco-Roman world, he argued, provided an antidote to romanticism and a model for a nation ruled by the monarchy, the army, and the Catholic Church.123 By the outbreak of the Dreyfus Affair, the climate was ripe for a nationalist rupture with the republican tradition. Indeed, shifts in the political climate had meant that discontent with the parliamentary system in the cause of the nation had increasingly narrow options through which to find expression. Despite their ideological differences and rivalries, over the course of the 1890s the growth in socialist support at the ballot box had led to pressure to collaborate in bourgeois parliamentary politics. Moreover, as Michel Winock observes, if the shooting of unarmed protesting workers at Fourmies of 1 May 1891 had helped to convince many on the left that the army was no longer a symbol of the nation, Dreyfus further catalysed the development of socialist anti-patriotism.124 Faced with a perceived threat to the survival of the Republic, socialists rallied to its defence, thereby confirming in the eyes of many nationalists the sense that parliamentary democracy, if not republicanism as a whole, was antithetical to the interests of the nation. Victory for the Bloc des Gauches in the 1902 elections drew together radicals and socialists squeezing out any credible nationalist assertion of republicanism and opposition to the existing regime.125 At the heart of Maurras’ political thinking lay his fear of decadence.126 Having been born in 1868, the events of l’ann´ee terrible did not exercise any direct influence upon the development of his ideas, but his diagnosis of decline was undoubtedly affected by the broad political climate and the credibility gap between patriotic myths and pessimistic soulsearching. One of the dominant themes of Maurras’ political thought was the belief that those who did not share the cultural, historical,

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and religious heritage of France threatened national unity. He blamed Germany for importing romanticism and Jewish influence for internal disorder. His preferred panacea was the restoration of monarchical government, albeit in modified form, which he believed would revive and strengthen national unity. Arguing that France had been weakened by parliamentary democracy, he claimed that parties merely served to divide society and reduce government to being under the control of financiers.127 Whereas Barr`es accepted political change since 1789 as an irreversible aspect of national development, Maurras argued that the period could be effectively erased from French history.128 While many nationalists or indeed members of the Action Franc¸aise did not adhere to Maurras’ monarchism, many were drawn to his claim that the solution to decadence lay in a return to tradition and hierarchy.129 Thus through the post-1870 emphasis on decline to the subsequent rejection of republican universalism and parliamentary democracy, Maurras incorporated counter-revolutionary thinking and thereby helped develop a new stage in French nationalism. The nationalist revival of the early 1900s drew attention back to memories of 1870. The generation reaching political maturity at the beginning of the twentieth century had received the full benefit of the republican patriotic education inspired by the defeat. Thus whereas their forerunners had felt detached from a disaster for which they held no responsibility, the new generation felt memories of the defeat more acutely than ever.130 Having been born in 1873, Charles P´eguy was too young to have experienced the war, but he came to symbolize the patriotism of his generation. A poet and journalist, his views evolved from internationalist socialism, Dreyfusism, and anti-militarism to nationalism and Catholicism. The Moroccan crisis of 1905 was a turning point in P´eguy’s political thinking as he awakened to the threat of imminent German attack. Looking back to 1870–1871, he concluded that the defeat had left an enduring and heavy impression upon the nation. While he continued to associate himself with the socialist left, P´eguy reversed his earlier position to argue that France’s failure to launch a war of revenge had compromised its destiny to lead the world towards liberty.131 His new political views thus became more aligned with nationalist positions, and he affirmed his commitment to revanche in A nos amis, a` nos abonn´es (1909) and Notre jeunesse (1910). Yet unlike many nationalists, he also condemned German anti-socialism for its opposition to the revolution, the Catholic Church, and France’s civilizing mission. Moreover, it was only on the eve of the First World War that P´eguy finally renounced his socialist ideals and acknowledged the legitimacy of war. Despite the

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patriotic insistence upon a glorious defeat, P´eguy insisted that France remained a vanquished nation and would only repair the damage with a victory.132 If the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine was prevalent in cultural discourse, in political terms, the principal legacy of defeat was not revanchism but the development of a new kind of nationalism centred on fears of decline and decadence. Revanche was never a realistic foreign policy option; during the 1870s the conservative government pursued a cautious foreign policy while republicans seeking electoral support from the peasantry had to moderate any belligerent rhetoric. The consolidation of the republican hold on government raised hopes among a minority of the population and produced an outpouring of revanchist sentiment, but it did not herald any change in foreign policy.133 The government’s rejection of war against Germany and pursuit of colonial expansion was instrumental in transforming D´eroul`ede’s nationalism into a weapon against Opportunism. By contrast, Boulangism enabled D´eroul`ede to escape isolation between radical patriotism, which remained faithful to memories of the Commune, and Opportunist patriotism, which had definitively renounced revanche. The shift turned D´eroul`ede’s attention towards France’s internal political problems, however, and even Boulanger, seeking to court monarchist support, played down the idea of revanche.134 During the 1890s and over the course of the Dreyfus Affair, the plight of Alsace-Lorraine appeared all but forgotten; revanche was scarcely ever mentioned even by nationalists as they emphasized domestic affairs over foreign policy.135 Yet if there was little political capital to be gained from campaigning for revenge, few were willing to publicly accept that the loss of Alsace-Lorraine might be permanent. Open renunciation of Alsace-Lorraine remained a taboo, but the lost provinces were no longer the focus of public demand. Indeed, at the outbreak of the First World War, revanche was neither a primary military objective nor at the forefront of conscripts’ thoughts.136 That the events of 1870–1871 left an indelible imprint upon French political culture, triggering the re-emergence of deep divisions, fundamentally shaping the development of French nationalism, and causing international tensions is well-established. However, this chapter has sought to sketch the nature of the relationship between memories of l’ann´ee terrible and political developments in the period between 1870 and 1914. Sedan cast a stone into the turbulent sea of French politics; with the Second Empire gone, a range of political, religious, social, and cultural concepts of the nation took its place. Yet in the vacuum of the early Third Republic, when the immediate threat from the enemy

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had receded, and the unifying impulses of national defence had been removed, debate degenerated into divisiveness. In an atmosphere born of despair and disillusion, old conflicts between revolutionary concepts of republican France and conservative visions of Catholic France re-emerged with renewed ferocity. The divisions were constantly shifting, mirroring the myriad and ever-evolving politics of the time. It was hard to keep pace with the velocity of events, the changing visions of the right and left, the fluctuating fortunes of electoral rivals. The stakes were simply too high for any ‘collective amnesia’ to paper over the cracks of l’ann´ee terrible.

2 The Cult of the Dead

Hidden away in the cemetery of Colmar, a victim of the Franco-Prussian War seemed to refuse to rest in peace. Disturbing the heavy concrete slabs placed above his grave, with one arm, the National Guardsman appeared to reach out for his sword. His epitaph declared that he was killed in combat, but for him, the fight was far from over. In the years after the war, all from monarchist Catholics to anti-clerical republicans put forward a notion that soldiers had exchanged their ephemeral lives for eternal glory, forever to be remembered and revered as martyrs. Such were the views that inspired Bartholdi’s monument to the fallen National Guardsmen of Colmar, which depicted one man’s struggle to carry on the fight from beyond the grave. Influenced by the rituals and language of Christianity, these beliefs emerged from a network of religious and secular visions of patriotic self-sacrifice that converged into a cult of the war dead. For amidst all the failures and the faults, only the dead emerged untainted by the conflict. Death did not leave a spectre haunting France, nor did it bequeath universal revulsion for the horrors of war; instead it brought hope and faith in the nation’s future. Urbanization, declining mortality rates, falling church attendance, and political attacks against the Catholic Church all affected changing attitudes and cultural concepts of death in the late nineteenth century.1 By the early nineteenth century, a cult of the dead had become a widespread phenomenon cutting across every social class and region, reflecting a growing tendency to deny death and an unwillingness to accept separation from loved ones.2 Such trends were revealed in cemeteries where fewer individual graves and increasing numbers of family tombs were constructed.3 From the wealthiest upper classes down to the poorest peasantry, all began to invest in the best burials their means would allow. By the 1830s, rich families were spending fortunes on lavish 56

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monuments and funeral ceremonies, rendering cemeteries places of curiosity and tourism as well as mourning.4 With scientific advances and the spread of more rational thinking diminishing superstitious fears of ghosts, visits to cemeteries on All Souls’ Day became a popular social and educational activity. During the Belle Epoque, the dead dominated culture and society either through the glorification of heroic death or through fears of apocalypse. Influenced by European representations of death in the work of the Pre-Raphaelite and Germanic painters and the music of Liszt, Bruckner, and Mahler, French fin-de-si`ecle culture consolidated the cult.5 This chapter explores how the catastrophes of l’ann´ee terrible produced a cult of the war dead. Having been so shattered in conflict, it seemed that the nation needed to create something else in which to believe. Writing in the late 1970s, George Mosse observed that despite growing scholarly interest in death, changing attitudes towards fallen soldiers had been largely overlooked, even though they had played an integral part in the development of nationalism.6 This is, of course, now far from the case, with considerable scholarly consideration having been focused on remembrance of the victims of war. Yet much of this work focuses on twentieth-century conflicts, and while Philippe Ari`es, Michel Vovelle, and Thomas Kselman have shed considerable light on political, social, and cultural attitudes towards death in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the dead of the Franco-Prussian War have tended to be neglected. The Revolutionary Wars changed the experience of combat, making soldiers out of citizens and transforming the relationship between armies and nations. With soldiers carrying a political stake in the nation, they had greater motivation to fight; at the same time, however, their increased value as individuals made them less dispensable. Thus the Revolution of 1789 at once gave men a reason to fight and a reason not to die. The nation therefore needed to be redefined in terms that would inspire loyalty, while patriotism needed to be configured such that it would demand sacrifice. In consequence, new concepts of nationalism came to represent death on the battlefield as the fulfilment of life, giving it meaning as the ultimate act of patriotic devotion.7 The fear of losing loved ones and declining faith in the reassurance of an afterlife also made a reconfiguration of patriotic self-sacrifice imperative. As Philippe Contamine argues, before 1789, soldiers willingly gave their lives for a vision of the fatherland sanctified by its association with the Church and monarchy; the Revolution therefore had to seize the mantle of patriotism, transforming faith in the nation into a new religious

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faith.8 Yet while the Revolution may have removed patriotism’s Christian elements, it took away none of its piety. Indeed, this new faith had its own apostles and martyrs. The republican appropriation of Catholic discourse signalled at once exploitation and surrender to deeply entrenched cultural associations between Christianity and sacredness. Indeed, in the period following 1870, in their rhetoric and rituals, republicans variously sought to subsume and displace Catholic teachings on death and sacrifice, employing Christian cultural formulations in order to undermine the power of the Church. Yet the assault was never wholly one-sided. The republican glorification of sacrifice for the nation sparked a Catholic counteroffensive centred on a reassertion of long-established ideas of patriotic martyrdom. It was no coincidence that the period also saw the renewed celebration and eventual canonization of Joan of Arc.9

Burying the war dead A new approach towards those who had died on the battlefields of 1870– 1871 began because of concerns about public health. From the outset, both sides suffered heavy casualties and in the blazing heat of early August, it became imperative to bury the dead as quickly as possible.10 The French and German governments recognized the importance of the task and, where absolutely necessary, negotiated a cease-fire to enable corpses scattered across the front lines to be cleared.11 Usually, however, burying parties moved in the day after battle. The urgency of the work meant that it was carried out with seemingly brutal haste, and it was often difficult to salvage any dignity for the dead. In the rush to clear the corpses, many were not buried deeply enough. Around Sedan, rotting corpses which had been inadequately buried began to spread disease, forcing the German occupation authorities to have to exhume and then burn the dead.12 With the pressures of war meaning that soldiers were often buried in a rather chaotic manner, civilians began to intervene to try and reclaim some dignity for the dead, making small, crudely improvised crosses to mark the sites of graves.13 Visiting Sedan in November 1870, J. W. McMichael noticed that names had been written on fragments of paper and attached to crosses with sealing wax.14 Some of the dead received funerals which were attended by entire villages, just as deaths in the community had always been.15 The German writer, Theodor Fontane, a prisoner of war in November 1870, recorded that the same respect was sometimes even extended to the enemy. Hostilities were suspended at Nogent-le-Rotrou as the funeral cort`ege for two Bavarian

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soldiers travelled through town to a church packed with French and German mourners.16 Near Metz, meanwhile, the inscription on a soldier’s grave reading, ‘Here rest friends and foes together’, had the word ‘foes’ scratched out by a compassionate passer-by.17 Such concern for the war dead of 1870–1871 stood in marked contrast with earlier practices. As late as the Italian wars of unification, an ignominious fate still awaited France’s soldiers. Those killed at Solferino in 1859 were often left to rot for several days, being robbed of their clothing and attacked by birds of prey before they were eventually buried in unmarked mass graves.18 Yet developments in the Franco-Prussian War were in many respects a manifestation of a much wider cultural evolution in attitudes towards death in war, where the loss of young men had come to represent at once the loss of a valued citizen and a human tragedy.19 The democratization of death in combat may be traced back to the Revolutionary Wars, when the call to mobilize the nation in arms transformed the nature of armies across Europe. Armies were no longer drawn from the ranks of the criminal classes, but became filled with citizens who claimed democratic rights in return for risking their lives for their country. Nevertheless, it took many decades for changing attitudes towards the value of soldiers to translate into improved treatment of the dead. Throughout the nineteenth century, men continued to be buried in mass unmarked graves, their heroic sacrifices not honoured in any specific, meaningful manner. In the initial period after the revolution, a proposal to name every fallen soldier in recognition of their equal status as citizens was put forward but never implemented by the fledgling First Republic, although it was adopted by Prussia.20 The Arc de Triomphe may have been dedicated to the heroic Grande Arm´ee, but it privileged generals over rank-and-file soldiers. And the bas-relief of the Vendˆ ome Column may have paid tribute to the nation’s combatants, but fallen soldiers remained an unrecognized mass. It took the Crimean War to trigger efforts by France, Russia, and Britain to provide permanent resting-places for their war dead. Seventeen large ossuaries were constructed by France to house the remains of its officers and soldiers in Sebastopol.21 For Germany, it was perhaps the Prussian Wars of Liberation that had the greatest effect upon relationships between soldiers, the army, and the nation.22 In consequence, it was not republican France but imperial Germany that pushed for a comprehensive project to bury every officer and soldier who had died in the Franco-Prussian War. Article 16 of the Treaty of Frankfurt of 1871 set the tone and established the framework for this new development, stating that ‘The French and German governments reciprocally agree to respect and maintain the

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tombs of soldiers buried on their respective territories.’ Since most of the dead lay on French soil, the article can be interpreted as having been primarily motivated by concerns for the safety of German graves after the army withdrew from occupation. In other words, France owed the protection of its fallen soldiers to its wartime enemy. While the German legislation of 2 February 1872 concerning war graves in Alsace-Lorraine established a set of practices in the annexed territories, it was essentially left up to the French government to decide how to implement its treaty obligations.23 It soon emerged that one of the greatest problems would be balancing German demands with those of French landowners. With many of the dead having fallen on private land, it was not long before farmers unable to sow their crops began to issue demands for compensation. There were also recurring concerns about the threat of disease, and indeed one landowner in Belfort sued the War Ministry in 1872 for the contamination of his water supply by soldiers’ rotting corpses.24 The commission charged with drafting French legislation on the implementation of Article 16 thus proposed exhuming and relocating the dead to public land. The Treaty did not specify whether graves should be temporary or permanent, but following a German memorandum relating to Alsace-Lorraine, the commission resolved that all soldiers should be laid to rest in perpetuity.25 The Treaty also failed to deal with religion and issues of compliance with the law of 23 Prairial XII (1804) which established the division of French cemeteries according to faith or denomination.26 The commission ruled that privately constructed graves bearing religious emblems would be preserved, while those constructed by the state would be largely secular in style in order to circumvent questions of religious difference.27 French obligations under Article 16 of the Treaty of Frankfurt were laid out in the law on military tombs of 4 April 1873. Implementation involved constructing 25 large ossuaries and burying 37,859 French soldiers, 21,876 German soldiers, and 27,661 soldiers whose nationality was unknown at a total cost of 2,287,896 francs. When the project was presented to the National Assembly on 20 March 1873, deputies were informed that as a matter of diplomatic imperative the state would be assuming sole responsibility for the work.28 Thus the law of 4 April 1873 established that the state would purchase any land where soldiers were buried, along with the land necessary to allow public access. Where there were several individual graves in one location, the land would be occupied temporarily, and the bodies would be exhumed and transferred into common graves following the statutory delay of six years. Wherever

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Figure 2.1

61

Ossuary in P`ere Lachaise Cemetery, Paris

more than one soldier was buried, railings were to be erected carrying the inscription, ‘Tombes militaires; loi du 4 avril 1873.’ In cases where large numbers of soldiers were interred, the state undertook to construct a vault or ossuary and to erect a funerary monument (Figure 2.1). The state also pledged to maintain graves and monuments on land purchased by families or committees (Figure 2.2).29 Government policy on burying the war dead must be viewed in the context of changing attitudes towards death in nineteenth-century France. Reforms introduced under Napoleon I establishing the right for individuals to be buried in separate graves symbolized an enduring and increasing attachment towards the dead, even if most people continued to be buried in mass graves.30 Yet while Annette Becker argues that in granting all the war dead a permanent resting-place the state was recognizing the worth of individual soldiers, the reality was that the vast majority of men were placed in common graves and none of the monuments erected by the state listed the names of the dead.31 Burying soldiers of every rank together may have accorded with republican notions that all should be equal in death, but this was largely a by-product of necessity. Unlike their German counterparts, French soldiers were not issued with any identification so they could not be identified if killed in action.

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Figure 2.2 War graves at Floing (Ardennes)

By the time soldiers came to be exhumed and reburied in 1878, it had been impossible to determine even the nationality of over one-third of the dead.32 Thus enemies on the battlefields were often laid to rest together. If initial responses to Germany’s dead had been sympathetic, that soon ended with the stories of wartime atrocities, the occupation, and harsh peace terms. Instead, the obligation to maintain German war graves turned into a major diplomatic headache for the French authorities. Even before the occupying troops withdrew, communities in northern and eastern France began to use war graves to settle their scores with the German enemy. They attacked memorials, smashed up headstones, and scrawled over inscriptions, leaving the government to pick up the bill. In September 1872, the monument to a Prussian officer in V´ezelois (Territoire de Belfort) was demolished, the gravestone overturned, and the plinth smashed into pieces.33 In October 1886, the marble plaques from the funerary monument at Perches near Belfort were removed and the German inscriptions were replaced with the words, ‘Here rest 1500 German charognes.’34 Attempts by French police to investigate the crimes were met by a wall of silence.35 Perhaps it was because communities supported the assaults, or perhaps it was because almost without exception the perpetrators were said to be women and children. In 1896, for

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instance, the wooden crosses marking the graves of German soldiers were overturned by a 15-year-old French boy in the battlefields around SaintPrivat and Sainte-Marie-aux-Chˆenes (Meurthe-et-Moselle).36 Meanwhile in Langres in the department of the Cˆ ote-d’Or in March 1887, a German war memorial was smeared with excrement, after having been pelted with stones. Footprints belonging to the culprit were found around the monument, and were said to belong either to a child or a woman.37 The German Empire never failed to call the French Republic to account over any assault on the sacred memory of its war dead. The most minor act of vandalism went to the very top of government. Thus in January 1875, the French Foreign Minister was called upon to placate an incensed German Ambassador over reports that the Prussian regimental monument at Habouville (Territoire de Belfort) had been vandalized.38 In February 1879, meanwhile, the French Foreign and Interior Ministers were forced to intervene over complaints from the German Ambassador that the Prussian memorial at Giromagny (Territoire de Belfort) had been mutilated.39 The cost of repairing the damaged monument was around 600 francs.40 The cost of repairing damaged diplomatic relations was significantly higher. The comprehensive burial of the war dead was thus largely determined by the requirements of the Treaty of Frankfurt and by continuing diplomatic obligations towards Germany. While the efforts of local communities to mark the graves of the fallen indicated a shift in attitudes, it should be observed that this was the first time that French soldiers had died at the hands of a foreign enemy on native soil since the Napoleonic Wars. Attacks against German war graves and memorials on French territory suggest that the losses on the battlefield were read in patriotic terms and that for some communities at least, hostility towards the enemy overrode feelings of sympathy towards the dead. In the post-1870 discourse, however, French soldiers’ sacrifices were characterized in terms of their political consequence for the nation. With all sides seeking to interpret the collapse in their own terms, defining what kind of France soldiers had been fighting for became a question of fundamental political significance.

Ideas of sacrifice In recent decades, scholarship on the relationship between Catholicism and republicanism has sought to challenge earlier notions that the two were locked in irreconcilable opposition. Indeed one must take care not to equate republicanism with anti-clericalism, for the debate did not

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concern religion per se but rather its place in public life and in fact many republicans were also Catholic. Thus Theodore Zeldin has questioned the reality of the rivalry, ascribing much of it to anger-fuelled rhetoric. The rupture of the Revolution was in fact not so decisive, Zeldin argues, because notions of a pious pre-revolutionary France were the invention of later conservative mythologies. And if they did not agree on the solutions, Catholics and anti-clerical republicans did share many concerns about mortality, virtue, and humanity.41 Concepts of a war of two Frances relate to the very extremes of opinion magnified by the imperatives of political rhetoric; they ignore considerable common ground especially in areas of social concern. And yet the nature of Catholic practices contributed towards creating very real and palpable societal divisions. The Catholic Church separated itself from the rest of society in a visible sense through the conduct and clothing of the clergy and in its adherence to a hierarchical model of society which ascribed the people the role of submissive followers.42 The existence of rival Catholic and secular systems of education was perhaps the greatest source of societal division, raising the spectre of two parallel generations growing into diametrically opposing and hostile camps.43 In many respects, the education debate revealed the extent to which Catholics and republicans were battling for mastery of the same territory. What made the struggle so fierce was that republicans borrowed and imitated religious concepts to create if not a civic religion, then at least an alternative system of beliefs.44 Attempts to republicanize France through the secularizing reforms of the early Third Republic are well known and need not detain us here. Through measures such as the establishment of free lay education, the secularization of courts and hospitals, the dissolution of Jesuit orders, the legalization of divorce, and ultimately the separation of Church and State in 1905, republicans sought not merely to remove the influence of the Church from public life but to transform the nature of citizenship. Seeking to end the supposed extremes of peasant passivity and urban volatility, the reforms were part of a wider campaign to ensure the longterm survival of the Republic. The most spectacular and striking aspects of the republican campaign lay in the cultural sphere. The creation of Bastille Day as a national holiday in 1880 mobilized communities across the nation in an overt attempt to redefine France along republican lines. As Christian Amalvi observes, it emphasized the popular origins of the Republic by celebrating the people’s destruction of a symbol of despotism and suggested that if storming the Bastille had brought political and social liberation, then moral and spiritual liberation could only be achieved once the ‘clerical

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Bastille’ had been demolished.45 The construction of the Sacr´e-Coeur basilica at Montmartre was undoubtedly one of the most visual manifestations of the rivalries between the Church and the republican state over the future of France. Originally a personal vow, it became nationalized and universalized in the struggle not just between Rome and the secular political order but also between Rome and liberal Catholicism.46 Even during its construction, it represented an aggressive and unambiguous assault on republicanism that culminated most strikingly in the erection of a luminous cross on top of the scaffolding of the Sacr´e-Coeur on 14 July 1892.47 Visible across much of Paris, the basilica rivalled republican architectural symbols such as the Eiffel Tower, which was built for the centenary of the Revolution, and of course the Panth´eon.48 The Church needed to present itself as the guardian of patriotism after doubts were cast upon its loyalty to France during the war. Despite mobilizing the clergy behind the relief effort and even sending trainee priests to serve in the army, the Church was regarded by many as having been at best primarily loyal to Rome and at worst in league with Germany against the Republic.49 In an atmosphere of paranoid fear of internal enemies, priests came under particular suspicion, even being accused of using their cloaks to conceal their spying activities.50 The Church’s radicalized ultramontanism and moralizing discourse after the war fuelled beliefs that it had desired defeat and had a tangible impact upon the relationships between local priests and their congregations. In the Loire region, priests reported a decisive shift in religious practice; attendance at mass, even at Easter, declined significantly with the war cited as a direct cause. Many clergymen reported that they had been accused of turning church collections over to the German war effort or even spying for the enemy.51 Repositioning itself at the centre of notions of patriotism and reminding the nation of its wartime sacrifices was therefore essential if the Catholic Church was to stake a claim to political legitimacy in the post-1871 period. In the aftermath of the defeat, sacrifice came to be seen by many as the key to regeneration. Notwithstanding the many divisions within the Catholic Church, all agreed that sacrifice lay at the heart of the nation’s necessary expiation. For freethinkers, meanwhile, it was the sacrifices of the Revolution of 1789 that would furnish an example and model for the future. And within the nationalist thinking that emerged after 1870, sacrifice on the battlefield represented the pinnacle of devotion to the fatherland to which all young men should aspire.52 In the context of the defeat, it was necessary not only to mobilize future generations behind the nation, but to find consolatory tales of heroism amidst the

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collapse as well. Having given their lives serving their country, the war dead were considered to embody the ideal of selfless sacrifice. Thus both the representation of their memory and their physical remains became central and contested elements in the drive towards national revival. Death therefore lay at the frontline in the struggle between Catholicism and anti-clerical republicanism. After the Napoleonic decree of 23 Prairial XII (1804) had sought to redress the treatment of the dead in response to the Catholic Church’s regulations banning clergymen from presiding over the funerals for particular categories of people, the Third Republic made further inroads into areas of traditional Catholic domination.53 The law of 28 July 1881 abolished denominational cemeteries while that of 15 November 1887 proclaimed the freedom of choice in religious or civil funerals. The Church thus jealously guarded its dwindling areas of control, but the challenges ran deeper. Moves towards secularization were not merely political; they reflected the declining confidence in Christianity’s explanations of death as well.54 Where Catholicism held the upper hand, however, was in its ability to provide comfort through the reassurance of an afterlife. Despite declining church attendance over the course of the nineteenth century, there were still many who feared facing the grave without having received the Last Sacraments.55 Indeed, even fervent anti-clericals were known to have succumbed to the persuasive reassurances of the clergy on their deathbeds. The Church’s ability to offer the dying the hope of redemption not only fuelled anti-clerical beliefs that the clergy exercised undue influence over the vulnerable, but also translated directly into political power. During war, when soldiers were forced to confront death every day on the battlefield, the Church’s reassurance of an afterlife was considered to help inspire courage and a greater willingness to take risks.56 Thus in the debates on military reforms and the separation of Church and State, army chaplains argued vigorously that their removal from the army would not only damage morale but would also result in further defeats. While the Catholic Church maintained that the cult of the dead provided confirmation of immortality, republicans held that immortality was achieved and sustained through the cult of the dead. For republicans had to compete with powerful and culturally entrenched religious ideas on the fate of the dead. They could not offer the reward of eternal life, so they offered eternal memory instead. This honour had, of course, to be earned, either through death on the battlefield or through devotion to the republican cause. Since the eighteenth century, the designation of ‘great men’ had been at the core of the creation of a new national collective memory. Beginning as a symbolic bulwark against

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a despotic monarchy, the concept of ‘great men’ was set apart from that of a hero in having nothing to do with the miraculous and everything to do with accomplishment and merit.57 When ‘great men’ died they were said to be transferred to the realm of posterity, or to the collective memory of future generations.58 The heroes of the Republic were identified with the nation and fatherland; just as the nation was immortal, so republican heroes would be immortal too. Such ideas on death owed much to the influences of positivism and Auguste Comte’s religion of humanity. For Comte held that humanity was governed by the dead; acquiring a ‘subjective immortality’, the dead were saved from oblivion by prolonging their existence in the minds of the living.59 In venerating men rather than God, republicans therefore sought to provide examples for the nation and the foundations of a new secular morality. Nowhere was this more strikingly demonstrated than in the grandeur of state funerals and indeed if there was one art the Third Republic truly mastered, it was that of burying its heroes. As Avner Ben-Amos has observed, a set of rituals incorporated the chosen dead into the memory of the Republic, removing their individuality to transform them into personifications of abstract republican values.60 Like the civic festivals of the Revolution, state funerals operated as a device for imparting republican patriotism and public education. The ‘great men’ of culture, science, and politics were said to merit eternal memory because they had devoted their lives to bringing improvement to the Republic, and so in death they became not just symbols but martyrs and Christ-like figures. The civil state funeral of Victor Hugo in 1885 represented perhaps the most spectacular attempt to fashion a symbol of the secular moderate Republic despite his acceptance of the Orleanist monarchy and later support for the Paris Commune.61 By placing Hugo’s coffin in the deconsecrated Panth´eon, republicans articulated a humanized vision of France that revolved around the heroic lives and glorious deaths of its citizens, paralleling and more importantly rivalling that of the Catholic Church. While the designation of ‘great men’ presented the possibility of transferring public affection and loyalty from an individual to the Republic, the war dead of 1870 offered even greater potential. As a collective, anonymous mass, their individual lives were unknown, and thus unlike the well-known ‘great men’ of the Republic, they were effectively blank canvases whose memories could be moulded and appropriated at will. The Catholic Church was the first to mobilize France’s fallen soldiers; turning their memories into one of the most powerful weapons in their political arsenal, the Church rejected republican notions of heroism and

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recast it in terms of faith in the nation and God.62 The Church claimed that all the war dead, regardless of their religious or political convictions, had paid for the sins of France with their lives, becoming martyrs for the fatherland and for Christianity. As Bishop Turinaz of Nancy argued, soldiers’ sacrifices had a regenerative effect, for ‘the blood of these martyrs is a seed for Christians, in the same way that the blood of those who gave their lives for the fatherland produced generations of heroes who [. . .] have fought and died [. . .] for the glory of our country’.63 They would provide inspiration for the future as ‘they fortify us by their example; [. . .] they push into our hearts [. . .] energy, bravery and enthusiasm for patriotism’.64 In dying for a just cause on the battlefield, soldiers were considered by the Church to have imitated Christ, their act of selfsacrifice becoming an act of redemption for past transgressions. Indeed, in the often-cited words of Bishop Pie, ‘the Lord of the armies holds in reserve for soldiers special graces, pardons [. . .], instantaneous acts of faith and love which assure eternal salvation’.65 Like Christ, soldiers were described by the Church as holding the power of resurrection.66 As Abbot Besson explained, their rising would come at the hour of revenge: One day [. . .] the wind of some great battle will come and stir up your dust, your bones will become alive again, and the news of a great victory will make the earth in these cemeteries mixed with the blood of so many heroes tremble.67 Until such time, the dead were to perform a didactic role, providing a kind of religious counterpoint to republican patriotic ideas and functioning to bind the French people into a collective duty to remember. Unlike Protestantism, the Catholic faith had long held that the bond between the living and the dead continued beyond the grave as the latter required assistance in the passage from one world to the next.68 Now, however, the relationship was cast in slightly different terms; awaiting the time when they would ‘live’ again and deliver justice, the fallen depended on the living for their survival and for the survival of the nation. Many members of the clergy therefore took it upon themselves to speak of the dead wherever they went, reinforcing the role of the Church in the national revival.69 Many priests described how, like saints, the war dead were able to speak of the fatherland from beyond the grave.70 Indeed, carrying his role a step further, Bishop Turinaz positioned himself as an intermediary, at once imploring the French people to listen to the dead and interpreting messages from beyond the grave: ‘Do you hear

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them? They exhort you to love France, to realize the union which gives strength, to place above all ambitions and parties the interests of the fatherland, finally to push away the disastrous divisions which are our greatest danger.’71 The cult of the Sacred Heart had its own war martyrs. Following the revolution of 4 September, Zouaves from the Pope’s volunteer protection force joined the war effort in France. Everywhere they fought, the Papal Zouaves displayed exemplary bravery, but it was their heroism at Loigny on 2 December 1870 that became legendary. Under General Sonis, they mounted a final act of defiance in the face of defeat, charging to their deaths behind the banner of the Sacred Heart. Over half their number fell dead or wounded, while Sonis lost a leg. The wounded body of Sonis came to be a metaphor for the mutilation of the nation, creating an explicit connection between the fate of France and the fate of its Christian martyrs. The Zouaves’ martyrdom, meanwhile, helped to inspire the devout Parisian Alexandre Legentil to make a vow to construct a church dedicated to the Sacred Heart at Montmartre. Bishop Cabi`eres of Montpellier compared their sacrifice to that of Louis XVI in 1793, arguing that both were necessary for the regeneration of France.72 The close proximity of Loigny to Orl´eans and Patay also brought comparisons with Joan of Arc, each being regarded as symbols of expiation that would bring absolution for the sins of the guilty.73 During the 1870s, a committee headed by General Charette raised 178,950 francs towards the construction of a memorial chapel dedicated to the Sacred Heart and the fallen Zouaves in Loigny.74 Its internal decoration explicitly linked military and religious self-sacrifice; one painting represented Joan of Arc at Patay alongside the Zouaves, while another portrayed the consecration of a battalion of Zouaves to the Sacred Heart.75 The chapel was constructed above the resting-place of 821 fallen soldiers, the ossuary forming the actual foundations for the new chapel and the symbolic foundations for future salvation. The ossuary at Loigny was inspired by that constructed for Bazeilles, the intention being that visitors should be able to see the bones of the dead through windows inside the crypt.76 Such reverence towards human bones dated back to medieval practices in which the dead were moved into ossuaries to ease pressure on cemeteries; by the Baroque period this had developed into a cult that was distinct from that surrounding the remains of saints.77 Yet while Catholic faith in resurrection was centred on the survival of physical remains, the Church sought to discourage the cult of bones and to channel attention more broadly towards the dead.78 At Loigny, however, popular piety prevailed,

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transforming soldiers from abstract symbols of national sacrifice into real, identifiable martyrs who could be seen and almost touched. The pale appearance of the bones seemed a visible manifestation of their moral and political purity, inspiring hope and awe among visitors to the ossuary such as the conservative journalist Philippe de Grandlieu: Who could describe the impression caused by the collection of whitened bones [. . .] which seemed to talk in pious silence of their solitude? Do you believe they will live again? Yes they will live, because devotion, sacrifice, martyrdom will not end in oblivion; because there is an eternal justice.79 Like Catholics, many republicans believed that having sacrificed their lives, the war dead acquired the power of resurrection.80 But while they did not claim that the souls of fallen soldiers would rise to heaven, they did claim that their skeletons would rise in the hour of revenge. The dead were described as lying uneasily in their graves, waiting to repair the injustices of the defeat; revenge would therefore be a moment of revelation, when the dead would discover their immortality. As with Catholics, republicans argued that the remains of the dead would form the basis of their resurrection in public memory, enabling them to rise alongside a new generation in the hour of revenge.81 The republican employment of quasi-religious discourse and symbolism was a measure of the difficulty in creating civil replacements for long-established religious forms of the sacred. Republicans thus at once emulated and attacked military and Catholic ceremonies. Following protocols on funeral processions dating from the Napoleonic legislation of July 1804, parades to war memorials placed army units or veterans at the front and rear, then representatives of central and local government, and finally the members of numerous patriotic societies. Unlike other ceremonial occasions when representatives of the Church occupied a significant position, clergymen rarely, if ever, joined the parades at war commemorations. Their role was largely restricted to the religious services which preceded the processions and sermons delivered in front of the war memorials. From the 1880s onwards, anti-clerical mayors took increasingly draconian measures to circumscribe the activities of the Church in memorial services, banning religious processions in defiance of instructions from central government.82 With the separation of the Church and State in 1905 came an end to religious sermons outside cemeteries, leaving priests everywhere unable to follow parades to war memorials located in town centres.

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The close symbolic connection between fallen soldiers and national regeneration triggered intense Catholic opposition to civil memorial services for the war dead. Although the Church was able to marshal powerful arguments centred on fears of death and widely accepted cultural norms, it had to compete against the growing ability of secular authorities to determine the nature of funerals. The culturally entrenched and widely accepted nature of religious concepts of death encouraged the Catholic Church to deny the legitimacy of secular notions of sacrifice. Deeming republicanism to lack any metaphysical foundations, the Church maintained that only religious faith could bring depth to patriotic devotion. Indeed, in Lyon in 1887 the Catholic newspaper L’Eclair cast doubt on the meaningfulness of the republican and secular unveiling ceremony for the monument to the fallen soldiers of the Rhˆ one, arguing that it was not enough simply to repeat the word ‘memory [. . .] without the expression of faith’.83 Thus not only were the war dead important as symbols of virtue guiding the national revival, but they also enabled Catholics to stress the connection between religion and patriotism. Whereas republicanism was centred on the scientific approaches of humanism and positivism, religion required faith and devotion, the two virtues that were deemed vital in developing unconditional loyalty to the nation. During the 1880s and 1890s, the Third Republic granted state funerals to several high-ranking republican military figures involved in the Franco-Prussian War including Colonel Denfert-Rochereau, Generals Aymard, Clinchant, and Faidherbe, and Vice-Admiral Jaur`es.84 In celebrating those considered to have displayed appropriate opinions on the kind of France they had been fighting for, republicans aimed to reinforce the legitimacy of their national vision. The funeral for L´eon Gambetta on 6 January 1883 sought to avoid his more problematic record as Prime Minister, presenting him instead as a heroic war leader in a ceremony designed to convey a harmonious image of a secular republican nation.85 Yet hopes that public opinion might be deftly manoeuvred into the republican sphere through the rituals and emotions of a state funeral were eroded by the funeral of another war hero from 1870 to 1871. The death of General Chanzy in January 1883 represented a double blow: moderate conservatives had seen him as a potential future leader, believing he would appease the army and revive monarchist fortunes in the face of a confident republican regime, while those on the left had regarded him as a rare senior military figure sympathetic to the Republic.86 At the same time, however, Chanzy’s faith prevented any credible attempt to claim him as a republican hero; his family demanded

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a Catholic funeral and at the ceremony itself, the Archbishop of Reims cited Chanzy’s belief that ‘religion is the origin of true patriotism’.87 Even within the republican left, discourse on death and martyrdom encompassed a variety of radically different ideas. By the 1890s, many socialists had come to abandon nationalism in favour of international workers’ solidarity, rejecting the legitimacy of permanent armies and any war that was not conducted for purely defensive purposes. In some towns, socialists continued to celebrate glories on the battlefield using the improvised nature of France’s forces as arguments against professional armies. In others such as Saint-Denis, however, war commemorations offered those on the left an opportunity to condemn war.88 Of course, there were many other elements of the left whose disillusionment with the failings of the moderate Republic and the growth of socialist internationalism led them in the opposite direction. Initially a supporter of Opportunism and an ally of Gambetta, from the mid1880s until his death in 1914, Paul D´eroul`ede became an arch critic of the political regime and a champion of aggressive nationalism. Recent scholarship on D´eroul`ede has tended to downplay the importance of his contribution towards the cult of the war dead, with analysis largely limited to his appearance at the commemorations around Paris.89 Indeed, throughout the 1890s and beyond, he increasingly treated commemorations as platforms to attack his political opponents and to express his views on a variety of subjects that bore no relation to the war. Nonetheless, fearing that nationalism might develop independently of memories of 1870–1871, D´eroul`ede did seek to maintain a link between the humiliation of defeat, the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, and the state of the nation.90 If the focus of his speeches veered away from memories of 1870–1871, his faithful adherence to the anniversaries of the defeat and his determination to position himself alongside the fallen testify to the enduring significance he attached to the war dead. In arguing for the prioritization of national interests above all others, there could be no more powerful symbol than that of the fallen soldier who in sacrificing his life had done precisely that. As a Catholic and a republican, he combined the two approaches, elevating national devotion into an article of faith because, he believed, ‘patriotism, which is also a religion, has its symbols and its rites, as it has its apostles and its martyrs’.91 Casting himself as the spokesman and sole guardian of all those who had died for France by virtue of his earlier popularity as a patriotic poet, D´eroul`ede’s involvement in war remembrance incurred irritation from the outset. Each year, D´eroul`ede and his followers in the Ligue des Patriotes went to great lengths not merely to attend the war

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commemorations around Paris, but to try and wrest control of them from local authorities. At Champigny in particular, they engaged in an annual race against the mayor for prime position alongside the ossuary so that in their physical alignment with the dead they might appear morally and politically aligned with them.92 Standing next to the dead as he decried the lack of progress on revanche and the weakness of parliamentary government, D´eroul`ede evoked the painful losses of 1870–1871 as an emotive spur for action. Often attacking his opponents for engaging in politics when they should be showing respect for the dead, he was able to reject any vision of the nation that differed from his own. Thus during the commemorations at Buzenval on 17 January 1886, D´eroul`ede clashed angrily with supporters of the Commune who had arrived with red flags and banners, condemning them for attempting to turn memories of the war from a source of unity to a source of disagreement.93 For D´eroul`ede, those who had died in defeat merited an equal measure of devotion from the living. His entire approach towards the nation was inspired by his memories of 1870–1871 and was driven forward by his sense of obligation towards the dead. A keen observer and commentator upon the post-1870 cult of the dead, the nationalist Maurice Barr`es added a further dimension to it. Aged only eight when he witnessed soldiers retreating from Reichshoffen, Barr`es was deeply influenced by the pilgrimages of expiation organized by the Church after 1870, and he believed that through the rationality of positivism, he could harness the emotions surrounding death and direct them into patriotic fervour.94 He saw Catholicism primarily as a source of ritual, tradition, and approach rather than faith, being more convinced by Comte’s religion of humanity.95 Indeed, he also recognized the value of republican funerals, referring at one stage to the ‘social virtues of a cadaver’.96 Using Durkheim’s analysis of crowd psychology, Barr`es combined the solemnities of death with the capacities of ceremonies to shape and bind groups to conclude that the activities of the Ligue des Patriotes were the most effective in advancing the cause of nationalism.97 The land and Comte’s religion of the dead were at the heart of Barr`es’ thinking on the character of the French people and nation. He maintained that the people of France were inseparably connected with their past as each individual was merely the prolongation of their forefathers. In this deterministic vision, the dead acted as the roots for the nation, transmitting an accumulated heritage through the soil in which they were buried.98 Because peasants were closest to the land, Barr`es deemed them the best qualified in conveying the traditions that were central

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to the development of ‘national energy’.99 In the period after 1870, the dead also served a political purpose in acting as a shield against attempted Germanization following the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. Every year, Barr`es therefore conducted pilgrimages to the cemeteries of Alsace-Lorraine. Adopting positivist notions of immortality through posterity, he asserted that the war dead demanded national devotion; if they were forgotten they would be doubly dead, for they would have died on the battlefield and died again in public memory.100 As well as using religious concepts and language, Barr`es adopted patterns of behaviour associated with family bereavement to articulate the moral obligations of the French people towards their nation. Anthropological studies of bereavement in modern western societies show that because relationships revolve around conversations, mourners often wish to continue to converse with lost family and friends, either to keep them informed of developments or sometimes to seek advice.101 In much the same manner, Barr`es advocated communicating with the dead in the annexed territories to derive guidance and hope, for he believed that ‘the most humble grave, in Lorraine, makes conversation with me. Without this discussion, life no longer has any purpose.’102 In return, Barr`es would listen to their advice and avow his faithfulness to them.103 Since Freud, psychoanalytical theory has suggested that the bereaved should not attempt to leave behind those who have passed away but should rather seek to internalize them, incorporating elements of the character of the deceased into their own.104 In a similar vein, Barr`es compared national mourning with that of a family who do not cry for those they have lost but who try to keep them alive in their memories, reflecting upon what the deceased would do if they were still alive and trying to act as they would have done. Thus Barr`es claimed the strength of those who had died remained as potent as ever, enabling the dead to continue to help the living.105 Carrying such ideas forward into the First World War, Barr`es sought to inspire sacrifice with tales of soldiers’ resurrection and the enduring presence of fallen comrades-in-arms. By employing practices established by the Catholic Church, the Republic, and ordinary families, Barr`es developed his own notions of the cult of the dead to articulate a vision of the nation and to draw the French people into it. Speaking at the unveiling ceremony for the war memorial in Bergerac in 1890, Bishop Dabert described the two dominant feelings tearing at the French soul. One was religious, while the other was national; each, however, had its martyrs. Thus, he observed, ‘in this fin de si`ecle, there has developed in each corner of the fatherland, a kind of rivalry

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in efforts to honour in a statue those names which are more or less worthy of honour’.106 For ultimately there was not one cult of the war dead but several. That supported by the Catholic Church ultimately looked to the dead to affirm Christian beliefs; that sponsored by anticlerical republicans ultimately looked to the dead to affirm republican beliefs. Between the two extremes lay a range of perspectives drawing on Christian practices and benefiting from republican patriotic enthusiasm. Before and after the separation of Church and State, religion occupied an ambiguous position in the republican cult of the war dead of 1870– 1871. While seeking to shift public faith towards the Republic, religion provided a source of inspiration, a familiar set of rituals and discourses, and a bank of emotional or even spiritual attachment to the nation that republicanism could not generate alone. In its faithful observance of supposedly sacred rites, the post-1870 cult of the war dead did resemble a new national religion, but it was not the same civic religion identified by Antoine Prost. The post-1914 secular republican cult which sought to imbue citizens with a sense of duty after the carnage of the First World War resulted from the separation of Church and State and saw fallen citizens being honoured by their peers in locally initiated, rather than state-directed, commemorative acts. Through their rituals of remembrance, they created an emotional bond with the Republic, deepening a shared sense of civic duty. At the same time, however, Prost observes that memorials listing the dead served to demonstrate that the Republic was merely the sum of its citizens and that the nation or army ought not to be ‘deified’.107 Of course, after 1914 the cult of the war dead acquired a different function to that of the post-1870 period, focusing on notions of the enduring presence of fallen soldiers to convince a war-weary public not to betray the cause for which their loved ones had died. In such concepts of duty, the influence of Catholicism was evident. Indeed, the Church argued that just as Christians were obliged to remember the sacrifice on the cross, so France was obliged to remember the war dead.108 Thus although Prost highlights the secular nature of the post-1914 cult of the war dead, the significance of Catholic patriotism ought not to be underestimated.109 Popular Catholicism and the deeply ingrained Christian sacrificial discourse fed into beliefs that war offered the opportunity for martyrdom and expiation; the Church therefore led the construction of national ossuaries as symbols of consolation for a sacrifice which had not been in vain.110 Whereas Protestant thinking after the Reformation rejected the theological foundations of the cult of the dead, removing death from the core of northern European cultural and societal values, the same was not the case in southern Europe.111

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The significance ascribed to the fallen soldiers of 1870–1871 combined with deeply entrenched Catholic ideas to give death in combat a new political potency. Because the loss of individual citizens mattered, and because the political character of the nation was under intense scrutiny, those who died in the Franco-Prussian War came to occupy a central role in the struggle to remould and revitalize France after the defeat.

3 Taboos

Scholarship on memory often emphasizes its continuous oscillation between the pressures of remembering and forgetting, for the study of memory is as much about what is forgotten as it is about what is remembered. Attempts to forget uncomfortable aspects of l’ann´ee terrible lay at the heart of public confrontations with memories of the Franco-Prussian War, prompting Robert Gildea to argue that rather than accepting the reality of the collapse, France took refuge in a kind of denial or ‘collective amnesia’.1 Despite this, as Monica Wehner has observed, forgetting is often neglected as a subject of study in its own right, being dismissed merely as a ‘malfunction’ or ‘slippage’ of memory.2 In psychoanalysis, forgetting is considered to be caused by repression, signalling discomfort and desired avoidance, but it might also be regarded as part of the ordinary workings of memory, enabling organization and orientation.3 Indeed, in Nietzschean thinking, healthy societies need to be able to forget because too much memory can be as dangerous as too little; forgetting may therefore help to heal internal divisions, especially after the experiences of civil conflict.4 In a fascinating theoretical examination of memory and forgetting, F. R. Ankersmit has identified four types of forgetting: the first relates to mundane repeated quotidian activities that appear to hold no great significance; the second involves forgetting elements that are fundamental to the construction of identity but of which one may be unaware; the third type is the often incomplete suppression of trauma; the fourth type occurs when profoundly transformative developments lead to engagement with one environment and the forgetting of that which preceded it. Where experiences of trauma are such that a new identity cannot easily be formed afterwards, the new identity is often shaped by the enduring presence of the trauma and the inescapable legacies of the 77

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past. Where there is a schism within society, trauma may never achieve closure because any attempt at looking back is necessarily performed from the perspective of the present, therein reinforcing the trauma and preventing reconciliation.5 In other words, as Freud observes, once it has been experienced, the past can never truly be forgotten.6 Forgetting may therefore involve the transition of memory from the conscious to the unconscious, while trauma-induced forgetting may signal the presence of some kind of obstruction hindering access to recollections of the past.7 In recent historical scholarship on memory, national forgetting has often been equated with individual forgetting, with nations portrayed as seeking to repress unbearable traumas in the same manner as individuals might do. Indeed, in his study of French confrontations with memories of the Second World War, Henry Rousso argues that the traumas of the occupation and the nation’s internal divisions revealed themselves in political, social, and cultural life, producing a set of symptoms that he describes as the ‘Vichy Syndrome’. Portraying France as a ‘patient’ suffering from a kind of ‘illness’, Rousso suggests that failed efforts to suppress uncomfortable memories of the war during the 1950s and 1960s led to their unexpected re-emergence and the subsequent aggravation of the nation’s condition.8 Yet treating an entire nation as an individual can be problematic; a nation does not respond to crises and stimuli in a uniform manner, and while Rousso’s analysis may tell us about the state of national public opinion, its linear approach does not fully accommodate the range of local, individual, and other memories.9 Like many studies of collective memory, Rousso concentrates largely upon the elite national political and cultural level. As Paul Ricoeur observes, however, even if individual memory is not dealt with explicitly in historical scholarship, its importance must implicitly be recognized because forgetting on an official level requires the active participation of the individual.10 Just as collective memories are deemed to be plural in nature, so collective forgetting might also be deemed multiple. Thus what is excluded from the memory of one community may lie at the heart of the memory of another. And while there might appear to be subjects that are not remembered, these lacunae underline the need not only to look at the creation and articulation of memories but also their intended function and reception. Indeed, analysing how the Franco-Prussian War was represented in cultural forms reveals a different picture to that gained from examining how it was expressed in war memorials and commemorations. In this sense, just as identifying a dominant memory is problematic, so identifying a ‘collective amnesia’ is also difficult.

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While acknowledging the notion that forgetting does not necessarily imply loss of the past, it might therefore be more helpful to consider the absences from public memories not so much as forgotten matters but as taboo subjects. Memories of the Second Empire, the Paris Commune, and the failings of the army were inescapable and ever present in the political culture of the early Third Republic. Despite the destruction of symbols associated with the Second Empire and the demolition of its credibility in the collapse at Sedan, after almost 20 years the regime had left its mark on the national landscape and political culture. The Paris Commune may have been more short-lived, but its legacy also endured in public memory and, thanks to the Sacr´e-Coeur basilica, in the visual landscape of Paris as well. In the initial decades after l’ann´ee terrible, however, such memories were largely absent from moderate republicandominated public discourse on the war. Deemed harmful by moderate republicans seeking to model the patriotic national revival in their own manner, these memories periodically intruded into culture and politics because of their capacity to empower rival groups competing for legitimacy. By contrast, while the 1871 uprisings in Algeria represented a serious challenge to the nature of French rule and threatened to undermine the reputation of the army, geographical separation and rising colonial ambitions ensured that developments across the Mediterranean were more easily excluded from memories of l’ann´ee terrible. The post-1871 patriotic mobilization sought to bury the realities of the defeat beneath narratives of glory and heroism, but it operated on a conscious and limited level. Writing shortly before the publication of La d´ebˆacle in 1892, Emile Zola observed that Hitherto there has been a belief in the necessity of great and heroic military legend. There has been in pictures, in literary tales, even in historical annals, a tacit agreement to suppress the failures and the faults, admitting only brilliant acts, the exaltation of patriotism even in the midst of defeat.11 Zola’s attempt to end the distorted treatment of the defeat in his final instalment of the Rougon-Macquart series has sometimes been regarded as the moment when the patriotic consensus on the war began to break down, to be finally blown apart with the Dreyfus Affair. Yet patriotic representations of the war after 1871 did not signal the emergence of a settled and homogenized public memory that had completely suppressed any uncomfortable truths. Indeed, they were not a reflection of public feeling so much as an attempt to shape and define it by those who

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hoped to raise the country above its recent disasters. Zola was therefore not responsible for exploding patriotic unity in relation to the war but for revealing it as little more than a political fac¸ade.

The cult of the army Despite the humiliating nature of the defeat, the army emerged from l’ann´ee terrible with its reputation remarkably unscathed. While there was widespread acknowledgement of the need for its reform, more than ever before, it became a symbol of national virtue and a rallying-point for national recovery. The resulting cult of the army spread across the arts, education, and sport, lying at the centre of revanchist aspirations, republicanizing agendas, and conservative hopes for moral regeneration. As Richard Thomson and Franc¸ois Robichon have observed, visual art was at the heart of the cult, with military painting enjoying particular success in the Salons and among the public. In paintings such as Perboyre’s Artillerie a` cheval aux grandes manoeuvres (1883) and Berne-Bellecour’s Exercice d’artillerie (1898), soldiers’ training and preparation for war offered hope, while in Maurice Roy’s La part des pauvres (1886), soldiers handing out food to the poor conveyed an image of a citizen army closely integrated into the life of the nation. As the symbolic distribution of the flags for the first official celebrations of Bastille Day in 1880 indicated, the army played an integral role in the new Republic. The appetite for paintings of the Franco-Prussian War may have waned in the decades after the defeat but images of the army remained popular. Children’s stories and advertisements for toys used military scenes to appeal to their customers, school manuals introduced military instruction into the classroom, and children were taught to write essays on the personal and national benefits of serving in the army.12 Under the education reforms of the early 1880s, gymnastics entered the curriculum and school battalions were established to help improve the discipline and physical fitness of France’s future soldiers.13 While the school battalions were later abandoned, the generations growing up in the early Third Republic were left in no doubt as to their duties towards the nation. As Raoul Girardet observes, after 1870 notions of the army became inseparable from notions of the nation.14 Yet the army was not without its critics. The brutal suppression of the Paris Commune led many on the far left to feel vindicated in their long-held view that the army was a force of danger and reaction. In the period thereafter, the expansion of military service helped to produce a rise in anti-militarist sentiment among men who felt brutalized by

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the harsh atmosphere of the barracks. A series of high-profile cases over anti-militarist literature divided public opinion over the balance between freedom of expression and the need to uphold loyalty to the army in the aftermath of the defeat. Paul Bonnetain’s Autour de la caserne of 1885 portrayed army life as immoral, while Henry F`evre’s Au port d’armes of 1887 told the story of a soldier’s relentless persecution by his sergeant. Yet it was Lucien Descaves’ Les Sous-Offs that created the greatest controversy, resulting in the author and his publishers being prosecuted on 53 charges of libelling the army.15 If the rise of socialist internationalism fuelled anti-militarism, the onset of the Dreyfus Affair opened the floodgates, sweeping away much of the remaining public deference towards the army. The defeat heightened sensitivities and transformed any act of disloyalty towards the army into a betrayal of the nation. When it came to assessing soldiers’ conduct in 1870–1871, however, the room for criticism was even narrower. Military chiefs and irregular forces were subject to considerable criticism during and after the war, but as symbols of the defence of the nation, the actions of rank-and-file soldiers were meant to be beyond reproach. In contrast with popular notions of an unequivocally glorious defeat, conservatives painted irregular forces in the worst possible light. Seeing the regular army as guarantor of political and social harmony, the monarchist-dominated National Assembly of 1871 blamed many of the military setbacks on the forces mobilized by the republican Government of National Defence. Instead of being credited with military glory, armed citizens were accused of inciting indiscipline, insurrection, and civil war, their disaffected ranks being blamed for forming the nuclei of the Communes of Paris, Lyon, and elsewhere. While cultural representations of the war celebrated the patriotic value of the improvised national defence, conservatives and even moderate republicans criticized irregular forces and prescribed a return to a disciplined professional army. For their part, those on the left responded by accusing army commanders and even some soldiers of incompetence and defeatism. Suggesting that those who had joined the army under the Second Empire had lacked the will to defend the Republic, the left accused regular forces of responsibility for the defeat. Criticisms of the army were thus not a taboo subject and when Zola published La d´ebˆacle it was not the first negation of patriotic myths. As Claude Digeon argues, writers belonging to the ‘generation of 1870’ felt no responsibility for the defeat and therefore felt less humiliated by it than older generations had done.16 Those espousing a naturalist philosophy were therefore less concerned with the war per se than with

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the social tensions that it had revealed. Bringing together stories by Emile Zola, Guy de Maupassant, J. K. Huysmans, Henry C´eard, Paul Alexis, and L´eon Hennique, the publication of Les soir´ees de M´edan in 1880 incurred strong criticism. For while most writers after 1871 had sought to create a patriotic memory of the war, the M´edan writers did not shy away from exploring its less glorious social consequences. Their impact was, however, far less than that which accompanied the publication of La d´ebˆacle in 1892. For whereas the short stories of Les soir´ees de M´edan had merely been set in the war, La d´ebˆacle sought to construct a historical account of it, and whereas Les soir´ees de M´edan offered fictional tales of betrayal, La d´ebˆacle insisted that its tales of betrayal were true. The most controversial of Zola’s claims was that soldiers had failed to perform their duties. Over the course of his epic narrative, Zola described numerous incidents of indiscipline, desertion, and refusal to fight, each of which was said to have been based on eyewitness accounts and documentary evidence. In the weeks following the publication of La d´ebˆacle, the pages of the Parisian press were filled with veterans’ furious refutations and Zola’s defiant insistences. Colonel du Ponchalon, a veteran of the Army of Chˆalons, denied that soldiers had abandoned their weapons at Wissembourg, Froeschwiller, or Sedan, while Jules Arnaud dismissed the allegations as ‘fantasy and comedy’, asserting that many of the dead had been found still clutching their arms.17 General Morel, meanwhile, objected to the suggestions of desertion, retorting that Zola had never been a soldier and therefore had little understanding of the army.18 In October 1892, Zola was compelled to respond to the backlash, insisting in that ‘it is not true that everyone did their duty’.19 Given that the army had not been entirely immune from criticism after 1871, the virulent reaction against La d´ebˆacle might be attributed to the fact that it dealt with the supposedly sacred memory of the war. Yet many of Zola’s claims were not new. That some battalions had suffered from poor morale and poor discipline was well known. In August 1872, for instance, newspapers reported upon the court-martial of Captain Cerfbeer who was found guilty of having surrendered himself in December 1870.20 Several war memoirs and eyewitness accounts of the war also described the collapse of the army. According to a reporter for L’Eclair of Lun´eville, as early as 10 August, troops arriving in the town had displayed signs of demoralization, and many had abandoned their weapons claiming that they had been betrayed by their commanders.21 One account of the defence of Laon described how in early September 1870, disorder and indiscipline had been rife among General Vinoy’s

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troops.22 Even General Lebrun conceded that the spirit of indiscipline had penetrated the very core of several units fighting around Sedan.23 Morale in the capital was shown to have been little better. In November 1871 Henri Dichard, a veteran of Le Bourget, published a candid account of the battle detailing acts of ‘betrayal’ and desertion by senior army commanders and fellow mobiles, insisting that incidents of ‘cowardice and treason were too numerous not to be stigmatized’.24 His claims were later supported by Alfred Duquet, whose book described how many gardes mobiles had deserted their posts owing to poor weather conditions and a lack of food.25 The reluctance of some civilians to help French soldiers was also well documented. J. W. McMichael, for instance, noted that in Metz shopkeepers held back their provisions in the hope of selling them later at inflated prices while soldiers and their neighbours starved, and Gabriel Monod recorded that the peasants of Beauce were unwilling to help wounded French soldiers, being more sympathetic towards German troops.26 That such claims could have been made prior to the publication of La d´ebˆacle without stirring any significant adverse reaction suggests that the problem lay less with what was being said than with the way that Zola said it. Indeed, as Paul Alexis observed in June 1892, the acute sensitivities of Zola’s audiences heightened their reactions against any perceived criticism of the army.27 Whereas reports of indiscipline in newspapers or war memoirs could pass relatively unnoticed by the general public, many believed that such a major work by an established author had a duty to provide a moral boost for the nation. Zola’s failure to contribute towards the revival and the irreverence with which he attacked patriotic cultural discourse on the war unleashed the full wrath of veterans and nationalists alike. Thus for General Morel, the most objectionable aspect of Zola’s work was its presentation of a ‘grotesque caricature of our brave army’ which he put forward ‘without worrying about France, without respecting the feelings of patriotism [ . . . ], without consideration for our national honour’.28 Jules Arnaud also condemned its ‘demoralizing’ effect, attacking it for exaggerating the negative sides of military life and for teaching younger generations to be ashamed of their fathers.29 Zola did not reveal previously unknown or suppressed information relating to the war and it was not that the army’s failings had somehow been forgotten after 1871; it was rather that patriotic exigencies had demanded their removal from cultural discourse. For Philippe Gille and many others, it was with some apprehension that he began to read La d´ebˆacle; he feared that within its pages resided the very memories which he had been trying so hard to forget.30

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Legacies of the Second Empire Even under the conservative regime of Moral Order in the early 1870s, patriotic cultural discourse was primarily framed in republican terms. If the battles in Alsace-Lorraine and the defence of Bazeilles had useful functions as symbols of French martyrdom, the phase of the war conducted before 4 September 1870 was a problematic subject. The period of the war under the Second Empire fitted neither with myths of France as a victim of German brutality nor with efforts to consolidate the new Republic. The problem was that cultural discourse could be selective in disregarding particular aspects of the war but it could not completely efface them from public memories. The battle of Sedan was a case in point. Synonymous with disaster and humiliation, many moderate republicans deemed its memory to be harmful to the national revival. They may have considered Sedan to represent the culmination of Napoleon III’s betrayal of France in his attempts to protect his own dynasty, but they could derive little political capital from the fact that the Republic had been born in controversial circumstances out of a national disaster. While Germany turned the anniversary of Sedan into a day of celebration, many in France would have preferred to forget that it had ever happened. Unfortunately for them, however, the people of Sedan could neither escape nor easily efface the memories of 1870–1871. Having a long history of successful resistance against invasion dating back to the fifteenth century, in the years after the defeat public opinion in the town grew increasingly irritated at the stigma attached to its name.31 Many residents believed that Sedan was unjustly bearing the burden of a national humiliation and that its unfortunate associations rendered it the only town in France unable to forge a heroic memory from the events of 1870–1871.32 Aiming to re-appropriate the memory and identity of Sedan, in October 1890 the local community therefore resolved to erect a war memorial that would replace images of humiliation with images of glory. From the outset, however, successive governments greeted the initiative with barely disguised hostility. Prime Minister Charles de Freycinet not only declined the position of honorary presidency of the monument committee, but refused to allow subscription lists to be circulated within the army as well.33 Acutely aware of the necessity of heroic myths in the post-war revival, politicians in the capital objected to the idea of erecting a national memorial in Sedan, advising that it should have a purely regional character. The problem was that they wished to separate Sedan from the national defeat in order to spare the Republic of the

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stigma attached to Sedan, while the people of Sedan wished to separate the memories in order to spare themselves of the stigma attached to the national defeat. The negative government response changed the campaign into a crusade to transform memories of Sedan’s painful humiliation into memories of glory.34 Despite many senators and deputies warning that there would be widespread public opposition to any monument recalling ‘that awful defeat’, Sedan’s residents and many municipal councils across the country did not regard the events of 31 August to 1 September 1870 as a subject of stigma.35 The ground swell of public support for the monument may partly be attributed to the committee’s successful repackaging of the memories of Sedan. Ignoring the catastrophic errors made by Napoleon III and his military commanders, former Mayor Auguste Philippoteaux insisted that the scale and inevitability of the defeat rendered Sedan’s defenders especially heroic because they had continued to fight ‘with the sole hope of conserving [ . . . ] the honour of the army and the reputation of France!’36 The newly recast memory of Sedan thus centred on the bravery of soldiers from all over France. Towering far above the statue of Turenne which honoured a more successful element in Sedan’s history, the memorial comprised three bronze figures on a granite pedestal (Figure 3.1). The first figure was an infantryman leaning on his rifle and cannon to steady him as he fell down, mortally wounded. Above him, a winged allegory of Glory was poised to bestow a crown of laurels upon his head. The monument committee had explicitly rejected the proposal of an exclusively funerary monument, but the bronze palm and wreath at the base of the plinth nonetheless expressed sentiments of mourning.37 Set against the plinth stood a female allegory of Sedan clutching a flag and writing ‘Impavidus numero victus’, which was translated as ‘impassive under fire, they only succumbed under force of numbers’.38 Two bas-reliefs on either side of the pedestal narrated episodes of French heroism; the first portrayed the chasseurs d’Afrique in the cavalry charge at Floing, while the second conveyed the defence of the bridge at Bazeilles. With no reference to the capitulation for which the fortress town was known, the monument sought to suffuse memories of Sedan with heroic memories of its neighbouring villages. Despite support for the memorial from residents of Sedan and numerous municipal councils, the view from government remained that the ghosts of 1870 had not yet been laid to rest. First, in January 1896, the Prefect of the Seine stated that he was reluctant to allow On´esymeAristide Croisy’s statue to be exhibited in Paris, claiming that it might arouse painful memories among members of the public.39 Then, after

86 Under the Shadow of Defeat

Figure 3.1 On´esyme-Aristide Croisy, Monument aux morts de Sedan, Sedan (1893–1897)

some initial hesitation, the M´eline government announced that no minister would attend the unveiling ceremony which was due to take place on 7 August 1897.40 Many nationalist, radical, and socialist newspapers condemned the decision, claiming that ministerial presence at Sedan would have underlined the illegitimacy of the Germany victory.41 But there were not so much diplomatic as domestic considerations

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behind the government decision. Despite the transfiguration of defeat into moral victory in cultural discourse and in many war commemorations across the country, memories of Sedan could not be so easily altered. Indeed, as the Parisian newspaper La R´epublique Franc¸aise and the moderate republican Les Ardennes argued, plans to transform the unveiling ceremony into a ‘fˆete’ would have been completely at odds with the inescapably ignominious debacle at Sedan.42 Regardless of their political makeup, every government of the early Third Republic had to deal with the fallout of l’ann´ee terrible. Unlike most other episodes in the war, however, the battle of Sedan could only ever be detrimental to the post-1871 damage limitation exercise. Erecting a monument in its memory not only threatened to rub salt into the wounds of those who bore a grudge against republicans for the revolution of 4 September 1870, but also risked reviving memories of the connection between the birth of the Third Republic and military defeat. It was thus a subject that many would have been happy to bury. For those who lived in Sedan, however, there could be no escaping the shadow it cast over the nation’s recent past. Representing a central reference-point for all shades of opinion and for new constructions of the nation after the collapse of the Second Empire, Sedan was at once a taboo subject within government and an inescapable, defining element in public memories of l’ann´ee terrible. One of the other problems with republican myths of a glorious defeat was that despite the humiliation of Sedan, the period of the war conducted under the Second Empire produced some of its most heroic episodes. Such was the case with the cavalry charge at Floing on 1 September 1870, which entered public mythology as a tale of supreme bravery in the face of death. In a last-ditch attempt to halt the German advance, General Ducrot called upon General Margueritte’s cavalry to beat a passage through German forces to enable the French infantry to move forward.43 But Margueritte was riding out to reconnoitre the hills around Floing when he was fatally wounded by a German bullet. Vowing to avenge his death, the French cavalry tore down the steep slopes, only to be mown down by German breech-loading guns. Again and again, cavalrymen charged to almost certain death, and when Ducrot called upon General de Galliffet to keep going, Galliffet replied, ‘as often as you like, so long as there is one of us left’. The heroic self-sacrifice of the cavalrymen at Floing earned the admiration of Wilhelm I; as he watched from a nearby hilltop, he was moved to pay tribute to their bravery. Notwithstanding this, however, it took until 1910 for a monument to be erected in their honour.

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At a time when French patriots were seeking episodes of glory as substitutes for the shame of defeat, the apparent reluctance to erect a monument to capitalize on the heroic charge at Floing requires explanation. The story entered public mythology, being recounted in numerous war memoirs and novels. In his popular Franc¸ais et Allemands series, Dick de Lonlay described the cavalrymen as ‘soldiers of the first order’ who saved the honour of the army, for ‘that charge, the last hope of our army, where our brave cavalry, decimated, threw themselves towards death with the enthusiasm of a day of glory, was useless’.44 Even Zola upheld the grandeur of the episode, declining to engage in the irreverent anti-patriotic iconoclasm that he employed elsewhere.45 Yet unlike the cavalry charges at Reichshoffen and R´ezonville which were portrayed in major paintings by Detaille, Aim´e Morot, Henri Dupray, and others, and which were also deemed to bring glory to the defeat, Floing failed to inspire works of art of any great calibre. Paintings by Ernest Delahaye and James Walker in the late 1880s were followed in 1903 by Jules Rouffet’s Les braves gens and Perboyre’s Le G´en´eral Margueritte a` Floing in 1905, but none really caught the public imagination.46 It might be argued that Floing suffered from its association with the stigma attached to Sedan, yet as we have already seen, Sedan gained its own memorial in 1897, and was represented in numerous paintings. The reasons for the disparity in the ways the incident was treated must therefore lie in the specific nature of the event itself. Memories of the French cavalry were ambiguous. The men in General Margueritte’s division had been widely admired before the war and became even more revered in the period thereafter. The chasseurs d’Afrique had made their reputation in decades of fighting in Africa, and when they were deployed in 1870, efforts were made to ensure that units who had previously fought alongside one another in the Crimea, Italy, and Algeria would do so again.47 Despite the heavy losses of 1870, the heroism of the cavalrymen entered the public memory and spurred military theorists to continue to value cavalry charges for many years.48 Yet while the cavalry exemplified the courage of France’s soldiers, it also symbolized the backwardness of the French army and situated heroism within an elitist, aristocratic, Bonapartist military framework rather than a democratic, republican notion of the people-in-arms. The defeat raised suggestions of the sterility of military thinking in the army’s high command. While the Prussian cavalry had learned the lessons of its failures against Austria in 1866, the French cavalry had failed to implement the changes that were so urgently needed. The Niel reforms of 1868 had

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downgraded their number and significance, yet planners continued to vaunt their symbolic and military effectiveness. During the 1860s, officers seeking to protect their forces created an image of the cavalry not only as being militarily pivotal but as a glorious symbol of French military identity as well.49 Soon after the war ended, the army began to re-evaluate its thinking, concluding that in the face of improved technology, bravery was no longer sufficient to ensure success.50 Yet it was loathe to abandon a force that had conducted itself in such an exemplary fashion, and in the military review of 29 June 1871, the sight of around 20,000 mounted cavalrymen provided a symbol of hope for many.51 Two heroes emerged in public memories of the charge at Floing: Margueritte and Galliffet. From the outset, Margueritte’s supporters turned his death into the most romantic mythology. His orderly officer described Margueritte’s dying moments as his transition to martyrdom: Every head was bent, swords were respectfully lowered, and one cry issued from every throat: ‘long live the General! Let us avenge him! . . . ’ The General thanked them with a movement of his head, and still had sufficient strength to point out the direction of the enemy, striving to cry ‘Forward!’52 His sons, Paul and Victor Margueritte, aged just ten and four when they lost their father, went on to produce numerous works of fiction and non-fiction in his memory. Yet while the losses at Floing were commonly represented as redemptive acts of self-sacrifice for the army and nation, one veteran of Sedan publishing his memoirs anonymously in 1871 cast doubt upon the heroism of the episode, claiming that Margueritte ‘encountered the death he had been looking for to escape the humiliation’.53 Such comments may, of course, simply reflect personal rancour, especially in the immediate aftermath of the defeat, but other accounts questioned the heroism of the episode. The military historian General Palat writing in 1907 claimed that the 3rd chasseurs who were generally credited with the feat did not participate in the second charge, but were instead discovered ‘resting behind a line of infantry lying flat on their stomachs, completely demoralized, deaf to the voices of their chiefs, of the generals’.54 There appear to be no obvious political reasons for Palat deliberately seeking to diminish the reputation of the 3rd chasseurs, and there is no reason to suggest that his sources were unreliable, so we must conclude that the claims were at least partially true.

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Further evidence pointing towards discomfort with memories of Margueritte and his men may be found in the responses to the initial proposal of 12 October 1890 that the monument at Sedan should be a monument dedicated jointly to the general and his comrades-in-arms. Senior figures in government strongly discouraged the glorification of ‘any particular individual’, recommending instead the construction of a ‘purely symbolic’ monument focusing not just on Floing but on all those who had died at Beaumont, Bazeilles, and Sedan.55 Such a reaction against any tribute to Margueritte and his men might initially appear to be a surprising response, for during his lifetime, Margueritte was not known as a controversial or even overtly political figure. He began his career by enlisting in the gendarmes maures and was promoted to the rank of general in late August 1870. His son Paul described him as having despised politics, although he also conceded that he had been a supporter of strong government under the Second Empire and an opponent of republicanism.56 Given that the proposal for a monument to Margueritte was raised in the months of October to November 1890, government opposition might at least partially be located within a wider concern about the popularity of the Boulanger movement. A tribute to a heroic general who had died fighting the German enemy might have become a focus for bellicose nationalism; indeed, six years earlier D´eroul`ede had used the inauguration of the monument to Margueritte in Fresnes-en-Wo¨evre to lament the lack of progress on revanche.57 A second cause for ministerial anxiety lay in the connection between Margueritte and Bonapartism. The Boulangist movement was boosted by the support of Bonapartists whose viability as an electoral force had been greatly diminished by the divisive leadership of Prince J´erˆ omeNapoleon. While Margueritte ought not to be regarded as a Bonapartist figure, he nonetheless represented a figure of glory in the imperial army, having served most of his career under the Second Empire, and having been visited by Napoleon III as he lay on his deathbed. From the earliest war commemorations, even under the conservative administrations of the early 1870s, memories of the Second Empire caused discomfort. Cultural representations of the war also tended to focus on the post-Sedan war of national defence, and those that did seek to present the period of conflict under the Second Empire in a positive light risked being shunned by critics and the public. Paul-Alexandre Protais, who spent part of the war attached to the staff of General Ladmirault, failed to enjoy popular success with his displays of loyalty to the imperial army in his paintings La s´eparation of 1872 and Metz of 1874.58 A major plank in the post-war political and cultural agenda

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was to discredit Bonapartism; regardless of his wartime actions, turning Margueritte into a hero would have made little political sense to many republicans. The second hero to emerge from the episode at Floing, General Galliffet, had even more problematic political associations. As Chapters 5 and 8 will discuss in further detail, Galliffet was closely connected with the regime of Napoleon III, and while he was widely hailed a hero at Sedan, he also became known as the ‘butcher of the Commune’ for his arbitrary shooting of prisoners during the civil war. By the mid-1870s, he had shed his earlier political convictions to become a republican and ally of Gambetta, and in 1899 he entered government as War Minister under Waldeck-Rousseau. Like Margueritte, Galliffet’s actions in the famous cavalry charge were later questioned. In the notes that were intended to be published as his memoirs, Galliffet conceded that the words he had uttered to Ducrot had been given a different sense in post-war mythology. When Ducrot had called upon him to make one further charge, Galliffet had been angry and his response was intended to have been ironic; in vowing to keep going ‘so long as there is one of us left’, his words were meant to have been a bitter comment that ‘so long as there remains one man alive, he is capable of dying’.59 More significantly, Galliffet’s role in the cavalry charge was exaggerated in public memories and in numerous military accounts. In his war memoirs published in 1884, General Lebrun, who led the 12th corps at Bazeilles and who was a close advisor to Napoleon III, sought to set the record straight. Insisting that he did not intend to diminish Galliffet’s glory, Lebrun wrote that contrary to post-war myths, Galliffet had not led the sole charge ordered by Ducrot, but had in fact only led the second charge.60 Galliffet’s presence in the mythology of Floing had lost some of its political potency by the 1890s as memories of the Commune had faded and Galliffet had consolidated his distinguished military career. Yet despite the doubts cast upon his actions at Floing, he was given a central position in the monument to the chasseurs d’Afrique erected in 1910, whereas Margueritte was curiously absent (Figure 3.2). Initiated by the Union Nationale des Anciens Chasseurs d’Afrique and funded by public subscription, the memorial featured a white stone statue of France in mourning, crying at the loss of her children. Owing to the height of the monument, however, the audience’s attention is drawn to the bas-relief sculpture of the cavalry charge and thus also to Galliffet whose famous words are inscribed next to it (Figure 3.3). Galliffet died in 1909 having spent his tenure as War Minister attempting to steer the army through

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Figure 3.2 Monument aux Chasseurs d’Afrique, Floing (Ardennes) (1910)

the Dreyfus Affair. His entry into government in 1899 was meant at once to rein in and to reassure the army vis-`a-vis the Republic, but he resigned having lost the confidence of officers who had come to suspect him of being a Dreyfusard agent.61 Thus whereas after 1871 Galliffet had been seen as an enemy of the left, by 1902 he had become a respected republican figure and an enemy of the right. No representative of Margueritte’s family attended the unveiling ceremony because the 1910 memorial had effectively written him out of the story, replacing his heroism with that

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Figure 3.3

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Inscription on the Monument aux Chasseurs d’Afrique

of Galliffet.62 If during the first decades after the war the episode at Floing had been problematic because it appeared to glorify the Second Empire, by the early twentieth century, the political divisions had shifted such that the army’s position within the Republic and the threat of European war were the principal issues at stake. The monument of 1910 therefore sought to reassert confidence in the army and in France’s preparedness for war. After the divisions of the Dreyfus Affair, this was to be a wholly moderate republican narrative, and thus while he had once been hailed the hero of Floing, in the circumstances of 1910 there could be no room for the anti-republican Margueritte.

The Paris Commune The greatest subject of discomfort relating to l’ann´ee terrible was, of course, the Paris Commune. From the outset, conservatives and moderate republicans made concerted efforts to separate memories of the Franco-Prussian War from those of the Paris Commune. For the Commune and subsequent civil war underlined the implausibility of myths of national unity. The fact that the uprising had taken place under the banner of republican patriotism in opposition to the French surrender of January 1871 posed particular problems for those who claimed that

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they represented the true interests of the nation. The Commune thus became a problematic, ever-present memory, especially in the early years of the Third Republic. For the left, it bequeathed an ambiguous legacy, at once of catastrophic failure and of momentary glory. For the right, it bequeathed a bitter aftertaste of fear and distrust of the left, the masses, and Paris. Although the early Third Republic sought to draw a line under the experiences of the Commune, the lengthy judicial process of dealing with around 50,000 prisoners helped to keep the issue at the forefront of public concern. Between the arrival of MacMahon to the presidency and the republican consolidation of the late 1870s, those actively seeking to combat attempts to forget the Commune were in a minority. Many on the right feared an imminent revival of the Commune, especially with rising republican support in elections across the country. Moderate republicans thus consciously distanced themselves from any connection with revolutionary ideas, and even after they had strengthened their hold on government, it was only with reluctance and with a view to retaining electoral support in the capital that they granted an amnesty for former Communards.63 The amnesty contributed towards normalizing memories of the Commune by reintegrating its supporters into political, cultural, and social life, yet such ‘institutionalized forgetting’ was at odds with the enduring afterlife of the events of March to May 1871. With Catholic discourse centred on themes of expiation and redemption, and republicans having to guard against fears of extremism, there could be little escape from memories of the Commune. Opponents of the Commune commonly represented the episode as a necessary and curative amputation of France’s septic limb; while the civil war was bloody and destructive, it enabled the otherwise healthy body of France to live on. In this sense, there was no need to continue to dwell upon it. The Commune was therefore virtually absent from French culture at least until the late 1880s when the consolidation of the Republic, the amnesty for former Communards, and the passage of time rendered memories of the episode less sensitive. No novels dealing explicitly with the Commune were published until Jules Vall`es’ L’insurg´e of 1886 and even in the years thereafter, literary representations remained few and far between.64 The crushing of the Commune was typically described as ushering in a fresh start for the nation, the dawning of a new age, and the beginning of reconstruction. In La d´ebˆacle, Zola saw renewal in the flames of Paris as the true, enduring France re-emerging from the flames. For Paul and Victor Margueritte, the beginnings of the revival lay not with the suppression of the Commune but rather with the military

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review of 29 June 1871, when the sight of 120,000 soldiers marching in unison provides hope and an antidote to the divisions of the war and civil war.65 In contrast with the reticence in literature, the belligerents on both sides were quick to publish their own versions of events, each stressing their own patriotism and virtue in opposition to the violence and immorality of their enemies. Moderate republican historians sought to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Commune’s republicanism while condemning its more extreme acts. The semaine sanglante proved to be a particularly controversial subject, with republican historians such as Camille Pelletan responding to conservative allegations of violence with claims that the Versaillais suppression of the uprising was far bloodier than any act committed under the Commune.66 Thus whereas literary works sought to avoid the Commune for almost two decades, the debate in historical writings and personal memoirs helped to ensure its continuing presence within the public consciousness. Between 1871 and the late 1880s, overt representations of the Commune in art were also rare, for it was a subject that had little commercial appeal and it stood in opposition to dominant thinking on artists’ role in the national revival. The political sensitivity of conservative governments of the early Third Republic meant that paintings of the Commune risked being barred from the Salons. Indeed, Ernest Pichio’s anti-Versaillais Le triomphe de l’ordre was excluded from the Salon of 1875 on the grounds that it revived not only painful but also dangerous memories. In March 1875, the marquis de Chennevi`eres wrote to Pichio warning that his portrayal of the civil war revived ‘painful memories’ that might ‘stir up political passions’.67 Over the course of 1871, artists who participated in or observed the events in the capital produced a wide variety of lithographs, sketches, and paintings. Gustave Courbet earned notoriety for his involvement in the Commune, but many other artists, including Manet, Gustave Dor´e, and Meissonier, opposed its excesses in images of revulsion and violence.68 The destruction of prominent buildings and the killings on both sides were depicted in works such as Manet’s La barricade (1871) as artists became at once reporters, commentators, and participants. Yet it took a younger generation of artists who were inspired by the anarchist movements of the late 1880s and 1890s to produce a new set of images after the events. In Une rue de Paris en mai 1871 (1903–1905), Maximilien Luce portrayed a handful of Communard combatants and a woman lying dead in a Parisian street in a scene that is widely considered to have been influenced by Meissonier’s La barricade of 1848. Luce was an active anarchist,

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and indeed was among those tried in the repression of anarchist actions following the bombings of 1893–1894. If cultural representations of l’ann´ee terrible buried, transfigured, or simply moralized over the memories of the Commune, the bodies of fallen Communards proved to be rather more difficult to control. Those who died defending the Commune were hastily buried by a government fearful of the political sensitivity of their deaths. Successive administrations, whether monarchist-dominated or moderate republican, refused to sanction any funeral ceremonies or the construction of any memorials to avoid creating sites of pilgrimage for the far left. Many victims were buried in anonymous mass graves or under public thoroughfares. Many others, however, were not buried deeply enough; ten years later, their skeletons resurfaced, to be used by children as toys.69 It was almost as if their remains had risen from their shallow graves as spectral and unwanted reminders of a violent and uncomfortable past. In the absence of any other site dedicated to memories of the Commune, what became known as the mur des f´ed´er´es turned into the principal annual gathering place for the left. Mistakenly believed to represent the location of the last defiant stance of the Commune, the wall entered public mythology as a site of bloody suppression. Being located in the P`ere Lachaise cemetery, it was a particularly convenient meeting place because it circumvented many of the restrictions placed upon public gatherings. By the mid1880s, the gatherings had gained in significance, but they continued to be subjected to restriction and repression. Police regularly clashed with far left groups and seized funeral wreaths bearing anti-militarist messages. Radicals and moderate republicans within the Paris municipal council remained sufficiently concerned about the dangers of evoking memories of the Commune that it took until December 1907 to grant the land around the mur des f´ed´er´es in perpetuity and until 1908 to begin work on memorials to the Communard dead in the cemeteries of P`ere Lachaise and Montparnasse (Figure 3.4).70 Thus while unprecedented efforts were made to remember the FrancoPrussian War, perhaps even greater efforts were made to try and forget the Paris Commune. In practice, of course, it was impossible to disconnect the two and so while they were remembering the former, many people could not help but recall the latter. Despite this, all from the political right to the moderate left strove ceaselessly to separate the Commune from the Franco-Prussian War in order to dismiss the far left’s claims that the Commune represented a legitimate expression of French patriotism.

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Figure 3.4

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Monument aux morts de la Commune, Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris

Algeria and the colonies Remembering the Franco-Prussian War in relation to the French colonies was also problematic, generating additional taboos. The Algerian uprisings of 1871 raised uncomfortable questions about French rule in the territory, further tainting the reputation of the army, aggravating tensions between republicans, Bonapartists, and monarchists, and

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undermining notions of the French civilizing mission. With the defeat and the Paris Commune dominating public memories of l’ann´ee terrible, there was little room for recollections of the uprisings in Algeria. Indeed, while other awkward memories were difficult to manage, being ever present and liable to re-emerge at any moment, mainland French perceptions of developments in Algeria were usually framed in terms of a dominant colonial discourse. Having endured a lengthy campaign to crush native resistance, France annexed Algeria as an integral part of its territory in 1847. In consequence, Algerian land and culture were targeted as part of a French policy of assimilation that was to insist upon the Mediterranean as no more of a separating expanse of water than the Seine was for Paris. That around 200,000 Kabyles should have risen up in opposition to French rule at a time of German occupation and civil war therefore threatened the credibility of assimilation policies and aspirations of national greatness through imperial expansion. And that European settlers should have challenged the legitimacy of military rule in the name of republicanism risked jeopardizing the plausibility of the post-war cult of the army and reviving memories of the Paris Commune. The army’s involvement in combating Algerian resistance had positive and negative effects on France’s ability to confront the German enemy in 1870. On one hand, it produced experienced forces, but on the other, success bred a degree of complacency, fuelling exaggerated beliefs that France was the strongest military power in Europe. Over the course of the war, the military presence in North Africa furnished the army with new forces in the shape of Zouaves and turcos in the infantry, and spahis and chasseurs d’Afrique in the cavalry.71 Many of the most prominent army commanders in the war had served in Algeria, and many Algerian colonists returned to service, boosting the ranks of the Army of Chˆalons in particular.72 On the battlefield, North African soldiers frequently conducted themselves with exemplary courage and discipline in tough conditions. Indeed, at Wissembourg on 4 August 1870, turcos countered a heavy Prussian onslaught with repeated counter-attacks, holding the enemy off amid mounting losses.73 In the period after the defeat, however, assessments of their military contribution to the overall war effort were overshadowed by political perspectives on the uprisings of 1871 and the nature of French rule. The outbreak of war was greeted with little enthusiasm in Algeria. It was not regarded with indifference, however, because from the outset the struggle against the German enemy on the battlefield and the struggle against the regime in Algeria were tightly intertwined. Republican opponents of military rule in Algeria initially feared that victory

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might embolden the Second Empire and encourage the regime to tighten its grip. Instead, however, early reports were of collapse after collapse, each fresh disaster serving directly to discredit the military regime in Algeria.74 With pressure mounting upon French forces, many republican colonists called for the introduction of civilian administration and for all soldiers to be redeployed to the front, arguing that the military regime in Algeria was hampering the war effort against Germany. At the same time, however, the military governors in Algeria repeatedly warned the government that the transfer of the strongest and most experienced troops would irrevocably damage French rule. Indeed, while at the start of the war 44,000 men were stationed in Algeria, by September, the highly regarded 38th, 39th, and 92nd regiments of the line had been replaced by the less-experienced mobiles of Allier, Creuse, and Bouches-du-Rhˆ one.75 During and after the war, tensions between republicans and the military administration undermined myths of patriotic unity and the cult of the army. Indeed, republicans in Algeria greeted the fall of the Second Empire as more than merely the demise of a despised regime; many seized the opportunity to express their long-standing anti-militarism in street demonstrations and allegations of treachery against officers. Such antipathy towards the army was accompanied by support for the Government of National Defence, with calls to continue fighting in a guerre a` outrance and republicans creating their own irregular units, recruiting for Garibaldi’s army, and raising funds towards medical aid.76 Yet the change of regime in France did not bring a change of administration in Algeria. First, the Interior Ministry appointed a series of controversial generals as governors, including General Lichtlin who had participated in the defeat at Sedan. Then, to compound matters, the decree of 24 October 1870 confirmed that Algeria would continue to be administered under a colonial regime. The news that perhaps the greatest act of treachery by a French commander had been committed by Marshal Bazaine, a product of the much despised Arab Bureaux, aggravated the tensions still further and convinced many republicans that no military chief could be trusted. Echoing the sentiments of their counterparts in mainland France, republicans in Algeria rejected the peace settlement to elect pro-war candidates such as Gambetta and Garibaldi in the elections of 8 February 1871. Their actions panicked the authorities into immediately declaring a state of siege.77 If the hostility between republicans and the military administration in Algeria seemed in some respects to replicate the wartime political divisions witnessed in mainland France, the Kabyle uprising of 1871

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generated its own taboos and sensitivities. While the precise nature of the long-term political, socio-economic, and cultural roots of the insurrection fall outside the realms of this discussion, its short-term causes and consequences had significant implications for the debates on citizenship, the empire, and the nation that were central to the post-war revival. Undoubtedly, the backdrop of agricultural crisis in the late 1860s, the clumsy attempts of the Second Empire to democratize village councils, and colonists’ appropriation of Arab lands helped to fuel ongoing opposition to French rule. Indeed, early in 1870, Arab Bureaux officials reported alarming levels of arms trafficking, leading them to fear an imminent insurrection.78 The pursuit of assimilation meant that republicans also aggravated tensions by seeking to weaken traditional Algerian tribal society and exploit the divisions between mountain-dwelling Kabyles and urban Arabs.79 At the same time, however, community relations were not consistently troubled; the largest Kabyle confraternity often had positive dealings with French authorities.80 Dissecting the causes of the 1871 uprising was a discomforting and highly politicized process; with debates centring on the roles played by the Cr´emieux decree and the Arab Bureaux, republicans and the army seemed to be deeply implicated. The National Assembly enquiry which was established to investigate the actions of the Government of National Defence included the Kabyle uprising within its remit, thus ensuring that events in Algeria would be viewed through the same political lens as the war and the communes of 1871. The Cr´emieux decree of 24 October 1870 which naturalized all Jews born in Algeria was part of a wider republican assimilation agenda. But because Arabs had to renounce sharia law to be granted full citizenship, the decree served to crystallize the divisions between Arabs and Jews, the latter acquiring a new and potentially privileged status within the French Republic. The decree also produced a sense that despite having provided loyal service under the French army, turcos were being rewarded with less preferential treatment than the Jews who on the whole had not taken up arms against Germany.81 It has therefore often been argued that the decree was responsible for arousing anti-French and anti-Jewish sentiment among Muslims and ultimately threatening the administration in Algeria. Witnesses at the National Assembly enquiry of 1872 painted a more ambiguous picture, however, suggesting that while the decree was unquestionably a factor in the uprising, it was far from the sole or most important cause. Indeed, many witnesses such as the former prefect of Oran, Alexis Lambert, and Admiral de Guedon predictably vented their anti-republicanism by blaming the revolution of 4 September, while many others including

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General Augeraud, a commander based in S´etif, emphasized the war and the departure of troops.82 For his part, Adolphe Cr´emieux argued that the troubles only began in February 1871 and were therefore not directly caused by the decree, which he defended with claims that Muslim soldiers had little desire to acquire French citizenship.83 The mixed assessments of those who testified in the 1872 enquiry, together with a lack of archival evidence connecting the uprising with the Cr´emieux decree, have led Richard Ayron to conclude that the linkage was largely the product of the conservative enemies of the Government of National Defence in the immediate post-war period and the Opportunists in the decades thereafter.84 The enquiry also placed considerable responsibility for the uprising on the actions of the Arab Bureaux. A string of defeats in the Franco-Prussian War shattered myths of the army’s invincibility and undermined the authority of the military administration.85 Muslim opponents of the regime were emboldened by such signs of weakness, especially as they were accompanied by rumours of an imminent German invasion of Algeria. During and after 1871, many republicans alleged that the Arab Bureaux deliberately sought to provoke unrest in order to justify the retention of military rule.86 This may have been the case to some extent, but the army also aggravated the situation because with many of the soldiers formerly stationed in Algeria serving in the war against Germany, those sent to crush the uprising often had little experience of local politics, society, and culture.87 The army’s crude approach towards a volatile and complex region entailed brutally re-imposing colonial rule despite the changed political environment.88 In the period after the war, colonial soldiers were commonly represented as faithful defenders of the motherland, fighting a heroic and disciplined campaign. Such images were, of course, based in reality, but the emphasis placed upon their role was undoubtedly part of a wider agenda to affirm the legitimacy of France’s ambitions for colonial expansion during the early Third Republic. Thus Jules Monge’s 1897 painting, Le turco Ben-Kadour a` Lorcy, received wide popular acclaim for representing a colonial soldier’s bravery in battle. Its positive message resonated with public enthusiasm for imperial expansion in Africa.89 Turcos were also commemorated in war memorials, their contributions recognized as at once integral and distinct from the French war effort as a whole. Next to German mausoleum at Geisberg in Alsace, the turcos’ tomb became a site of pilgrimage, being regularly covered in flowers by visitors and local residents.90 The grave of Mohammed-ben-Masour who was fatally wounded at Woerth featured on one of the first illustrations

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in Hansi’s Mon village; two Alsatian children pay homage to the fallen turco, as though he were a recently lost relative.91 The juxtaposition of the younger Alsatian generation and symbols of Algeria’s contribution to the war effort reinforced the closely intertwined roles played by what many regarded as integral elements of the French nation. Monuments such as that in Figeac (Lot) unveiled on 7 July 1907 also paid tribute to Algerian combatants. Erected by public subscription, one of its bas-reliefs represented the turcos’ tenacity in the face of the enemy in the battle at Froeschwiller, and paid tribute to Sergeant Abd el Kadar ben Dekkish for heroically preserving his regiment’s flag throughout the fighting. If racial stereotyping sometimes led to colonial soldiers being portrayed as semi-savage in combat, their value in relation to the war was rarely in doubt. In reality, however, Algerian combatants were neither consistently nor unanimously unreserved in their support for the French war effort. In January 1871, married spahis disobeyed orders to go and fight in France, and indeed Moujebeur and A¨ın-Guettar, where many were based, witnessed some of the first uprisings. Of course, by far the greater threat to the credibility of moderate republican colonial visions was the uprisings themselves. But if historians interpret the insurrections in terms of a clash between republican and colonial racism and anti-clericalism on one hand and affirmations of Islamic identity on the other, French colonists regarded them in wholly different terms.92 Blaming the Arab Bureaux for fermenting disorder, French authorities were not only brutal and heavy-handed in their repression but sought to minimize the political significance of the uprisings as well. Treating the insurgents as little more than criminals, French authorities applied justice arbitrarily, selecting at random those they wished to put on trial and imposing a penalty of 36,500,000 francs on all involved. The most draconian punishment of all, however, was the sequestration of Algerian land, a move so severe that it was likened to deporting the whole population of Paris for having supported the Commune.93 The repression, punishment, and the subsequent trials and enquiries opened the way for policy towards Algeria to be reshaped in accordance with republican models. Thereafter, memories of insurrection in Algeria were gradually replaced with memories of loyal colonial troops in the war against Germany. An important aspect in the repackaging of Algeria after 1871 involved the notion that it would act as a kind of compensation for the loss of Alsace-Lorraine. On 21 June 1871 the National Assembly voted to confiscate 100,000 hectares of Algerian land and concede it to Alsatians and Lorrainers wishing to flee annexation and retain French citizenship.

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While patterns of emigration from Alsace and northern Lorraine to Algeria were already well established before the war, the period between 1871 and 1874 saw only around 6000 people take advantage of the National Assembly’s decree. Over the course of the period between 1871 and 1914, the figures increased albeit not significantly, with between 12,000 and 15,000 people emigrating from the lost provinces to Algeria.94 To these numbers must be added men who either acquired German citizenship or were born with it but who retained an allegiance to France and therefore sought to avoid military service by joining the Foreign Legion based in Oran. Between 1882 and 1908 around 45 per cent of all Foreign Legion troops were originally from Alsace-Lorraine.95 If such figures seem relatively low compared with the 460,000 who emigrated to France between 1871 and 1910, Algeria’s symbolic association with Alsace-Lorraine in the public consciousness facilitated the creation of sanitized myths. With considerable political and public backing for colonial ambitions after the defeat, such impulses resulted in memories of the Algerian uprisings of 1871 virtually disappearing from French memories of l’ann´ee terrible.96 Constructing memories of the Franco-Prussian War involved a complex process of negotiating between many problematic, uncomfortable, and inconvenient aspects of l’ann´ee terrible. The domestic and international imperatives of the national revival meant that it became doubly necessary to construct a heroic narrative of the struggle against Germany to draw attention away from the internal political divisions that had impeded it. Paradoxically, while the admission of political division during the war was one of the greatest taboos of the post-1871 period, every political, religious, and social group hunted for scapegoats to exonerate themselves from responsibility for the defeat. Through political and cultural discourse, a moderate republican interpretation of the war sought to constitute itself as the dominant memory; yet because its parameters were so narrow, excluding the experiences of the Second Empire and Paris Commune and insisting upon an entirely glorious image of the army, they were easily infringed by all those who sought to challenge such a political vision of the nation.

4 Memories for the Masses

In 1871, Edouard Fietta published a tourist guide to the battlefields around Froeschwiller in Alsace. In addition to detailed excursions for visitors on foot or by carriage, the book contained several coloured illustrations of the battlefields. The conflict may just have ended, but the images portrayed serene countryside, with only the occasional crosses giving any indication of the recent carnage. While Fietta’s recommendations on hotels, places to stop for lunch, and even advice on wine may have had practical uses, it is difficult to escape a sense that the guidebook sought to cater for bourgeois taste and comfort rather than for the necessities of mourners on pilgrimages.1 In August 1870, the fields of Froeschwiller were covered with 20,000 corpses; less than a year later, Fietta suggested that they should be filled with picnickers. This chapter explores the tensions that emerged with the expansion of war commemoration into a mass experience, and examines how struggles to manipulate spaces and objects lay at the frontline of the battle over memories of the Franco-Prussian War. The French defeat of 1870–1871 triggered an unprecedented wave of commemorative activity, mobilizing communities across France in efforts to honour the fallen. By 1878 over 457 war memorials had been erected and many more were unveiled in the period thereafter.2 Initially concentrated around the theatre of conflict, by the 1890s monuments were being erected as far away as Bastia and Bonifacio in Corsica. With the state taking only a minimal role in acts of war remembrance, local communities and veterans believed that they had a duty to continue to honour the dead and to keep their memories alive. Their determination translated into a proliferation of forms of war remembrance, including battlefield visits and the construction of monuments, commemorative chapels, and 104

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museums. The expansion of such activities brought into sharp relief the dilemma at the heart of war remembrance, however; the war dead may have been deemed sacred and worthy of remembrance, but in constructing collective memories that sought to articulate and perpetuate the significance of the sacrifices, communities risked rendering meaningful memories meaningless. With the Franco-Prussian War, the dilemma was particularly problematic because commemoration lay at the heart of the post-war revival, seeking to replace thoughts of the defeat with memories of the resistance and to regenerate the nation through the example of those who had died in its defence.

Forms and functions Most of the war memorials erected in the 1870s were funerary in nature, being placed close to soldiers’ resting-places, either on battlefields or in local cemeteries, and tending to take the form of pyramids, columns, or obelisks. A second wave of memorial building began in the 1880s out of fear that the earlier monuments, often hidden away in cemeteries and with no easily understood message, might not be able to convey memories of the war to future generations. These later war memorials were ascribed a didactic role, were placed in public spaces, and often included statues. Where monuments were constructed in the absence of any proximity to the dead, they tended to assume a funerary function, but where communities possessed a funerary and commemorative memorial, veterans and mourning families tended to honour the dead at the former, while politicians and local associations affirmed their patriotism at the latter. Despite some exceptions to this broad pattern, it may generally be observed that an initial wave of war memorials was constructed in the midst of national grief while a second was inspired by patriotic and propagandistic motives.3 In having the task not only of preserving but also propagating memories of 1870–1871, the later war memorials raised questions about how to translate the memories of individuals or small communities who had a direct connection to the war and its combatants into a mass, shared experience. In moving from the realm of private and local mourning to the realm of public remembrance, from a simple funerary gesture to a more overtly political one, problems emerged over whether the sanctity of these memories could be maintained, and whether commemoration on a mass scale would become devoid of meaning.

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One method of ensuring that war memorials gained and retained a sense of the sacred was to erect railings. The railings marked out a separate space around the monuments, not so much to keep people out, but to provide an area for mourners to place wreaths, flowers, or funerary plaques. Thus while they might have been located in the busiest town squares, surrounded by markets, festivities, or simply streams of passersby, there would always remain an area separating the monuments from the bustle of daily life and helping to protect them from merely blending into their surroundings. Only rarely were the railings deemed to hinder the preservation of the revered or to obstruct the transmission of memory. In 1899, the Conseil G´en´eral of the department of Aisne decided that the monument to the three teachers killed in the war ought not to be masked by railings in the courtyard of the teachers’ training college but rather incorporated into the public thoroughfare so that the wider community could draw inspiration by coming into close contact with it.4 Erecting railings changed the status of war graves and memorials from private to public sites, transforming the dead from private to public possession. The memories conveyed by war memorials were shaped by their location. The decision about where to place them was therefore a matter of frequent contestation. As David Troyansky has argued in relation to Saint-Quentin, it is important to appreciate the juxtaposition of commemorative sites within a local context in order to understand their meaning.5 The location of the war memorial for Sedan, for example, was central to its message. The committee proposed several possible sites, including opposite the railway station, on place Nassau, and on place de la Halle.6 Placing the monument by the railway station would have targeted visitors, rather than residents of Sedan, and would only have been seen by rail passengers, as the new station was situated outside the town centre. Place Nassau was more centrally located, and its position next to the road to Balan and Bazeilles would have linked it with the memories of those two villages. The third option, place de la Halle, would have positioned the monument firmly within the civilian history of Sedan, being in the middle of the cloth-manufacturing industrial area. It was the sculptor Croisy’s suggestion to erect the memorial on place d’Alsace, at the end of the high street. The square and its surrounding streets were renamed in the 1870s in memory of the lost provinces, and in honour of the town’s 500 immigrants from Alsace-Lorraine.7 The sculptor’s choice was probably also influenced by the fact that place d’Alsace was directly aligned with a statue of Henri Turenne erected by public subscription in 1823 to celebrate a more auspicious period in the history of Sedan. Born

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in Sedan in 1611, Turenne had defeated a much stronger army from across the Rhine, and gone on to conquer Alsace in 1675. The spatial and symbolic linkage between the Franco-Prussian War memorial and the statue of Turenne therefore served to lessen the blow of 1870. While it may have been the scene of one of the greatest military collapses in French history, the intention was undoubtedly that Sedan should also be remembered for its heroic military past and for the fact that France owed the acquisition of Alsace to one of Sedan’s sons. Because so much meaning was invested in the location of war memorials, there were often bitter arguments about whether they should be placed in a quiet space where people could mourn in private or in a public area where their message could be conveyed as widely as possible. Such debates raise broader questions about the functions of war memorials and whether they are intended principally for mourners or for a wider public. In particular, they highlight shifts in the patterns and meanings of commemoration, as it transforms from individual to collective remembrance.8 The two broad phases in the construction of funerary and commemorative war memorials after 1870 appear to correspond with the movement from the private to the public and the transition from mourning to remembrance. The changing functions of commemoration therefore necessitated different forms of war memorial. In the late 1880s, residents of Chˆalons-sur-Marne petitioned the municipal council to open a new subscription for a monument to the victims of 1870. Warning that the existing memorial was in danger of being forgotten because it was hidden away in the cemetery, they successfully argued for a new, more public, and more ‘worthy’ monument.9 In SaintQuentin, meanwhile, as early as 1871 local people began to protest that placing the town’s war memorial in the cemetery would mean that it would be rarely seen and quickly forgotten.10 But while many towns dealt with the problem by constructing two monuments, many others could not afford to do so. In Pasques (Cˆ ote-d’Or) in 1891, local residents divided in debates between those wanting the war memorial to remain in the cemetery and those wishing it to be relocated to a public place. The municipal council resolved that since the monument was dedicated to all those who had fought rather than just the victims, it was not funerary in character and therefore ought to be publicly visible. The graves were thus covered with a tombstone, and the monument was moved to ote-d’Or) in 1898, the town centre.11 In a similar vein, in Pouillenay (Cˆ the municipal council ruled that the proper place for the war memorial was not in the cemetery and that it should be relocated to the public square instead.12

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At the forefront of concerns about retaining meaning in the transformation from mourning to a wider cult of the war dead lay mass-produced war memorials. The controversy arose because when commissioning war-related statuary, local committees tended to be less concerned with aesthetics than with meaning. While mayors and municipal councillors employed artistic discourse to justify their choice of monument, they aimed above all to convey an easily recognizable memory.13 The imperatives of local memory thus prioritized commemoration over art, viewing war memorials as symbols rather than aesthetic objects. With meaning prevailing over aesthetics, mass-produced war memorials became acceptable among local communities. The purchase of such monuments is more often associated with the aftermath of the First World War, when towns and villages with limited resources sought to pay homage to their dead. In fact, the development of electroplating in the nineteenth century meant that the practice became commonplace during the statuomania of the early Third Republic. Indeed, as Maurice Agulhon observes, of the 142 busts of Marianne produced between the 1880s and the First World War, 103 were mass-produced, comprising 9 models from only 7 or 8 production houses.14 It might be argued that while they were significantly cheaper than original works, their iconography lacked any meaning specific to the local community. Statues of Marianne symbolized abstract ideas but war memorials were meant to represent lost sons and husbands; a comparatively cheap, mass-produced memorial therefore risked seeming disrespectful to their memory. Just as after 1918, art critics claimed that serial production of monuments impaired the sacred memory of the dead and ‘disfigured’ villages, so similar accusations were made after 1870.15 As Daniel Sherman has argued, associations with the ‘vulgar’ mass of common people were seen to ‘taint’ monuments as works of art.16 Indeed, whereas commissioning committees believed that popular appeal enriched war memorials, art critics maintained that it merely cheapened them. The statue of a soldier defiantly clutching a flag by Croisy was a case in point. Originally featured on the monument to General Chanzy, the figure proved both popular and cost-effective. At only around 1200 francs for a bronze copy, it offered an affordable solution for Nolay, Paray-le-Monial, Beaugency, Briouze, Villers-sur-Mer, Fauquembergues, and many other towns (Figures 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3). Mass production enabled small towns to upgrade from simple funerary memorials with limited visual impact to more ambitious figurative monuments. Indeed, the monument committee for Nolay had initially planned to erect a purely architectural funerary memorial, having received little by way of

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Figure 4.1

109

Monument aux morts de Briouze, Briouze (Orne)

public donations owing to the economic recession in the Cˆ ote-d’Or.17 On the suggestion of the local branch of the Souvenir Franc¸ais, however, the committee purchased a copy of the Croisy figure, and transformed the monument from one failing to inspire the public to one widely deemed worthy of the dead.18 Officials saw the monument in a very different light, however. Government funding of war memorials was wholly dependent on assessment of their artistic merit; with patriotic value not deemed sufficient reason for a state subsidy, many purely architectural

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Figure 4.2 Monument aux morts de Villers-sur-Mer, Villers-sur-Mer (Calvados)

monuments did not even qualify for consideration.19 A report dated 9 May 1899 recommended that no subsidy should be granted to the Nolay memorial, describing the statue as having been produced by ‘industrialists’ and lacking any ‘artistic character’. While it was a laudable ‘patriotic gesture’, in aesthetic terms, it was little more than a ‘vulgar repetition’ of the kind of statue being erected throughout the country.20 Only later did officials realize that the statue was the same as that at Parayle-Monial, for which 1000 francs had previously been allocated; to

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Figure 4.3 Monument aux morts de Fauquembergues, Fauquembergues (Pasde-Calais)

cover their embarrassment, they therefore agreed to grant the Nolay committee 300 francs.21 Mass production thus served to crystallize emerging debates about the functions of war memorials. Whereas local organizing committees regarded war monuments as sacred objects of memory, critics viewed them as inferior objects of art. The relationship between art and commemoration raises issues of interpretation, for the connection between the final forms that monuments take and the ideas they are meant to articulate is problematic.22 Indeed, Antoine Prost has argued that the visions that communities wish

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to convey may become obscured by aesthetic considerations in those monuments that have been designed by artists. The problem is further aggravated by the fact that mass-produced memorials that are not the work of artists might be deemed to lack any meaning specific to the community, while non-figurative monuments such as columns or pyramids might be considered too abstract to convey an easily deciphered memory. Daniel Sherman has sought to break down the dichotomy between art and commemoration suggested by Prost by arguing that the aesthetic helped to shape commemorative discourse and practice. Moving beyond concepts of the artist as sole ‘creator’, Sherman interprets war memorials in terms of two forms of cultural production: one that creates the object and the other that activates its meaning.23 These approaches have, however, been informed by analyses of modes of remembrance in the twentieth century. With Franco-Prussian War memorials, the importance of the visual was connected with the proximity of the monument to the dead and to the intended audience. Whereas after the First World War the vast majority of monuments were erected within five years of the cessation of hostilities, after the FrancoPrussian War, memorial construction continued until 1914. Proximity to the remains of the dead generated a functional distinction between monuments in cemeteries or battlefields and those situated in town centres. The iconography and inscriptions of the latter were intended to serve a didactic role; their authors and patrons sought not so much to create symbols for those who had experienced the conflict as to convey political messages to younger and future audiences who had not. Thus while non-figurative monuments might have been invested with considerable meaning for the local community, their ability to communicate a particular memory through their visual impact was deemed to be limited. Sherman argues that where abstract monuments are concerned, meaning may be derived from the ‘discourse of authorship’ rather than the iconography.24 Yet commissioning committees who were concerned with educating future generations after 1870 sought images that did not require interpretation.

Pilgrimages and tourism Memories and monuments mobilized the masses. Not content with honouring the memory of the fallen at local war memorials, many veterans, families, and members of the public made annual trips to the final resting-places of the dead. Such voyages of remembrance echoed the post-1870 expansion of Catholic pilgrimages, each marking a sacred

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journey terminating at a ‘consecrated’ location. Indeed, those who undertook to visit the battle sites of 1870–1871 considered themselves pilgrims, worshipping at the altar of the cult of the war dead. Yet contemporary accounts raise questions about the intentions and actions of participants, suggesting that the conduct of the pilgrims was more akin to the behaviour of tourists. In recent years, historical and anthropological scholarship has devoted considerable attention to establishing the relationship between pilgrimage and tourism, the latter generally being regarded as a comparatively shallow modern product of the decline of the former.25 Erik Cohen has identified a set of motives that help to distinguish between the two forms of travel; while pilgrimage involves movement away from the ‘profane’ towards a designated ‘sacred centre’, tourism entails a move away from one’s own ‘sacred centre’ towards those of other cultures and societies.26 Touristic experiences and behaviour range from the ‘recreational mode’, in which the tourist seeks enjoyment and gains satisfaction from consuming a constructed ‘reality’, to the ‘existential mode’, where the traveller journeys to an alternative spiritual ‘centre’, experiencing something akin to religious conversion.27 Pilgrims are regarded as travelling with the sole aim of reaching a particular destination with which they have a special bond; however, as Tony Walter has observed, tourists may unintentionally become pilgrims if they experience some sort of emotional connection with the sites they visit.28 The behaviour of visitors might be deemed to provide indications of their intentions, yet as Ian Reader has shown, pilgrims may switch from the deeply respectful to the irreverent as they distinguish between the sites of pilgrimage themselves and the spaces connecting them.29 Where battlefield visits are concerned, George Mosse identifies an emerging distinction in nineteenth-century practices between those who travelled to their ‘sacred’ destinations in austere conditions, and those who trivialized the experience by journeying in luxury and gaining little sense of the hardships of war.30 It is not always so easy to differentiate the two, however. Pilgrims sometimes seemed to behave like tourists, even collecting memorabilia related to the war. The only difference was that whereas tourists saw their acquisitions as souvenirs, pilgrims claimed theirs were relics. David Lloyd, by contrast, sees accusations of trivialization originating in late nineteenth-century class antagonisms. Transportation improvements and shortened working hours opened up the possibilities of travel to the middle and even lower classes. In response, many upper-class travellers sought to justify visits as edifying and superior to the frivolous pleasure trips of the lower classes.

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They claimed to derive improvement from their experiences, purchasing guidebooks and condemning the ‘ignorant’ and ‘vulgar’ social orders who ‘desecrated’ their destinations with their inappropriate behaviour.31 Of course, unlike battlefield tourism, war grave pilgrimages function as a kind of emotional catharsis, helping to ease the process of mourning.32 Thus it is between the suffering and the comfort, the confrontation and the avoidance of brutal realities, the purposive and the chance nature of the encounter with the sacred that the relationship connecting battlefield pilgrimages with battlefield tourism is located. Battlefield tourism grew into a popular activity in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. Having captured the imagination of the British public, unprecedented numbers of visitors journeyed to the battlefields of Waterloo hoping to recapture the excitement of recent events. Many collected gruesome mementoes from the battlefields, including skulls and even soldiers’ thumbs.33 But as time passed and the debris from war became obscured by vegetation, visitors began to feel disappointed that there was little to see. Thus detailed guidebooks began to emerge describing not only where the fighting had taken place but also the locations of unmarked graves. John Murray’s account published in 1830 poetized the landscape, evoking the crops fertilized by decomposing corpses as memorials to the fallen.34 Over the course of the nineteenth century, the fields of Waterloo became decorated with numerous monuments and a small museum, while the individuals wandering alone through the empty plains were replaced by organized group tours. Such was the growing popularity of the destination that by the 1890s, a special coach service regularly conveyed visitors from the railway station to the battlefields.35 By the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, battlefield tours were thus well established throughout Europe. Such was public enthusiasm for the pursuit that some British tourists did not even wait for the cessation of hostilities to visit the battlefields. Indeed, the Thomas Cook company took a group within half a mile of the frontline of the fighting around Metz in the summer of 1870.36 While the number of guidebooks dealing with the sites of 1870–1871 was always limited, scarcely had the final shots been fired than the first began to emerge. In the selection of sites, the significance ascribed to them, and the commentaries, such literature reveals not only what the authors believed visitors ought to see, but because guidebooks are written and revised in accordance with the demands of their market, they provide clues about where visitors wanted and expected to go, indicating shifting practices and interests, as well as how the sites changed over time.

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While battlefield visits offer a means of perpetuating memories for those with direct experience of conflict and of constructing memories for those without, when the fighting has ended, there is often little remaining to recall the scenes of combat. This was especially true after the Franco-Prussian War where battles were short-lived, and the fighting left little mark on the landscape (Figure 4.4). By their nature, the guidebooks dealing with the sites associated with 1870–1871 emphasized the visual, and indeed visitors would have made their journeys expecting at the very least to see the hills from which cavalry charges were mounted, or the fortresses that were held under siege. There were, of course, occasional graves and war memorials that could be seen scattered across the battlefields and in some places, the landscape did serve as a form of memorial. After the war, many of the old walnut trees of Alsace were cut down for their wood, but those on the plateau of Elasshausen which had too many bullet holes to be sold remained, representing at once a reminder of the fighting and a symbol of resistance.37 In Wissembourg, meanwhile, German authorities ordered that the trees lining the battlefields which had been cut down by the landowner be replaced exactly as they had been in 1870 so that the ‘physiognomy’ of their victory would be ‘preserved’ for posterity.38 In general, however, the landscape of war was unremarkable. Indeed, one battlefield guide published

Figure 4.4

Battlefields around Woerth (Bas-Rhin)

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in 1914 included numerous photographs and detailed, multi-stage maps directing visitors to the significant sites of combat that would otherwise have seemed unremarkable after over 40 years of vegetation re-growth.39 In contrast with guidebooks’ emphasis on the visual, travel writers tended to emphasize the experiential, seeking to trigger emotions among their readers. Of course, there are functional differences between travel writing and guidebooks, the former catering for a readership that may never visit the places being described, yet overall travel writers indicated that the visual impact of the battlefields of 1870–1871 was less important than their symbolic significance. They believed that such sites held a poignancy that could communicate itself to visitors, creating a memory not of the actual fighting, but of what the resistance and defeat meant to the nation. Visits to battlefields were meant to be morally fortifying. Echoing the sentiments of earlier Romantic travellers, writers believed that wandering through the undulating landscape of defeat would trigger palpitations that would stir the senses, excite the emotions, and mobilize the masses out of the depths of national degeneration. Thus in 1880, the conservative nationalist journalist Georges Bastard recommended that tourists forego the pleasures of the seaside and visit the sites of France’s recent misfortunes instead. ‘Nothing is more vivifying for a strong, emotional, passionate, patriotic soul, than to walk among these bellicose memories’, he wrote.40 Many believed that the experience would produce a physical and spiritual sensation that would cure the sick body of the nation. For Madame Arnaud, visiting Marsla-Tour would produce ‘a profound sentiment of comiseration and love of the patrie!’41 And Bastard wondered, ‘is there a better and more fortifying reagent to cold, lymphatic or indifferent natures than to cross the very theatre where these heroic cavalry charges or these bloody, legendary combats took place [. . .] which [. . .] trigger within you stifled anguish, beneficial and ardent emotions, breathless, unappeased and regenerative’.42 Some even feared that such visits would prove too overwhelming. Indeed, Maurice Barr`es wrote that ‘hygienists’ advised against them as a ‘long excursion communicates to the more fragile visitor an emotion which grows at each station close to our tombs and near to innumerable ‘‘monuments of memory’’ erected to German regiments’.43 For those who did make the journey, however, attending the sites of defeat and carnage could also prove to be a sobering experience, at once restoring faith in civilization and reviving all the old feelings of anger and humiliation. As one schoolteacher observed at Sedan,

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A battlefield is a harsh school where the legend of Cain is renewed. [. . .] How well we see there that war is an execrable folly and that nations are destined to exchange between them not wounds and killings but ideas and light! How one returns better for it, stronger, more decided to do one’s duty and to banish miserable selfish calculations!44 The capacity to derive faith from places of combat depended upon the memories they evoked and what visitors found when they arrived. Whereas the battlefields on French territory conjured up pride at the heroism of the dead, the battlefields in Alsace-Lorraine provoked shame at the seeming cowardice of the survivors. Touring the annexed territories in the early 1900s, Georges Ducrocq was reminded of his country’s failure to achieve revenge: A pilgrimage around Metz is for every Frenchman a disagreeable and humiliating exercise. One suffers from visiting these places drenched with the blood of our fathers and from the feeling of being watched by curious, straight and severe eyes, belonging to local women who seem to say to us: what have you done to avenge them?45 R´egis Brochet, describing Metz 30 years after the defeat, experienced a similar sentiment, noting a ‘profound melancholy’ at the realization that the deaths of so many remained unavenged.46 Undertaking a pilgrimage to the battlefields around Froeschwiller in the early 1880s, Paul Hugounet discovered poorly maintained French war memorials and felt a sense that the dead were calling to him for justice.47 Tracing the same ground in the early 1900s, Maurice Barr`es found that while the women remained faithful to the painful memories of those who had died in 1870, the crosses marking their tombs were wearing away, disappearing under vegetation. Farmers had grown tired of maintaining the graves on their land and were charging families increasing sums in rent. As a result, some had been forced to exhume their dead, and thus in the eyes of Barr`es, uproot them from their bonds with the earth that was rightfully theirs and which they guarded.48 With Germans gathering there to recall their victory, touring the battlefields of Alsace-Lorraine may have been an edifying experience for some French visitors, but one which could often prove less than satisfying. Travel writers thus undertook to convey such sentiments to their audiences as an emotive spur to revanche. Of all those seeking to convey their impressions upon visiting the lost provinces, Barr`es had perhaps the greatest appreciation of the power of

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landscape to inspire patriotic feelings. Asserting that national identity lay rooted in the heritage of the land and the dead, Barr`es insisted that France’s Latin culture needed to be defended against barbarian Germanic influences. He therefore designated particular sites in Alsace-Lorraine to act as ‘bastions of the east’ for the nation. These symbolic and topographical defences included the battlefields of Froeschwiller and the war memorial in the cemetery of Metz as well as sites that held a particular significance to his concept of the French nation. Each year after 1900, he undertook pilgrimages to locations such as Sion-Vaud´emont where he claimed he ‘conversed’ with the ‘ghosts of Lorraine’ and ‘listened’ to their guidance on remaining faithful to the values of the French nation.49 His visits to the battlefields around Reichshoffen, Froeschwiller, and Woerth in Alsace inspired Barr`es to seek to invoke what he regarded as a Catholic sense of the ‘spirit of the place’. Like other writers evoking the melancholy of the lost provinces, Barr`es realized the need to develop an emotional engagement within a readership who most likely would have never visited Alsace-Lorraine for themselves.50 Visits to the battlefields and cemeteries of 1870–1871 required a basic infrastructure. On the anniversaries of battles when thousands of people came to honour the dead, special trains were timetabled. For the commemorations at Mars-la-Tour in 1897, for instance, 8 additional trains from Nancy, together with those on the normal service, brought 10,000 French visitors, while a similar number of trains brought around 8000 people from across the border in Metz.51 With hotels unable to cater for the demands for accommodation, it was not uncommon for public buildings to be requisitioned to provide accommodation for veterans. Outside anniversaries, however, things were considerably more difficult. Attempting to tour the area around Sedan in 1880, Georges Bastard found that there were few facilities: the town lacked guides to greet visitors at the railway station and to show them around the historic sights. He contrasted the situation there with that at Waterloo which offered not only frequent coaches from Brussels, but also benches for visitors to relax and reflect, guides, a museum, and even meals on the battlefields.52 One solution lay in the growing popularity of the bicycle in the late nineteenth century, which saw many people peddling their way to physical as well as mental well-being by cycling to the battlefields of 1870–1871. Guidebooks explained how the new freedoms of cycling opened up the sites of the war to deeper and more independent exploration.53 It is difficult to discern the precise levels of public interest in visiting the battlefields of 1870–1871 outside anniversary commemorations, but the evidence available suggests that on the whole it tended to be

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limited. Although they were produced in Germany, the widely used Baedeker guides of France published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provide some indications of the sights popular with tourists. The guidebooks scrupulously pointed visitors in the direction of war memorials and battlefields, including brief descriptions of the fighting as well. The editions covering the Rhine, Vosges, and AlsaceLorraine placed rather limited emphasis on the sights associated with 1870–1871, but they did recommend walking tours of the battlefields around Wissembourg.54 Motivated by the desire to provide, and to be seen to provide, comprehensive guides to everything that could be visited by tourists, the biases of the Baedeker guides were not overtly nationalist, yet they were sometimes dismissive of the places of particular significance in French memories of the war.55 The English-language versions of the guide for northern France described Belfort as being of ‘little interest to the tourist’, and while it acknowledged that Sedan was ‘famous for the battle and capitulation of September 1 and 2 1870’, it commented that ‘it is uninteresting to the stranger’.56 Only Bazeilles was deemed worthy of attention, with instructions offered on how to view the Maison de la derni`ere cartouche and the ossuary.57 With the Baedeker guides priding themselves on tailoring their coverage to meet tourists’ demands, and the lack of facilities for visitors it might be assumed that touring the sites associated with 1870–1871 was an activity that was only ever pursued by a small number of people. Notwithstanding the dismissive comments in the Baedeker guides, Belfort did attract a considerable number of visitors. Scarcely known before 1870, the fortified town became famous for remaining undefeated under siege and for being the only area of Alsace not to be annexed. Its association with victory provided part of the explanation for its popularity, but for many visitors, the principal attraction was Bartholdi’s Lion de Belfort. Measuring 11 metres in height, the massive stone sculpture on the fortress rockface was visible from a great distance and came to represent not only a spirit of defiant resistance that had been lacking elsewhere in the war but also regional and national hope in the future revival. The initiative to exploit the monument came in 1887 when the Club Alpin Franc¸ais suggested that public access to the Lion could provide a means of stimulating interest and identification with a symbol of French glory.58 The steep climb to reach first the monument and then the top of the fortress would bring spectacular views of the surrounding countryside and of the territory which had been spared from annexation thanks to the heroism of the resistance. The first visitors were granted access in May 1890, and it was not long before local residents,

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war veterans, and tourists began to arrive in their thousands.59 Year after year, the numbers of entrants rose sharply from 5197 in 1891 to 23,789 in 1906.60 Popularity, however, bred contempt. Shops and businesses in the region exploited the image of the Lion in every possible way, re-naming caf´es and brasseries, and selling everything from tobacco grinders to watches, bracelets, biscuits, and luxury pastries inspired by the monument.61 Bartholdi fought bitterly to oppose the commercial exploitation of his work. On 6 December 1898, he formally warned all local businesses against reproducing the Lion without his permission. Encountering only resistance and non-compliance, however, on 27 April 1899, he resorted to extreme measures and personally seized any product featuring a lion from local shops and businesses. Finally in June 1902, the court of appeal at Besanc¸on ruled in favour of Bartholdi, but it could not prevent lifelike depictions of lions continuing to be used by local businesses.62 Local responses to the Lion and its exclusion from the town’s annual war commemorations indicate low levels of attachment to the monument among the people of Belfort. Their exploitation of its imagery came less from pride than from realization that it would be popular among the many visitors who came to view the patriotic symbol of 1870–1871 that had become the town’s principal tourist attraction. Indications as to whether those visiting the sites of 1870–1871 did so out of curiosity or out of faithfulness to the dead may be gleaned from their mood and behaviour. The evidence is limited, but descriptions of the annual commemorations at Mars-la-Tour suggest that despite the religious and funerary character of the day’s events, there appears to have been a holiday-like atmosphere. The ceremony took place in the sunshine of 16 August, the day after the traditional Catholic festival for Assumption, and indeed Abb´e Faller often sought to encourage visitors to go during their summer holidays.63 Many took the opportunity of their trip to participate in General Geslin’s hour-long tour of the surrounding battlefields.64 Many others, however, behaved as though they were enjoying a vacation, sending postcards and crossing the nearby German border to stock up on cheap cigarettes.65 To be sure, the ceremony hosted by Faller was solemn in tone, avoiding revanchist rhetoric and focusing on memories of the dead, but the conduct of those attending was a sensitive subject.66 For the nationalist press delighted in comparing French behaviour with that at the parallel German ceremonies in nearby Gravelotte. While German commemorations were depicted as lacking support and being disrespectful to the dead, their French counterparts were portrayed as genuinely popular and pious expressions of

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patriotism.67 Reporting on the commemorations at Gravelotte in August 1894, Henri Galli of the Ligue des Patriotes described with horror how German veterans ate picnics next to the graves of their comradesin-arms. With apparently little respect for the sacred resting-places, veterans simply discarded their waste, he claimed, leaving the battlefields littered with broken bottles, uneaten pork sausages, and bread crusts.68 The scenes were undoubtedly repeated at Mars-la-Tour, but no one wished to admit that this could have been the case. As Ian Reader has observed, even the most devout pilgrims may engage in frivolous behaviour because they distinguish between their conduct in different locations.69 Contemporary observers, wishing to maintain the image of French moral victory, did not interpret the actions of visitors to the sacred sites of 1870 in such terms, however. With frequent comparisons being made to events in Germany, French conduct had to be seen to be beyond reproach. Local restaurateurs of Mars-la-Tour, who were used to dealing with a population of 630, thus made the improbable assertion that they could feed all 25,000 visitors each year. Improper conduct in relation to the war memorials of 1870–1871 was necessarily hushed up and blamed on others. When the high reliefs on the base of the Mars-la-Tour monument were maliciously damaged, commentators blamed ‘foreign tourists’. The ‘Vandal’ race, they claimed, were now vandalizing the temples of French patriotism. While French visitors wandered down into the hallowed vaults of the ossuary seeking spiritual connection with the war dead, German visitors were said to treat it as some kind of gruesome fairground attraction. Soldiers’ skeletons fell victim to the ‘indiscretions’ of these ‘tourists’ and therefore had to be protected by iron railings.70 In Bazeilles in 1901, the ossuary was also vandalized and the dignity of the dead compromised.71 The monument in Concoeur (Cˆ ote-d’Or) was routinely subject to criminal damage, the four cannons and cannon balls being stolen by what the sub-prefect referred to as ‘evil people’.72 No one mentioned the frequent desecration of German war graves by the French people, nor the fact that the overwhelming majority of German visitors behaved with dignity, discretion, and decorum.73 For patriotic opinion held that there could be no admission that French war remembrance was anything other than reverent.

Museums The expansion of battlefield visits produced a concomitant emergence of battle museums. Mars-la-Tour, Bazeilles, Loigny, and P´erigord were

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just some of the towns to gather small collections of objects related to the war and open them up to the public. Yet these museums were not market-driven, profit-making responses to the growth in visitor numbers; all the indications are that they were motivated by the imperatives of memory. Driven less by desires to present a historical account than by the demands of patriotic self-legitimization, the museums of the FrancoPrussian War sought to stimulate the public more than to educate them. Often connected with the construction of war memorials, they were the product of local initiative and funding. No state-funded museum dedicated to the Franco-Prussian War was ever opened; the Mus´ee de l’Arm´ee, which was created in 1905 to educate young conscripts and to encourage feelings of patriotism in the wake of the first Moroccan affair, concentrated on preserving relics of the nation’s more glorious military past.74 The weapons, uniforms, and military maps displayed in the Mus´ee de l’Arm´ee informed visitors of the mechanics of warfare, but they did not necessarily communicate a feeling of connection with soldiers’ experiences. By contrast, items such as regimental flags and letters which were deemed to possess meaning and to evoke emotion lay at the heart of the collections housed in Franco-Prussian War museums. Often developing from the large numbers of items found by farmers on the battlefields, the impulse to preserve a memory of 1870–1871 preceded the possession of an actual museum collection. Museums might appear to present their collections impartially, classifying objects in a manner that implies that they hold an inherent meaning, but as recent scholarship has suggested, they serve to help construct and influence ideas.75 As Daniel Sherman has observed, through classification, ordering, and textual orientation, heterogeneous collections of objects which might otherwise trigger a chaotic mass of memories may be manipulated into a coherent narrative.76 Indeed, museums may function to stem the tide towards forgetting not only by creating memories but by doing so in a tangible and real form.77 They also provide indications of the expectations and responses of audiences. For museum displays are necessarily in constant evolution, interacting with the process of production and that of reception, between those running the museums and those visiting them.78 The museum created from the Maison de la derni`ere cartouche in Bazeilles was typical, symbolizing not only the dominance of a commemorative agenda, but the dilemmas between public education and public exploitation as well (Figure 4.5). Having been the scene of heroic resistance by a handful of marines in September 1870, and immortalized in a painting by Alphonse de Neuville in 1873, the owners felt it their

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Figure 4.5

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Maison de la derni`ere cartouche, Bazeilles

patriotic duty to preserve the house and transform it into a museum. Those who experienced it found a collection designed to overwhelm the senses. Items gathered from the battlefields and the struggle in Bazeilles itself told a story not of military engagement but of human suffering. The torn Red Cross flag spoke volumes about the indiscriminate violence of the combat, while the preserved morsel of bread told of the penury endured by the nation’s defenders. The aim was to transport the visitor

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back to the brutal days of 31 August to 1 September 1870, and it succeeded. As one writer observed, ‘attached with art to shields, or arranged in display windows, all these objects form a continuous panoply which seduces the eye and gives a hallucination of war [. . .] One dreams, in this bizarre phalanx, of men having their throats slit, of massacre, and one’s finger touches reality.’79 The commemorative museum at Mars-la-Tour produced a similarly emotional response. Created in 1896 by the local parish priest Abb´e Faller, the museum housed over 2000 objects, each faithfully preserved like religious relics.80 Local farmers helped Faller to gather objects from nearby fields, where they found complete uniforms, pieces of equipment, and bayonets.81 Many families also donated personally valuable items such as photographs, letters, or blood-stained uniforms belonging to their dead sons, believing the objects belonged in this shrine to the memory of 16 August 1870, rather than in their homes.82 The museum did not leave its visitors indifferent. Photographs revealed a small room packed from floor to ceiling with items telling the stories of so many ordinary soldiers. The intimate nature of the setting, the close proximity to ‘sacred’ objects, and the memories they all evoked produced an intense feeling of connection with the past. Boosted by the large numbers attending the annual commemorations, by 1901 the museum had raised enough money from the modest entrance charge to fund the construction of an additional sacristy in the parish church.83 By contrast, because it did not play host to a large-scale annual pilgrimage, outside public holidays and anniversaries, the museum at Bazeilles received few visitors. On Whit Sunday and Monday of 1906, around 2000 people passed through the museum doors, while on 15 July, the figures were around 500; on average, however, it saw only one visitor per day.84 Museum visitors demanded authenticity, or at least the semblance of authenticity. Despite the fact that collections had to be created and sorted, audiences eschewed anything they deemed too far removed from what they considered genuine. Their concern stemmed in part from their desire to connect with representations of the past which might enable them to formulate and strengthen their own recollections. Yet in part it was also derived from fears that memories of 1870–1871 were being exploited for commercial gain. Indeed, one local socialist newspaper in the early 1900s alleged that the owners of the Maison de la derni`ere cartouche had enriched themselves ‘by selling bullets and shrapnel supposedly collected from the battlefield to gullible people’.85 The house, it claimed, had been ‘the subject of so much speculation for thirty years that one now considers it a small fairground’.86 As a result, it had become

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‘just a shack which recalls nothing of the glorious feat of arms which made it famous’.87 Critics also questioned the legitimacy and meaning of the German war museum at Gravelotte, attacking it for having artificially ‘created’ the spoils and thus the memories of war.88 Unlike Mars-la-Tour, where the museum represented the memories of veterans, relatives of the dead, and the local community, in Gravelotte, some of the objects had been bought from local market stalls, and did not relate to the fighting of 18 August 1870. The proliferation of interest in war remembrance was geographic as well as quantitative, and it is important to stress that while most commemorative activity was centred around the zone of combat, many towns and departments further afield engaged in efforts to perpetuate the memories of local soldiers. Conscripts and volunteers came from all over France as well as Corsica, Algeria, and the colonies, and while the cost of war was far greater in some departments than others, those outside the zone of combat did not necessarily get off lightly. Indeed, as Bertrand Taithe observes, the department of Haute-Vienne, which had a population of 319,000, contributed 10,652 men and 10 million francs towards the war effort.89 In the period thereafter, many departments, towns, and cities wished their sacrifices to be recognized and remembered. In the first instance, they contributed funds towards the construction of funerary or commemorative monuments near the sites of battle. Thus, for instance, the department of Ard`eche donated money towards the monuments at Vernon and Saint-Ouen-de-Thoubeville in the department of Eure.90 But if many veterans fulfilled their desires to pay tribute to the dead by undertaking annual pilgrimages, they also realized that such activities would not communicate memories of the war to younger generations in their local communities. Indeed, in some respects, geographical separation made the need to create lieux de m´emoire more acute and in turn rendered their meaning all the more potent. An initial wave of monument construction in areas outside the war zone during the early 1880s might be ascribed to the republican consolidation of power at national and local level. The rise of new forms of nationalism in the late 1880s and the impact of the Dreyfus Affair ensured that memories of the Franco-Prussian War became once again a subject of public interest and contention across France. Indeed, undoubtedly spurred on by the political fallout of the Dreyfus Affair as well as Italian irredentism, 17 years after Gambetta’s death veterans from the department of Alpes-Maritimes launched a campaign to erect a monument in memory of his wartime leadership.91 In Limoges, affirmations of republicanism were rather more left-wing in nature, but the war

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memorial nonetheless also became a weapon in the battle against local nationalists. Having struggled to raise sufficient funds owing to economic hardships, the municipal council decided in 1896 to turn it into a tribute to Sadi Carnot as well.92 Unveiled on 1 October 1899, the monument featured an allegorical statue of Haute-Vienne holding a flag and seeming to call her children to defend the nation. But having experienced its own commune in 1871, memories of the war had long been a divisive subject in Limoges, and indeed nationalists and local clerical interests opposed the project from the outset. The presence of the socialist minister Alexandre Millerand at the unveiling ceremony only fuelled the controversy.93 Thus despite not having witnessed any fighting during the war, memories of l’ann´ee terrible were as potent in Limoges as they were anywhere else in France. Elsewhere, whether the rise of nationalism rippled out into responses against or in line with changing domestic political equations, it revived interest in the war and spurred fresh initiatives to perpetuate its memory. Across the country, the 1890s witnessed a wave of new war memorials and the foundation of veterans’ associations. In the Dordogne region, around 20 war memorials were erected, the most prominent being that in P´erigueux which was initiated at the height of the Dreyfus Affair in 1899 and unveiled 10 years later. Edmond Desca’s allegory of France offered an image of defiant and belligerent resistance.94 The growth of the Souvenir Franc¸ais, an organization dedicated to perpetuating the memory of all fallen French soldiers in all conflicts, was at once a symptom and a factor in the revival of public interest in the war. With membership rising from 5000 in 1891 to around 40,000 in 1897, local committees of the Souvenir Franc¸ais were usually heavily involved with commemorative activities in their areas.95 As a nationwide umbrella organization, it provided practical and financial assistance in the construction of war memorials, contributing towards funds raised in Baule (Loire-Atlantique), Sauteau (Gironde), and Nice between 1893 and 1894. In some instances, local committees took charge of erecting monuments themselves; more commonly, however, the Souvenir Franc¸ais facilitated and connected local initiatives that were spread across the nation. The 1890s also witnessed the proliferation of veterans’ associations. Men from all over France who had served in the war but who lived far away from the zone of combat were often motivated by desires to renew or create notions of comradeship with those who had died and those who survived. While it is difficult to establish precisely how many groups were established or how large their membership was in total, fragmentary evidence suggests a widespread and dispersed phenomenon

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where distance from the sites of battle did not diminish enthusiasm. Much of the associations’ work centred on perpetuating the memories of their fallen comrades by sending wreaths to war memorials or organizing visits to commemorations. The activities of the association for Haute-Garonne based at Toulouse were typical, organizing accommodation and reductions in rail fares for veterans undertaking the long trip to the annual commemorations at Belfort.96 The overwhelming majority of associations also sought to maintain fraternal relations between veterans by attending members’ funerals and providing pensions and financial assistance to widows. With many also engaging in welfare-related activities, the associations may be interpreted in terms of veterans’ feelings of neglect by central government, but they also show how commemorative activity was not restricted to the areas that had witnessed battle in 1870–1871.97 The unprecedented efforts to commemorate the Franco-Prussian War, and the zeal with which it was conducted, produced a variety of conflicting impulses. War remembrance was at once driven forward and constrained by the imperatives of a supposedly sacred cult of fallen soldiers. Ambitions to spread and perpetuate memories of 1870–1871 resulted in mass-produced war monuments, battlefield tours, and museums, but these were forms of memorialization that might be deemed far removed from forms of meaningful remembrance. Any analysis of acts of commemoration in the post-1870 period must not, however, de-link the forms and functions that such gestures took. Unlike after 1918, the legitimacy of war was not under significant threat and while some elements on the internationalist socialist left came to oppose the cult of the army, the glorification of military sacrifice became stronger after 1870. Acts of remembrance motivated by desires to perpetuate the memories of those who had died in the Franco-Prussian War were deemed inherently legitimate because fallen soldiers were considered to embody the virtues of bravery, resilience, duty, and devotion that would provide the antidote to fears of decline and decadence. The Franco-Prussian War was the first conflict in France to be commemorated on a mass scale. It was the first time that large numbers of war memorials were erected in memory of rank-and-file soldiers and the first time that people gathered in their thousands each year to remember those who had died in combat. There had, of course, been dramatic defeats before, but with the collapse of 1870–1871 came a refusal to accept the results of the fighting on the battlefield as final. And yet with the consolidation of the Third Republic, economic recovery and expansion, and a revived sense of cultural confidence, the war began

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to fade from public consciousness, leaving local communities having to seek new ways actively to engage current and future generations in sustaining its memory. New forms of remembrance involved a transition to broader bases of commemorative activity, producing a more problematic relationship between the intended meaning and that which was actually conveyed. With the expansion of commemorative activity following the First World War, the potential for divergence between the two became only greater.

5 Legacies of l’ann´ee terrible

Nowhere did the words l’ann´ee terrible more fittingly describe the experiences of 1870–1871 than in Paris. Under siege from 19 September 1870 until 26 January 1871, the capital was forced to endure bombardment, starvation, disease, isolation, and inaction, only to have to face the indignity of occupation and a German victory parade down ´ ees on 1 March 1871. The crowds who amassed on the Champs-Elys´ the streets to celebrate the declaration of war against Germany in July 1870 could scarcely have imagined that it would end that way; after all, when the siege began there were over 400,000 men ready to protect the city against around 200,000 enemy troops. Such strength in numbers was not, however, matched by effective strategic thinking as the disastrous sorties from Le Bourget, Champigny, and Buzenval clearly revealed. Civilian suffering exacerbated public fury at the failure to break out of the impasse and so when the government negotiated an armistice on 28 January 1871, the extreme left backed by many more moderate Parisians rose up in a violent convulsion of anger, calling for r´esistance a` outrance and proclaiming a new Paris Commune. Clashes between forces supporting the Commune and the reconstituted army based at Versailles on 2 April marked the beginnings of the civil war which was to bring violent suppression and around a further 22,000 dead. Events in the capital resonated in the political life of the nation. Paris lost its position as the seat of government until 1879, while the constitution of 1875 sought to shift power towards the countryside and away from the radical cities. For all but the far left, the civil war made the image of Paris as the vanguard of patriotism, home of the Revolution, and guardian of the Republic one to fear rather than one to admire. Paris had, of course, long suffered from an image of decadent corruption. 129

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While in part rooted in a history of real or perceived difference between urban and rural societies, it was the Girondins who contributed most significantly towards establishing a discourse of hatred towards Paris as a place of arrogance, chaos, and disorder.1 By the outbreak of war in 1870, notions of Paris as the centre of revolution had been combined with images of extravagance under Napoleon III. For their own part, elements of the Parisian left developed myths of the city standing alone against the hostile elements of reaction, arguing that republicanism had been suppressed by provincial forces in 1848 and that the Second Empire had been imposed upon Paris by rural conservatives.2 As he led the crushing of the Commune in May 1871, Thiers saw an opportunity finally to rid the capital of its ‘dangerous’, revolutionary elements; he therefore espoused particularly brutal methods in the hope of terrorizing and purging problematic communities.3 The corruption of the capital became a favoured theme for the right after 1871, but although the Catholic Church considered that Paris was not alone in needing to repent, Lyon, Toulouse, and the other cities associated with revolution did not carry the same stigma. Repairing the reputation of the capital and repositioning it as a symbol of the political nation thus required replacing images of the Commune with those of the siege. As this chapter seeks to suggest, however, the two aspects of l’ann´ee terrible could not be so easily separated, and memories of the Franco-Prussian War were perhaps inevitably viewed through the prism of memories of the Commune. In the aftermath of the Commune, memories of the siege of Paris sat uneasily with representations of the broader war experience. Indeed, myths of the army and people united in the national defence seemed nonsensical when juxtaposed with the brutal civil war that followed. More broadly, in the eyes of the monarchists and the moderate left, the political recovery and stabilization of the Republic necessitated a strict separation in the two phases of the Parisian experience and a determined effort to discredit Communard claims that the insurrection had risen in the name of patriotism. The relationship between Paris and the provinces was also problematic. While the capital had an image of frivolity and decadence, its excesses under the Second Empire had been influenced by a regime that owed its existence to support from the rural provinces. Politics and culture in the capital thus addressed the crisis with efforts to manage representations of l’ann´ee terrible, even though broader expressions of Parisian identity remained inexorably permeated by the enduring legacy of the war and the Commune.

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The immediate response of the monarchists to the crisis in the capital was to seek to restore unity by portraying the Commune as a conspiracy by a minority of extremists. The National Assembly enquiry into the uprising which was established on 17 June 1871 therefore duly concluded that from the fall of the Second Empire, the entire catastrophe had been engineered by the International. In accordance with right-wing visions of the Commune as part of a wider revolutionary movement, the uprising was taken out of a specifically Parisian and even French context, making all but the most hardcore elements merely the pawns in an extremist conspiracy.4 The enquiry report painted a picture of a divided capital: on one side were the minority who saw the siege as a means of arming the revolution; on the other were the majority who endured the suffering in good faith, armed solely with patriotism.5 From the outset, the Government of National Defence failed to fend off the threat from revolutionary factions who openly attempted to exploit France’s misfortunes.6 Seeking to establish the Commune as a distinct chapter in the experiences of l’ann´ee terrible, the enquiry pointed out that the National Guard, whose men were at the heart of the insurrection, was not the same force as that which had defended the capital against Germany. Units had changed, most officers were no longer in place, and around 30,000 guardsmen from the provinces had returned home to their families.7 Demoralized but relieved at the end of the suffering, the enquiry reported, the population slipped into a kind of fever of excitement; in their clubs, workers fell under the spell of ‘damaging doctrines’, while disarmed soldiers who had returned to Paris became susceptible to the contagion of disaffection.8 The Commune thus appeared as a disease, infecting an exhausted population. All that was needed, the enquiry concluded, was for weapons to be placed into the hands of the enfeebled.9 The findings of the enquiry reflected a wider condemnation of ‘ParisBabylon’, the decadent, corrupt object of distrust for monarchists and many Catholics. Long held in contempt for its association with revolution, the corruption of the Second Empire, and the secularizing impulses of urban society, the Commune fuelled Catholic suspicions that in the capital lay the roots of the nation’s ills.10 Thus out of the smouldering ashes of the devastated capital arose a defiant Catholic Church. Having witnessed the murder of 23 priests and the Archbishop of Paris at the hands of the Commune, the Church was in no mood to forgive the transgressions of Paris. Elsewhere in the country, the defeat had triggered a major religious revival. Riding on a tide of evangelism, the Church moralized on national decadence, arguing that the defeat was God’s will

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and vengeance for France’s abandonment of faith, respect, discipline, and obedience. As early as 17 March 1871, the ultramontane Catholic journalist Veuillot had insisted that the nation’s suffering was caused by more than just a temporary illness; the poison had entered the soul and the capital needed an exorcist, not a doctor.11 Instead of attempting to soothe the divisions in the capital, the Church therefore chose to exacerbate them with a merciless assault on the forces of anti-clericalism. The uncompromising stance of the Church came to be symbolized in the construction of a basilica dedicated to the cult of the Sacred Heart. Originating in a vow of atonement in return for Paris being spared from invasion, it became a votive offering of reparation for the sins of the capital under the Commune.12 Yet even some moderate Catholics feared that the basilica would be too provocative, claiming that its counterrevolutionary message would be too extreme.13 For it was to be located in Montmartre, the site of the martyrdom of St Denis, and the place where Generals Lecomte and Cl´ement-Thomas were executed the day the Communard uprising began. Its elevated position would render it the only monument which could be seen almost everywhere in the capital, and its gleaming white fac¸ade would be a daily reminder that Paris had sinned. Just as the deconsecrated Panth´eon came to symbolize the secular values of the Third Republic, so the Sacr´e-Coeur aimed to defend an opposing vision of the capital and the nation. A site of pilgrimage over the course of its lengthy construction, intransigent Catholics hoped that its erection would mark the consecration of France to the cult of the Sacred Heart and the expulsion of all the ideas associated with 1789.14 If monarchists and Catholics considered the Commune to have been the manifestation of a Parisian ‘illness’ aggravated by the claustrophobia, poor living conditions, and close proximity to ‘harmful doctrines’ during the siege, more moderate opinion sought to portray it as a temporary aberration in an otherwise heroic narrative of hardship. Indeed, the many writers and artists caught up in the siege captured the horrific and fantastic implications of the food shortages, leaving little doubt as to the levels of Parisian stoicism and patriotism amidst the suffering. Their depiction of the proud, enlightened, and sophisticated capital having been plunged into darkness, its people left scavenging for food, eating their pets, devouring the zoo, and hunting for rats provided one of the most enduring images of l’ann´ee terrible. Only the conservative Edmond de Goncourt offered a dissenting voice, being unimpressed by the sacrifices which he claimed amounted to little more than having to eat ‘strong butter’ and horsemeat rather than beef.15 It was only after the armistice had been signed against the will of the capital that its

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apologists conceded that the besieged population began to succumb to ‘malign’ influences. Indeed, as A. J. Dals`eme noted, without the motivation of the resistance ‘like a general malaise, there reigns in the public mood a feeling of vague anxiety that has overtaken the city’s spirit of over-excitation’.16 For Zola and many other writers, the metaphor of illness provided an explanation for the Commune that allowed for the restoration of Parisian greatness after the civil war. In La d´ebˆacle, Zola thus depicted a feverish, intense atmosphere drawing even the most rational and stable elements into a collective madness. When Maurice enters besieged Paris in September 1870, he finds it prepared for any sacrifice, but already there are signs of ‘unhealthy excitability’ reaching an ‘epidemic fever’.17 Paranoia is rampant and soon Maurice falls prey to the ‘disease of suspicion’ which overcomes all his beliefs and values.18 At each defeat he becomes increasingly ‘unhinged’, his resistance weakened by lack of sleep and food.19 Angry at the provinces’ vote for peace, Maurice joins the National Guard, leading a life of idle drunkenness, and inhaling the mob’s ‘germs of madness’ that are trapped in the enclosed space of the city defences.20 On 18 March, Maurice becomes drawn into an orgy of intoxicated violence and unwittingly bayonets his old comrade-in-arms, Jean.21 The story ends with Paris consumed in a sacrificial conflagration that will banish the corruption. If the capital has been unwell, the body is essentially healthy and can live on after the infected limbs have been amputated. Thus while many monarchists and Catholics suggested that the Parisian disease was hereditary and even terminal, moderate republican narratives such as Zola’s suggested that it was contagious but treatable. The desired recovery of the capital pervaded the work of French painters, many of whom had participated in the defence of Paris and had sympathized with the Commune. As Albert Boime observes, while Impressionists may not have concentrated upon depicting the siege or the Commune, in tracing the repaired sites of l’ann´ee terrible and portraying them drenched in sunlight, they sought to contribute towards the rebuilding of Paris, the nation, and the Republic.22 Pissarro’s and Monet’s paintings of the reconstructed bridges at Pontoise and Argenteuil which had been destroyed by German forces in the siege of Paris may thus be interpreted as symbols of regeneration and hope.23 In Paris itself, Impressionists depicted a republican, harmonious, and confident city. In 1878 Manet painted the colourful scenes of tricolour flags on rue Mosnier, while Monet portrayed the celebrations of 30 June on rue Saint-Denis.24 Memories of the war were never far away, however.

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Degas’ Place de la Concorde (1875) depicted passers-by in the square that was a focus for patriotic gathering during the siege, but which was also occupied by Prussian troops on 1 March 1871 and was the site of celebrations for the founding of the Commune. In the foreground, Degas placed Vicomte Ludovic-Napol´eon Lepic, a Bonapartist aristocrat who had fought alongside Napoleon III and had been imprisoned at Sedan.25 His top hat conceals the statue of Strasbourg to symbolize the absence of Alsace-Lorraine, but as Hollis Clayson argues, it may also be interpreted as hiding memories of the Commune in an attempt to replace its horrors with images of peaceful normality.26 Restoring the damaged reputation of Paris necessitated an assertion that its defenders and people had been defeated by hunger alone. For the far left, such claims corroborated their insistence upon the legitimacy of r´esistance a` outrance; for more moderate opinion, however, it was a matter of demonstrating that the capital had salvaged national honour with its exemplary courage.27 Meissonier’s Le si`ege de Paris, 1870–1871 thus sought to contribute to the capital’s recovery with a compelling allegory of political, social, religious, and national harmony. Having spent the siege serving as a messenger in the National Guard, Meissonier initially conceived of the painting in terms of revenge against Germany, beginning sketches while Prussian soldiers were quartered in his house. In the 13 years it took to complete it, however, Meissonier’s attention turned towards questions of Parisian and national political identity. The painting portrayed the relationship between France, the provinces, and the capital as one of mutual assistance and dependence. As Paris is surrounded by suffering and death, she faces the one enemy who can defeat her; the ‘spectre of Famine’ descends from the sky while a Prussian eagle clings on ready to scavenge among the victims.28 All social classes are depicted fighting together in a show of national unity, implicitly dismissing the divisive politics of the Commune.29 With its central female allegory juxtaposed with a tricolour flag and surrounded by combatants, the painting is redolent of Delacroix’s La libert´e guidant le peuple of 1830. The contrasts are clear, however, as Meissonier’s Paris appears steadfast and solid rather than dynamic and revolutionary, and the combatants are military rather than civilian. If the central female allegory is reminiscent of Marianne, Meissonier makes it clear that the enemy is foreign, and that the conflict is national, not social or political. Out in the Parisian suburbs, however, many of the battle lines of April–May 1871 proved stronger than the fragile alliances of the war against Germany. Men who had fought at Le Bourget, Champigny, and Buzenval attended memorial ceremonies not just as veterans of the

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Franco-Prussian War but as veterans of the civil war as well. Whereas cultural representations used artistic and literary devices to articulate particular narratives, when it came to war commemorations, the lines of division were complex and the actors not so easily manipulated. If the National Guard became synonymous with the Commune in the eyes of many conservatives, in reality, the distinction between the forces that had fought against Germany and those that had resisted the Army of Versailles was not so clear. Many regular soldiers joined the ranks of the National Guard in February 1871 and many of those who had served in the National Guard against Germany fled at around the same time; it was therefore not uncommon for men who fought for the Army of Versailles to sympathize with those fighting for the Commune.30 Monarchist and Catholic proselytizing on the virtues of the army and implicit condemnation of the National Guard thus represented an act of provocation for many former soldiers and guardsmen. For not only were many anti-clerical in outlook, but they opposed the Church’s support for the military leadership, whom they accused of defeatism in capitulating to Germany and betrayal in supporting the Army of Versailles. The transposition of memories of the Commune onto recollections of the siege was made abundantly clear in the memorial ceremonies in the suburbs. In January 1872, Bishop Mabile of Versailles was praising the ‘skilful and determined’ army commanders in the sortie from Saint-Cloud, when he was interrupted by murmurs of disapproval from ex-servicemen. Viewing the battle through the prism of the events that had followed, Mabile went on to allege that ‘the besieged town contained devoted defenders, except for a few [ . . . ] who, instead of thinking of the fatherland, were already preparing the horrors of the Commune’.31 He proposed that only the army could provide an antidote to such sentiment and rescue civilization from one of its greatest ever crises. In a similar manner, speaking at the memorial service for Le Bourget in October 1872, Abbot Bayle of Saint-Denis attacked the ‘impious forces’ and ‘evil doctrines’ of the extreme left which he claimed could only be combated through the union of the Church and army.32 At ceremonies everywhere, the defence of Paris was recalled via memories of the Commune and the civil war. Indeed, the battle for Le Bourget could not be separated from associations with the extreme-left disturbances that followed.33 The battle began on 28 October 1870 when General de Bellemare’s successful surprise attack on the town’s Prussian garrison was greeted by the Parisian press as the first significant victory of the war. Bellemare’s initiative failed to win over General Trochu, however, who insisted that Le Bourget was indefensible and

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strategically insignificant. With only 3100 men under his command, Bellemare refused to surrender his gains and pleaded for reinforcements against the 18,000 men being amassed on the Prussian side. But Trochu only provided an ambiguous telegram on the evening of 29 October, which left Bellemare no wiser as to whether he was being ordered to resist or evacuate.34 On the morning of 30 October, the Prussian army launched a massive counter-attack; the defenders mounted a brave resistance, but by midday Le Bourget had fallen once again.35 The news brought shockwaves to the capital, seeming to confirm extreme-left suspicions about the credibility of the Government of National Defence especially in the wake of Bazaine’s surrender of Metz. In November 1871 Henri Dichard, a veteran of Le Bourget, published a candid account of the battle, detailing acts of ‘betrayal’ by several senior army commanders and numerous incidents of ‘cowardice and treason’.36 The experiences of the civil war had left many rank-and-file soldiers feeling embittered towards their superiors’ conduct in the combat against Germany. Dichard thus revealed that not only had fellow mobiles deserted their posts, but that many officers had done so as well. In the 14th battalion of mobiles of the Seine, Lieutenant-Major Roussan and Major Jacob had mysteriously disappeared on the morning of 30 October, to be found several miles in the rear in the relative safety of Aubervilliers. General Rolland, commander of the francs-tireurs de la presse, was also nowhere to be seen and had to be replaced by Captain Bouleau. The fact that all three were later promoted or decorated for their conduct only exacerbated the antagonism between officers and elements of the army rank and file.37 At the first memorial service for Le Bourget in October 1872, however, the Bonapartist writer Francis Aubert compared the devotion of those who had braved death with those who, tempted by the ‘lure of gain’, had abandoned their positions and gone on to support the Commune.38 Recalling the uprising in Paris the day after the sortie, Aubert blamed France’s collapse on the agents of civil war ‘who tried to profit from the presence of the enemy to ferment sedition’.39 Commemorating the failed sortie from Buzenval on 19 January 1871 also revived and intensified the tensions between those who had fought alongside one another in the Franco-Prussian War. For the sortie was widely remembered with the suspicion that Trochu had only sent large numbers of National Guards into action as a means of ‘bleeding’ the force of some of its radical elements.40 The mission had been poorly planned and executed, being seen by many as merely a response to the increasingly impatient demands of extreme-left factions for a sortie torrentielle. It comprised a three-column attack led by General Vinoy on

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the left, General de Bellemare in the centre, and General Ducrot on the right. It began badly and did not improve. The French advance was soon halted, causing morale to collapse among the exhausted National Guards. With no artillery or infantry reserves to draw on, Trochu issued the order to retreat.41 The offensive involved around 90,000 men, of whom 42,000 were National Guards, but Trochu insisted that at least an eighth of the losses were the direct result of guardsmen’s indiscipline.42 One year after the sortie, the battlefields of Buzenval were once again a scene of conflict; this time, however, the struggle was for control over memory rather than territory. In the midst of paying tribute to those who had performed their duty in the battle, Am´ed´ee Langlois, who had originally been designated to head the National Guard under the Commune, was interrupted. Upon hearing the word ‘duty’ through the bitter cold and torrential rain, the crowds of former soldiers and guardsmen erupted into a resounding chorus of ‘Long live the Republic!’ With equal resolution, however, many of the officers and ex-servicemen who were present rejected such a politicized and left-wing interpretation of the conflict, responding with cries of ‘Long live France!’ The guardsmen repeated their cry, and the exchanges threatened to escalate into a disturbance until the mayor of Rueil intervened with the diplomatic solution that ‘France and the Republic are one: but [ . . . ] it is France before everything’.43 Several times during the ceremony at Buzenval in 1873, former guardsmen again noisily acclaimed the Republic, only to be met with equally vociferous cries of ‘Long live France!’44 With the future of the Republic remaining uncertain, similar scenes were repeated across the Parisian suburbs as veterans, politicians, clergymen, and local communities clashed over the different visions of the nation they believed they had been fighting for. The final major date in the calendar of anniversaries from the defence of Paris was Champigny on 30 November (Figure 5.1). The offensive was sold to the people of Paris as the long-awaited sortie in which Ducrot would lead a break-out across to the left bank of the Marne. It began inauspiciously, however, when it proved impossible to throw bridgeheads across the river. With the offensive delayed, Moltke was able to divert reinforcements so that when they attempted to scale the heights of the Villiers plateau, French forces were met with entrenched and invisible opposition. The German fusillade inflicted massive casualties and struck terror into the French armies.45 The Champigny sortie was by far the most costly of all the attempts to break out of the siege, with the French army losing around 4000 men in only a few hours. News of the failed sortie was swiftly followed by reports that the Army

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Figure 5.1 Ossuary at Champigny-sur-Marne

of the Loire had been halted and that Orl´eans had once again fallen to enemy hands. Having lost any realistic possibility of relief from the provinces, the authority of the Government of National Defence was dealt a crushing blow, fuelling the threat from the extreme left and once again raising the spectre of revolution. Memories of Champigny were therefore inextricably bound up with recollections of the disintegration of moderate republicanism, especially in the eyes of monarchists and Catholics. Speaking at the commemorations in 1873, War Minister General Boissonnet contrasted the motivations behind the national defence with those behind the Commune as he argued that at Champigny men ‘were brought together from all corners of the land: all without distinction of rank, of wealth, of opinion’.46 Asserting that the war had been fought in the name of France, Boissonnet sought to refute the mayor of Champigny’s praise for the Republic, implicitly invoking the dead as symbols of national unity whose sacrifice was in stark contrast with the selfish machinations of the left.47 In such clashes were perpetuated the divisions of l’ann´ee terrible. The experiences of the Commune and the civil war radicalized notions of republicanism and divided veterans of the siege into those who supported such ideas and those who opposed them. It irreversibly altered the political identities of combatants, conflating memories of the Franco-Prussian War and the civil war. Supporters of the Commune saw

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themselves as patriotic republicans above all else and in the war against Germany it was to acclamations of the Republic, rather than France that they had rallied.48 War commemorations in the early and mid-1870s were therefore characterized by a gulf of opinion between organizers and participants. Catholic priests, military leaders, and even representatives of the Red Cross initiated ceremonies to highlight their belief in the legitimacy of the resistance against Germany and the illegitimacy of the Commune. Yet the resulting conflicts of opinion between conservatives and radicalized former soldiers and guardsmen saw many of the battle lines of the civil war being redrawn and revived in services that were meant to honour the fallen. Catholics clashed with anti-clericals, officers with rank-and-file soldiers, regular soldiers with volunteers and National Guardsmen, and republicans with anti-republicans. With the consolidation of republican support in the legislative elections of 1876– 1878, however, came an end to feelings that Parisian patriotism was being squeezed by the forces of conservatism. In a gesture of defiant confidence, the capital erected a monument dedicated to its heroic perseverance. In so doing, however, it revealed the extent to which the fissures of l’ann´ee terrible lived on.

Monument to the defence of Paris The decision to erect a monument to the defence of Paris was taken on 12 February 1878, less than a month after significant republican gains in the municipal elections and only a fortnight after the departure of the conservative president Marshal MacMahon. The announcement marked one of the first major initiatives to republicanize the monumental landscape of the capital, being followed by a separate competition in October 1879 to construct a statue of the Republic. The designated site at Courbevoie underscored the political significance of the new monument, having previously been occupied by the statue of Napoleon I before its removal by the Government of National Defence in 1870. The new monument would be directly aligned with the Arc de Triomphe, but whereas the latter was dedicated to the glory of the officers and generals of the Grande Arm´ee, the former was to be democratic and republican, celebrating citizens-in-arms. The location was also significant for being the site where Communard forces had resisted a heavy attack by Versailles troops on 2 April 1871.49 Positioned facing outwards, the monument would therefore appear to confront not only a German enemy but a French one as well.

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The Conseil G´en´eral de la Seine invited sculptors to compete in a contest which attracted over 100 entries, more than the concurrent competition for the monument to the Republic.50 Many of the country’s finest sculptors submitted proposals, preferring to memorialize the war rather than the more abstract ideas of the Republic.51 Often they were able to draw on personal experiences of combat; Ernest Barrias, Alexandre Falgui`ere, Henri Chapu, and Auguste Rodin had been stationed around Paris, while Auguste Bartholdi had enrolled in the National Guard of the Seine and had fought to defend his native Alsace. The competition entries struggled to find any originality, however. The vast majority juxtaposed a female allegory of Paris with a smaller statue of one of her defenders who tended to be mortally wounded. As Hollis Clayson observes, the attribution of masculine characteristics upon female representations of Paris developed out of the changing atmosphere in the capital under siege as it shifted from pleasure to penury, from decadence in peace to austerity in war, and thus from effeminacy to masculinity.52 The inversion of traditional gender roles in which the male figure appears vulnerable and dependent upon a more powerful female was also influenced by representations of Christ in the piet`a, an image that seemed particularly pertinent at a time when soldiers were popularly regarded as martyrs for the nation. One of the greatest difficulties was finding a statue which projected the meaning the Conseil G´en´eral de la Seine wished to convey. From the entries shortlisted to go through to the second and third rounds, there emerges a clear preference for realistic detail in soldiers’ uniforms and arms, and for allegories of Paris rather than the Republic, although the iconography of the capital was often conflated with that of the Republic.53 One of the notable absences from the final shortlist was Rodin. Looking back on the affair several years later, Rodin acknowledged that he had misjudged the situation. His statue simply did not match the jury’s desire for a monument that would be easily understood and meaningful, but not politically provocative. Rodin later conceded that his statue ‘must have seemed too violent, too vibrant’, but he remained unrepentant about the timidity of the jury and his fellow competitors, claiming, ‘we have made so little progress since the Marseillaise by Rude, who also shouts with all her strength’.54 In reality, however, it was not that artistic expression had failed to advance, but that politics constrained experimentation in public monuments. A call to arms in the style of the Marseillaise might, in the context of 1879, have seemed suggestive of the extremist, violent, revolutionary patriotism of the Commune. While Radicals were reconciled with its memory,

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campaigning for amnesty for former Communards and supporting the election of Auguste Blanqui, Opportunists continued to view the ideas and leaders of the Commune as a threat. The winning entry by Ernest Barrias successfully conveyed a confidently republican assertion of Parisian patriotism, but in a manner that appeared non-confrontational (Figure 5.2). The accurate detail in the

Figure 5.2 Ernest Barrias, La d´efense de Paris, Courbevoie, now La D´efense, Paris (1878–1883)

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military uniforms appealed to the jury’s quest for realism, and unlike the other two finalists, Barrias’ monument featured a wounded soldier. In another departure from many of the other entries, Barrias incorporated a woman crouching down with her head bowed down in grief to symbolize the civilian suffering in the siege. The female allegory of Paris appears strong and resolute, towering protectively over one of her wounded but defiant defenders. Perhaps most significantly, however, Paris wears the greatcoat of a National Guard, thus re-appropriating and transforming its memory from a volatile, dangerous, revolutionary force to one representing the true spirit of the capital. It is not hard to see why this appealed to Radical members of the Conseil G´en´eral de la Seine. Many believed that the National Guard, embodying the republican principles of a nation-in-arms, should replace the army which they suspected of being uncommitted to the Republic. Barrias’ monument thus seemed a perfect compromise: its moderate style suited Opportunists, but its content and meaning satisfied Radicals. Attempts to accommodate Radical and Opportunist memories and present them as complimentary collapsed in the unveiling ceremony of 12 August 1883. Only the Radical president of the Conseil G´en´eral de la Seine, Barth´elemy Forest, was authorized to speak. He repeated the popular republican myths in which France was unwillingly plunged into combat by the Second Empire and the army performed its duty bravely but was outnumbered by the enemy to conclude that ‘Paris was defeated by famine alone. Such a defeat is more honourable than victory.’55 If such words were scarcely provocative in their repetition of hackneyed ideas, the marches that followed proved otherwise. Three years earlier, the involvement of the army in the first celebrations of 14 July had been condemned by Le Figaro as representing the triumph of the values of the Commune.56 Reports in L’Intransigeant suggest that at the unveiling of the monument to the defence of Paris, soldiers resented having to be involved in another republican ceremony, especially as it seemed to privilege the National Guard over the army. And as if to add insult to injury, soldiers had to salute former leaders of the Commune who were sitting in the official tribune as members of the Paris municipal council. Thus L’Intransigeant claimed: During the military parade it was frequently noted that when troops passed before the monument and before the official platform, none of the military honours which are customary at such events were rendered by officers, or by the flag carriers, and that the bands of various army corps, except the dragoons, passed by in silence. It seems to us

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that this ceremony, which recalls the heroic struggle of Paris, should have seen if not enthusiasm, then at least the goodwill of military authorities. But the old rancour against republican and patriotic Paris still persists, it would appear.57 Undoubtedly, such claims were embellished with the kind of polemical flourish that characterized the journalism of L’Intransigeant, but they are broadly consistent with reports from other sources. The abolition of the National Guard in 1871 meant that it was not officially represented in the parade; according to the monarchist Gazette de France, former guardsmen therefore paraded alongside freemasons in an act of defiant protest.58 It was the presence of workers’ associations and anti-clerical freethinking societies that finally unmasked the incompatibility of Opportunist and Radical memories of the war. As they filed past Waldeck-Rousseau, freethinkers unfurled a red flag. It was a provocative and symbolic act projecting the divisions of the civil war straight into the heart of the ceremony. In the fighting of April–May 1871, the red flag had been the symbol of patriotism for the Commune, while the tricolour had been the discredited emblem of French defeat and Versailles.59 WaldeckRousseau’s irritation was obvious; some reports claimed that he grimaced and hastily replaced his hat as the freethinkers marched past, while one account stated that he promptly left, accompanied by cries from the workers of ‘Long live the amnesty! Long live the social revolution!’60 On one level, the incident revealed a gulf of discomfort between Radicals and Opportunists over the relationship between memories of the siege and memories of the Commune. On another, it manifested the difficulties of reconciling the experiences of l’ann´ee terrible within republican thinking. For the appearance of a red flag on the site of Communard resistance against the Army of Versailles threatened to give the monument to the defence of Paris a totally different meaning. In attempting to create a republican image of the siege encapsulating the experiences of the entire capital, the monument clashed with deeply entrenched rival memories. The result was a failed political compromise and a monument that suited no one. Those on the right had been critical of the republican initiative from the outset, but the presence of the extreme left at the unveiling ceremony prompted particularly strong condemnation.61 Notwithstanding the attempts of the Conseil G´en´eral de la Seine to construct a relatively anodyne representation of the defence of Paris, at only 12 years since the bloody suppression of the Commune and only 3 years since the amnesty for its leaders, memories remained vivid and resentments intense. The monarchist

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Gazette de France asserted that the venture had been injudicious from the outset, for erecting a monument to the defence of Paris inevitably turned thoughts back towards the ‘criminals’ responsible for the ‘catastrophes’ of 1870. The parade had been ‘grotesque’, and by sanctioning the event, the government had lent ‘shameful’ consent to a ceremony that ‘glorified [ . . . ] the demagogy of the Blanqui faction’ and all those who were responsible for the uprisings of 31 October, 19 January, and 18 March.62 The moderate left were dissatisfied with the timidity of the gesture; Gil Blas reported that the ceremony had lacked grandeur and had seemed ‘trivial’, ‘infantile’, and ‘puerile’, leaving many onlookers indifferent and perplexed at the long parade that followed the army.63 As L’Intransigeant observed, such was the problematic nature of l’ann´ee terrible that the Conseil G´en´eral de la Seine had sought to turn one of the most tumultuous periods in the history of the capital into something resembling ‘the opening of a new casino’.64 With little sense of belonging to any community and lacking a tangible connection with the war dead, the monument to the defence of Paris never commanded the same kind of loyalty that the memorials in the suburbs possessed. It therefore never became the focus for the capital’s war commemorations. In the years after 1883, the municipal council of Courbevoie adopted the monument as its own, organizing a small ceremony around it each year in early June.65 By 1896, the monument was incorporated into the commemorations for the sortie from Buzenval.66 The monument represented an attempt to construct a common memory based on a republican narrative; it sought to preclude opposing political perspectives and to establish an image of the defence that would suppress memories of humiliation and civil war. Like any act of remembrance, it was the product of compromise, but instead of mollifying the tensions of l’ann´ee terrible, it merely aggravated them.

Nationalist memories Because Franco-Prussian War commemorations around the capital have tended to be explored from the perspective of the Ligue des Patriotes, a somewhat distorted picture has emerged in recent scholarship. From its foundation in 1882 until the eve of the First World War, Paul D´eroul`ede led supporters of the Ligue in annual pilgrimages to the ceremonies at Buzenval, Bougival, Le Bourget, Champigny, and the plateau of Avron, attracting considerable press attention and creating an impression of hegemony over the memorial landscape of the war around the capital. In reality, however, the Ligue only ever exercised limited influence. Mayors

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in the outlying areas retained control over the political character of their war commemorations, and with an overwhelmingly Parisian and lowermiddle class membership, the Ligue had scarcely any support outside the capital itself.67 The scene in Champigny in 1889 was typical. As the ‘official’ parade organized by the municipal council met at the town hall, a rival one led by D´eroul`ede marched to the memorial to deliver a series of anti-government speeches. But while L’Intransigeant claimed that the municipal council’s cort`ege was ‘noisy and irreverent’, the real reason that D´eroul`ede’s was quiet and ‘respectful’ was that hardly anyone was there.68 D´eroul`ede was later forced to admit that it had all been a huge embarrassment; he had hoped that thousands would turn out in support, but only 800 had, making the ceremony a total failure.69 One of the main reasons for the mistaken impression that the Ligue des Patriotes dominated the region’s war commemorations was the high level of attention their presence received from the Parisian press. Often it was simply because the pattern of provocation and counter-provocation between rival gatherings made interesting reading.70 Nationalists never outnumbered their opponents at war commemorations; they were simply more vociferous and more successful in creating the illusion of predominance. They never successfully captured control of ceremonies from moderate republicans and the far left; only skilful manipulation of the press created the impression that they did. Instead, nationalists became highly adept at exploiting the printed word. Not only did their own press devote numerous column inches to their activities, but the same was true for newspapers of the centre and far left. In part this was due to nationalists’ headline-grabbing confrontations with local authorities. Their main asset was, of course, D´eroul`ede himself. His speeches were always reported because they were invariably well-written and controversial, while those given by local politicians and veterans often failed to be reported. When D´eroul`ede was exiled in early 1900, the Ligue struggled to maintain a following. Many more militant members, who had joined at the height of the Dreyfus Affair, grew bored and stopped attending the war commemorations. In October 1901, the Ligue only managed to muster around 100 supporters for the ceremony at Le Bourget.71 It was simply incapable of sustaining itself without the leadership of D´eroul`ede. As one police report explained, ‘the Ligue des Patriotes, without Paul D´eroul`ede, is like a train without a driver or a mechanic’.72 The number of those attending war commemorations in the suburbs varies widely according to the source, but nationalists were clearly outnumbered by participants in the official commemorations. Even L’Intransigeant, which frequently inflated the figures, conceded that

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the nationalist parade at Champigny in 1891, for instance, could only muster 500 participants, with around the same number returning the following year.73 The collapse of the Boulanger movement caused the fragmentation of nationalists. In Champigny in 1892, three separate unofficial cort`eges made their way to the memorial. The first comprised around 120 former Liguers. The second included around 20 members of revisionist and socialist committees under the leadership of Paulin-M´ery. The third consisted of around 40 men headed by Poirier de Narc¸ay, leftwing members of the Union des Groupes Revisionnistes, and the Ligue Intransigeante.74 Over the course of the 1890s, unofficial parades typically comprised members of small clandestine groups of former Liguers, local committees of Rochefort’s Ligue Intransigeante, and other local revisionist and socialist groups. The vast majority came from Paris, reflecting the kind of social mixture characteristic of Boulangism. Even the brief resurgence in interest around the twenty-fifth anniversary of the war tailed off by the end of the year such that only around 40 former Liguers attended the Champigny commemorations in 1896.75 By contrast, the official ceremonies led by local municipal councils were packed with people from neighbouring towns and villages. Nationalists often criticized their lack of spontaneity as ‘demonstrations by command’, but it was the many families, veterans, and local residents lining the routes and gathering around memorials who boosted attendance figures into the thousands.76 Claims that the Ligue was at the forefront of war commemorations and setting the agenda could never have been borne out, not only because of nationalists’ numerical inferiority, but also because memories of the Franco-Prussian War provided a cornerstone of legitimacy for several competing perspectives on the Dreyfus case. For nationalists, it was vital to stake their claim over war commemorations in order to defend the reputation of the army against its Dreyfusard detractors. After the war, the army rank and file had been exonerated from blame for the defeat, with soldiers being considered as embodying the defining qualities of the French people and holding the key to national revival. For nationalists, then, attacks on the reputation of the army of the day, or that of 1870–1871, represented an assault on France and the national revival. For moderate republicans, memories of the war were the most potent argument against conservatism and against the concentration of power in the hands of one man. They therefore needed war commemorations to remind the public of the dangers of nationalist plans for plebiscitary government and an overly powerful executive. For the extreme left, the war was a lesson in anti-militarism. They saw commemorations as a

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means of asserting the dangers of militarism which had been manifested in the Dreyfus case, and which had been responsible for dragging an unwilling France into war in 1870.77 Gaining the upper hand at war commemorations might not have won the argument between Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards, but with memories of the war being such an important cultural reference-point, it was vital to control representations of 1870–1871. With the status of the army as a republican or national institution under threat, the Affair produced a significant revival of interest in memories of the Franco-Prussian War. The size of the crowds attending the ceremonies in Champigny in 1898 rose to 6000 according to the police and 20,000 according to Le Gaulois.78 The following year, the figures were 8,000–10,000 according to the police, or 10,000–12,000 according to Le Gaulois.79 Le Temps reported figures of 30,000 at Le Bourget in 1898, while in 1899, L’Intransigeant and Le Gaulois estimated that the number was around 10,000–12,000.80 The Affair triggered the creation of a coalition held together by opposition to Dreyfusism, but it made for a number of inconsistencies in nationalist memories of the war. The anti-Dreyfusard campaign necessitated a robust defence of the army and its reputation in the Franco-Prussian War. D´eroul`ede thus abandoned his earlier criticism of bourgeois generals, whom he had believed were unwilling to sacrifice themselves in the war, to advance an unconditionally flattering vision of the army high command.81 Rochefort’s revision of his earlier beliefs was still greater; having previously championed citizen soldiers in opposition to the kind of conservative, reactionary force that he blamed for suppressing the Commune, he became an ardent defender of professional armies. In the realignment of political loyalties, the line of demarcation between socialist and nationalist perspectives on the war became blurred. In public, each maintained that they were diametrically opposed to the other, but many nationalists retained a strong ideological attachment to their roots in the left, and it was significant that many left-wingers recruited to nationalism from Boulangism were at the forefront of nationalist movements. Some nationalists found the transition from left to right relatively easy owing to their opposition to socialist anti-militarism and anti-patriotism. Others, whose conversion to nationalism was more recent and inspired by anti-Semitism and anti-syndicalism, conveyed an ambiguous message. The volatile anti-Dreyfusard coalition thus sent out a confused set of memories of the war. Perhaps the greatest testimony to this was the police assessment of potential trouble at Champigny in December 1899. Rather than expressing concern about the possible clashes between

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Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards, police warned that the greatest danger lay within the anti-Dreyfusard camp itself. Their fears were confirmed as tension erupted between conservatives, patriots, and anti-Semites.82 Of course, nationalists might not have had to perpetuate the illusion of unity on the war had it not been for the fact that they were in direct competition with Dreyfusard local authorities in the suburbs for control over commemorative ceremonies. The many rival unofficial parades, first witnessed after the collapse of the Boulanger movement, became consolidated as nationalists joined the ceremonies organized by the Ligue des Patriotes. At each battle anniversary, groups of Dreyfusards and antiDreyfusards thus engaged in undignified scrambles to reach the war memorial first. In 1898, the dynamics of the clashes between Dreyfusards and antiDreyfusards shifted as swings away from the radicals and socialists resulted in electoral gains for the nationalists. Emboldened by what they regarded as a moral defeat for the government’s stance on the Dreyfus case, the newly elected nationalist municipal councillors such as Henri Galli, Ferdinand Le Menuet, Achille Balli`ere, Maurice Quentin, Jean Spronck, and Edouard Dubuc began to attend war commemorations en masse.83 After the failed nationalist coup of February 1899, however, suburban mayors turned to draconian tactics to disrupt nationalist activity. Thus at Avron in 1899, the Dreyfusard mayor ordered gendarmes to remove nationalist symbols and instructed that the military band play the Marseillaise in order to drown out L´eon Dumonteil’s speech.84 At times, however, even the more belligerent mayor of Champigny found it difficult to prevent commemorations from degenerating into violence. In November 1900, he proposed to cancel the annual ceremony fearing a breakdown in law and order as the Ligue des Patriotes, Ligue de la Patrie Franc¸aise, and Ligue Antisemitique planned to send out 10,000 invitations.85 Notwithstanding the rise of new kinds of radical nationalism, the far left did not relinquish its claims on patriotism. As moderate republicans and nationalists jostled for control over memories of the war in a contest for political legitimacy, they effectively banished the Commune from expressions of patriotism. Yet the legacy of the uprising lived on, dramatically manifesting itself at the commemorations for Buzenval in 1886 as local freethinking societies brandishing red flags and shouting pro-Communard slogans burst into the parade.86 The belligerent reaffirmation of Communard patriotism at the carefully sanitized commemorations for Buzenval challenged moderate republican and

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conservative efforts to dismiss the Commune as a legitimate expression of frustrated commitment to the national war effort. Left-wing victories in the suburbs meant that socialists found themselves not only at the helm of local government, but at the helm of local war commemorations as well. The problem was, of course, that socialist perspectives on war and armies were in a state of flux.87 The commemorations in Saint-Denis, Courbevoie, and Kremlin-Bicˆetre exemplified the complexity of far-left positions. Socialist gains in 1892 secured the far left a majority in the municipal council of Saint-Denis and a Blanquist mayor; the following year’s war commemorations thus saw demands for the abolition of the army, an end to deaths for the fatherland, and social revolution.88 In an inversion of the practice elsewhere, it was the Opportunist minority in the municipal council who were forced to host rival unofficial commemorations.89 Socialist anti-militarism threatened to undermine the sanctity of myths of the war dead as willing martyrs for the fatherland. Many moderate republicans therefore banned socialists from attending commemorations. In Choisy-le-Roi in 1894, the Opportunist mayor forbade socialist deputy Coutant from attending the inauguration of the monument to the marines who had died in the battles of 29–30 November 1870.90 In Courbevoie the same year, the Opportunist municipal council banned the socialist deputy for SaintDenis, Ren´e Chauvin, from the ceremony at the monument to the defence of Paris. Chauvin defied the exclusion to deliver a speech eulogizing the citizens ‘murdered’ by the Army of Versailles and invoking the suppression of the Commune as a symbol of the dangers of militarism.91 The rise of internationalism did not mean that all socialists rejected the legitimacy of memories of wartime sacrifice, however. In February 1898, the socialist municipal council of Kremlin-Bicˆetre voted to allocate 500 francs towards a broken column in memory of the ‘citizens who died for the fatherland and for liberty’.92 The council believed that it had a duty to perpetuate the memories of the ‘victims of duty and of the criminal politics of the heroes of Sedan’ not just ‘because it was socialist’ but because if it did not, anti-socialist societies would do so instead.93 While they may have been anti-militarist, opposed to alliance with Tsarist Russia, and hostile to the idea of revanche, many socialists remained fervent patriots. Indeed, it was not uncommon for socialists to draw attention to the reversal in the attitudes of those who had wanted peace in 1871, claiming that the ‘capitulards’ of the past had become the ‘revanchards’ of the present.94 At the furthest extreme, the Allemanists, a militant group of socialists who formed the Parti ouvrier socialiste r´evolutionnaire (POSR) in 1891, rejected the validity of nation states as

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merely the tools of the ruling classes. More moderate socialists, however, continued to uphold patriotic values and the legitimacy of defence in the case of invasion.95 The 1890s also saw the rise of a non-Marxist, xenophobic, nationalist socialism that sought to protect the interests of French workers against the exploitation of international finance.96 Nationalist socialists claimed that they did not want to wage war, but they attended the commemorations because they wanted to be prepared to do so if necessary.97 In the municipal council and parliamentary elections of the early 1900s, improved socialist organization in working-class areas of Paris served to undermine nationalist support.98 With D´eroul`ede in exile following his failed coup and the Ligue des Patriotes in disarray, nationalists struggled to rival the domination of moderate and radical republicans in suburban war commemorations. The diplomatic crises of Casablanca in 1908 and Agadir in 1911 brought renewed interest in memories of the siege, but they did not revive flagging support for the Ligue. One journalist described the meaninglessness of its activities, the repetition of old slogans, the familiar places, and worn-out faces: ‘they were almost all old men. They stamped their feet as though to comfort the dead: ‘‘We are still there! . . . Alsace . . . Lorraine . . . Quand Mˆeme!’’ I swear that I felt an infinite sadness.’99 Another commentator observed that without the annual commemorations, the Ligue would have no reason to continue to exist.100 In February 1914, however, D´eroul`ede died. While over 100,000 mourners attended his funeral, obituaries proclaimed that as he lay dead, so memories of the war could finally be laid to rest as well. Journal des D´ebats affirmed that interest in D´eroul`ede’s activities had long waned and that for the past decade he had been ‘the object of an ungrateful silence’.101 For Le Figaro, D´eroul`ede’s demise marked the end of a sombre chapter in French history: ‘he was the last witness who continued to relive the ann´ee terrible, it seemed that the tragic memories which he defended were disappearing with him’.102 In reality, however, D´eroul`ede was not alone in being haunted by the legacies of 1870–1871. For the true meaning of l’ann´ee terrible lay in the political, religious, and social divisions it left behind and in the ability of the capital to overcome the traumas it produced. The siege, the famine, the bombardment, the interminable wait for a sortie torrentielle, the disastrous battles, the insurrections, the triumphant German march down the Champs Elys´ees, the bitter civil war, and the fierce conflagrations were deeply ingrained in the memories of all who endured l’ann´ee terrible in the capital. Above all, however, public recollections were dominated by continuing political divisions. Memories of the

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war against Germany could neither replace nor erase memories of the civil war because the two had been so closely connected. The Commune had sprung from a patriotic rejection of the armistice and a feeling that the nation and the Republic had been betrayed by the government. In the eyes of many Parisians, those who supported the Commune were the true patriots, whereas those who opposed it, including Catholics, monarchists, the Army of Versailles, and even moderate republicans, were the traitors. Franco-Prussian War commemorations around the capital did not help to heal past differences; they often served to keep the anger alive. From the cessation of hostilities in 1871 to the eve of the First World War, tension persisted between former soldiers and guardsmen, commanders and the army rank and file, Catholics and anti-clericals, monarchists and republicans, moderate and far-left republicans, and Parisians and those outside the capital. The frontlines were constantly changing as each side scored victories over the other, and the divisions were complex and multifaceted. The alliances were constantly shifting as well, with old Communards joining monarchists under Boulanger, anti-clericals supporting Catholics against Dreyfusards, and socialists joining nationalists. Yet if the acuity of the memories of l’ann´ee terrible began to fade with the passage of time, their significance did not recede and they remained a central cultural and political reference-point. The trauma of the Commune and its bloody suppression left a deep impression on all who experienced it, causing the Franco-Prussian War to be viewed through the prism of the civil war. With such a legacy, it was hardly surprising that the politics of commemoration in the capital often resembled the continuation of civil war by other means.

6 Martyrdom and Resistance

In many national mythologies, war represents a sacred moment of testing when the people and army reveal their true worth. Notwithstanding the suffering or even the successfulness of the fighting, the extreme and often intense experiences become moments of virtue. When war brings defeat, the need to seek solace in myths of national revelation becomes all the greater. In recent decades, scholarship on the Second World War and its aftermath has led the way in analysing how countries have used memories of occupation and resistance as starting-points in a process of reconstructing political and moral legitimacy.1 Myths of wartime experience typically revolve around a narrative in which the innocent country is attacked; there are initial reverses, but these are redeemed by the rediscovery of strength and unity which enable the invader to be triumphantly expelled. The anguish of occupation transforms the defeated into martyrs, offering redemption through sacrifice, while the dangers of resistance signal faith in the nation even in the depths of despair.2 Together, notions of martyrdom and resistance replace disgrace with honour and passivity with activity. The myths of the French resistance in the Second World War and their role in the restoration of national pride are now a familiar subject of enquiry; much less, however, is known of the representations of resistance and martyrdom that emerged with the Franco-Prussian War, even though after the collapse of 1870–1871, these were precisely the ideas through which the nation sought recovery. Robert Gildea argues that because of its history of humiliation on the battlefield, France has developed a political culture centred on concepts of greatness and honour. Thus defeats have been variously blamed on ‘defective’ regimes or buried under the weight of a larger narrative of national glory.3 Yet we 152

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might seek the roots of France’s particular emphasis on martyrdom and resistance in other facets of its political culture. The two concepts embody an idea of the nation as one of ideas not aggressive military might, and of the resilience, patriotism, and intelligence of the people. In their democratic qualities, the concepts are implicitly republican, but in their glorification of suffering, they are also implicitly Christian. After 1870, they were juxtaposed with reconceived notions of a racial and cultural German ‘other’ that served further to reinforce this newly significant self-image. The village of Bazeilles lay at the heart of patriotic memories of 1870–1871 in France. The marines’ tenacious defence of Bazeilles on 31 August to 1 September 1870 in the face of an overwhelming Bavarian offensive entered national mythology as a symbol of the heroism of the French resistance. But the village was also remembered for the terror and brutality inflicted on residents by the German invaders. The two sides to the memory of the battle for Bazeilles fitted neatly into a wider national representation of the war: the victimization of Bazeilles symbolized the victimization of France, while the defiance of the marines symbolized the defiance of the French army and people. Significantly, the battle for Bazeilles offered a patriotic counter-image to the humiliation of Sedan, its heroic defence occurring on the same day that only four kilometres down the road, one of the most spectacular military defeats in French history was unfolding.

Myths of martyrdom Even before the war had ended, Bazeilles was widely regarded as a martyred village, not only in France, but across Europe. Bazeilles was suddenly plunged into the conflict at around four o’clock in the morning on Thursday 1 September 1870 when Bavarian forces led by General von der Tann attacked. Von der Tann had around 40,000 men behind him, facing a French defence comprising only 4 marine infantry regiments of 10,000 men under General Vassoigne. By some fateful error, the French army failed to blow up the bridge over the Meuse leading to Bazeilles before the Bavarians arrived. As they struggled to prevent von der Tann’s men from capturing the bridge, the marines were pushed back, forced to retreat into the village for protection. The marines mounted a fierce resistance, often fighting the enemy face to face in the streets. Some took refuge inside houses, where some local residents assisted them. Bavarian troops began to show increasing signs of frustration at suffering

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such heavy casualties for so little territorial gain.4 What happened next, however, was and remains a source of controversy. The undisputed facts are that in the struggle to capture Bazeilles, around 400 houses were burned down, as well as the town hall and church, leaving only a handful of buildings standing. Thirty-nine civilians perished out of a total population of 2048.5 Yet it was the issue of how the fires were started and why so many civilians died that lay at the centre of the polemic. British and Belgian newspaper correspondents reporting from the frontline sent back detailed accounts of alleged Bavarian massacres of innocent civilians which provoked international outrage. Correspondents for The Times vividly expressed their horror at the death and destruction. In the confusion of the war, their reports painted a devastating image, claiming that hundreds of civilians had been burned alive while trapped in their cellars. One report stated that the village had suffered ‘one of the most deplorable incidents of modern warfare’, while another described it as ‘a scene of desolation and horror which must be without parallel in history’.6 In a bid to regain public support following such negative press coverage, on 29 June 1871, General von der Tann took the rare step of issuing a statement refuting the allegations that his men had acted barbarously in Bazeilles. In an open letter to the press, he complained that his men had been ‘upbraided by journalists [. . .] for using unjustifiable cruelty towards the inhabitants of Bazeilles’.7 He wrote that according to several newspapers, Bavarians and Prussians are said to have set fire to the village in order to punish the inhabitants for the part they took in its defence. It is said that the Gardes Nationales had for the most part remained in the village, that the inhabitants had fled into the cellars, and that women and children, everybody in fact, had been burnt to death. Of the 2000 inhabitants, barely 300 were said to have escaped, and these related how the Bavarians had driven whole families back into the flames, and shot down the women who tried to make their escape.8 Von der Tann insisted that of the 39 residents reported dead, wounded, or missing, only 2 bedridden women, 3 men, and 3 children had been burned to death or had been suffocated.9 If the numbers of casualties had been shown to be far fewer than initial reports had suggested, there remained considerable disagreement over how the fires had been started and whether German reprisals were justified. Von der Tann denied allegations that the houses had been

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deliberately set alight, arguing instead that the conflagration began because the houses were in the line of German projectiles.10 From the outset, however, French sources insisted that the fires had been started in reprisal for the resistance.11 The mayor of Bazeilles asserted that only 37 houses were destroyed by German shells; the remainder had been deliberately set alight with petrol, matches, and in some cases, lighted candles placed under mattresses.12 One marine officer later claimed he had seen Bavarians ‘armed with torches setting fire to houses which had been spared from gunfire, without verifying whether there were women, elderly people, or children inside’.13 While the stories of German soldiers pushing back the families trying to escape the flames may have been the product of rumour and speculation, they fed on knowledge that elsewhere in the country fires had been started as a means of reprisal. The village of Fontenoy was burned down on 22 January 1871 following claims that Prussian soldiers had been shot by francs-tireurs. In this instance, however, the villagers were permitted to leave, although a paralysed woman and elderly man succumbed, unable to escape the flames in time.14 Accusations of German barbarity became a prominent feature of French memories of the war, the aim being to cast France as both victim and martyr. Descriptions therefore typically made the victims the most vulnerable in society, namely women, children, the elderly, and infirm, but they also included unarmed or wounded soldiers. Indeed, veterans of Bazeilles claimed to have witnessed wounded French soldiers being disembowelled with bayonets, while the war memorials at Villecien and Passavant testified to the killing of disarmed prisoners of war.15 The French Red Cross often corroborated such stories, publishing its own list of alleged atrocities in 1871.16 Writers and artists seeking to depict the events in Bazeilles in the period thereafter thus drew upon a well-established narrative of the suffering and victimization in 1870. As Jules Mary’s play La derni`ere cartouche indicates, their language and tone continued to reflect the same indignation of eyewitness accounts written in the heat of the fighting.17 Even Zola, who believed he had a duty to explode patriotic myths surrounding the war, offered a description that might have been drawn verbatim from veterans or the people of Bazeilles: Their anger was rising, and the terrible losses they had been suffering for nearly five hours provoked them to take atrocious reprisals. [. . .] So then they could be seen throwing lighted straw into every house they captured after a fight, and others ran along with torches or sprinkled walls with paraffin.18

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Yet the failure of such cultural representations to step beyond the horror stories to question the binary images of German brutality and French martyrdom did not simply reflect an inability to do so because of the pervasiveness of patriotic narratives, it signalled a conscious unwillingness to do so as well. Indeed, responding to criticisms of La d´ebˆacle from Captain Tanera, a Bavarian veteran of Bazeilles, Zola suggested that the value of his description lay less in its accuracy than in the sentiments that lay behind it. The fact that he had not witnessed the events did not make his account less significant than that of Tanera, Zola argued, since he believed that he had morality and honour on his side.19 For such a view to have been expounded by Zola is significant. So sacred were the memories of Bazeilles deemed that it was widely accepted, even by critics of the post-war whitewash, that upholding exaggerated tales of German brutality was a matter of patriotic obligation that transcended any search for balance or objectivity. On one level, the French emphasis on German atrocities was just another aspect in a propaganda campaign to portray Germany as the barbarian aggressor and France as the peaceable, civilized victim.20 Yet the message was often more complex. If the perpetrators of the brutality were rarely specifically identified and never charged with criminal behaviour, it was because it suited French commentators to convey an image of collective national responsibility.21 Moreover, accounts of German barbarity were often juxtaposed with eulogies on the heroism of the civilian resistance.22 The individuals who defended their homes and their towns were celebrated as upholding republican values of citizens-in-arms fighting to protect the fatherland, serving to create the impression that the entire nation had risen up to defend itself. The brutal German suppression of this democratic and patriotic impulse thus represented an assault not only on French civilization but on French republicanism as well. At the heart of French allegations and German denials were differing views on the status of guerrillas and civilians who took up arms. In France, many regarded the participation of the people in defending their soil as an act of supreme patriotism, the realization of myths of the nation-in-arms. For the German army, by contrast, non-uniformed combatants represented a terrifying, illegitimate, and dishonourable perversion of the rules of warfare. Regarding them as targets on a par with spies, German forces dealt with them accordingly.23 One witness to the fighting in Bazeilles explained how German soldiers differentiated between the types of combatant: ‘the mobiles, who are everywhere organized, are treated by our soldiers as regular troops, but the peasants,

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who fire from the windows, are generally shot without ceremony’.24 Whereas in French eyes, guerrilla fighters were inspired and mobilized by patriotism, in German eyes, they were driven by ‘fanaticism’ and ‘wild passion’.25 The spectre of non-uniformed and unpredictable combatants entered German mythology as a source of terror, being the subject of a genre of literature that remained popular up to the eve of the First World War. These memories were explicitly invoked in 1914 as soldiers were ordered to take preventive measures against any resistance, and were in part responsible for the atrocities committed against the populations of Belgium and northern France.26 The issue of guerrilla warfare split French communities, as many local authorities and residents preferred to co-operate with the enemy rather than risk reprisals.27 The experiences of Chˆateaudun in Eure-et-Loire testified to the dilemma facing towns in the path of invasion. Bowing to public fears, the municipal council did not distribute weapons to National Guards and even demolished barricades and any other obstacles which might have hindered enemy forces. When German troops attacked on 18 October, however, the town mounted a spontaneous and fierce nine-hour resistance.28 In consequence, local residents paid a terrible price, with civilians being thrown out of windows or hanged.29 Thus while the idea of popular resistance fitted with patriotic myths, the reality was complex and controversial. German sources always claimed that the civilian resistance was met with a proportionate response, and in his memoirs, Moltke insisted that ‘the inhabitants [of Bazeilles] took an active part in the fighting, so they inevitably drew fire upon themselves’.30 Yet such claims raised uncomfortable questions for France about the human cost of the resistance, and, perhaps more importantly, were inconsistent with efforts to portray the nation as the innocent victim. In order to strengthen the image of French martyrdom, the role played by women in the defence of Bazeilles was effectively effaced from public memory. In Bavarian accounts, women were everywhere, urging the men on, and taking up arms themselves. They were described as unfeminine in demeanour, conduct, and appearance, representing an inversion of traditional gender norms that functioned in Bavarian eyes to highlight the immorality of the resistance.31 By contrast, in French sources, the women are totally absent. Their involvement may have been exaggerated in German accounts, but their omission was also undoubtedly due to the fact that images of female fighting risked conjuring up at best memories of the women francs-tireurs and at worst associations with the p´etroleuses.32 While women did play a significant role in the war

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effort, the only heroines celebrated after the war were the nurses and cantini`eres whose work conformed with traditional concepts of gender norms. Civilian resistance by men was a cause of patriotic celebration, but similar actions by women were the subject of uncomfortable silence. During and after the war French commentators sought to paint an image of German violence as being at once an uncontrollable outburst of inherent barbarity and a premeditated, institutionalized element of military strategy.33 Indeed, speaking at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the battle for Bazeilles, Mayor Vauthier argued that the ‘massacre’ was intentional and was The result of a planned system which the Prussian chiefs of staff implemented with scientific rigour. Their acts of cruelty were executed coldly as a means of intimidation, the fires were lit in a calculated manner with the ingredients carefully brought there. It was all planned, premeditated, and it is that which makes the war of 1870 the shame of our century.34 Concern about Prussian militarism and the effects of modernity upon the German people became widespread after 1870. Commentators from across Europe painted an image of a mechanized society, advanced in industrial progress but backward in social development. The belief that a racially determined appetite for war had combined with the technological capability to wage it made Germany seem an alarming threat to European civilization.35 The machine-like character of German warfare gained particular emphasis in France. Writers often depicted the triumph of sophisticated German weaponry, especially the Krupp cannon, as contrary to ‘real’ war of man against man. German battle tactics and their strategy of concentrating men were seen as cowardly compared with the heroism of acts of individual resistance.36 Unlike their French counterparts who had fought armed only with patriotism and determination, the German soldiers were said to have hidden behind superior weapons, and unlike the initiative and humanity of French soldiers, the Germans were portrayed as having acted with unthinking, mechanical obedience.37 The corollary to claims of a disregard for the values of modern European society lay with allegations that Germany had violated the Geneva Convention. Since the signing of the Convention in 1864, European opinion increasingly expected that civilians and soldiers should be treated humanely in war.38 Atrocities had, of course, always been a feature of war, and indeed German commentators often argued that their

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army’s conduct in 1870 was scarcely different to French behaviour in Prussia in 1806. The difference in 1870 was that newspaper reporters were positioned on the frontline, able to communicate developments quickly. Improvements in copying photographs onto boxwood blocks meant that the images of the war could appear in the press within a fortnight as well. Thus engravings of the devastation of Bazeilles were printed in the Illustrated London News as early as 24 September 1870.39 The horrors of war conveyed in word and image shocked the public and were newsworthy. The story of Bazeilles’ suffering struck a particular chord with the British public, with responses reflecting indignation at the affront to notions of Christian compassion and to more recent humanitarian concerns for the protection of fundamental rights in wartime.40 There were, of course, many counter-accusations that French forces had also violated the Geneva Convention. On the whole, however, French claims against Germany were part of a wider assault on the legitimacy of their victory. French commentators sought to paint an image of a military triumph tainted with the blood of innocent victims. A Red Cross worker writing to Gazette de France shortly after the battle for Bazeilles declared ‘war can be harsh; but it also has its rules based on the laws of honour and of humanity. [. . .] You [Bavarians and Prussians] have tarnished your victory.’41 One anonymous writer, calling himself Nemesis, invoked the threat of divine retribution, loading a moral burden upon the German Emperor: ‘Wilhelm, your emperor’s crown will be heavy to wear . . . the violence will fall back upon you.’42 Pitching their appeal to a wider European concern for humanitarianism, French sources sought to transform German military feats from a subject of celebration to a source of guilt. In Bazeilles, however, there were limits to how far residents were prepared to go in perpetuating their image of martyrdom. In 1871 a group of English visitors proposed to buy the remains of the entire village, encircle it with railings, and preserve it as a monument to nineteenth-century German barbarity.43 The offer was, however, unanimously rejected by a community keen to begin rebuilding their lives. Following the defeat, working towards recovery became a practical and psychological priority for the nation. Just as farmers whose land had become battlefields and cemeteries had no desire for a permanent and visible reminder of France’s recent misfortunes, so residents of Bazeilles did not consider the preservation of the ruins the most appropriate way to perpetuate the memory of their suffering.44 Over time, Bazeilles was completely reconstructed with financial assistance from the state and from the charities Oeuvre des Paysans Franc¸ais, Oeuvre des Tombes, and Oeuvre de Bazeilles. Only

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the building works and the plaques above houses bearing the words ‘national subscription’ testified to the fact that the village had once been laid to ruins.45 The task of perpetuating the memory of civilian suffering therefore fell upon the war memorials of Bazeilles. The first was unveiled on 23 November 1875, costing the relatively inexpensive sum of 14,000 francs. It comprised a truncated quadrangular pyramid, with a palm on one side, and a list of the regiments who took part in the battle on the other (Figure 6.1). The appearance of the gleaming white stone monument was in stark contrast with the image of the ruins of Bazeilles blackened by fire. Compared with the monuments at Etr´epagny and Chˆateaudun,

Figure 6.1 Monument aux morts de Bazeilles, Bazeilles (1875)

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List of the civilian victims in Bazeilles

the inscriptions on the base were surprisingly neutral and almost prosaic. On one side were the lists of marine infantrymen who had died in combat, although curiously unlike elsewhere only officers’ names were recorded, while on the opposite side was a list of 27 of the civilian dead, the inscription simply describing them as ‘victims of 31 August and 1 September 1870’ (Figure 6.2). The inclusion of the names of civilian victims on a war memorial was highly unusual and emphasized the importance ascribed to preserving memories of the specific nature of their deaths. More than anything, the loss of civilian life reinforced claims of German barbarity and French martyrdom. Yet it was significant that the names of 16 of the residents who had died were omitted from the memorial on the insistence of their families.46 We cannot be certain of the reasons for this, but there are several possible explanations. Despite the fact that the monument was located opposite the entrance of the church, rather than the more obvious square which lay around the corner where the town hall was situated, it bore no religious symbols. It would not have been the first or last time that families and veterans refused to support an entirely secular memorial, especially one that was essentially funerary in character. Another possible explanation for the omissions may lie in the nature of the civilian deaths. Families may have been reluctant to become involved

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in the international row about alleged Bavarian atrocities and the legitimacy of the French defence. They may have felt that the inscription ‘the fatherland to its defenders’ which was on the front of the memorial suggested that all those listed had died having taken up arms to defend the nation. It was the state-built ossuary that created the most vivid reminder of the devastating human toll of the fighting in Bazeilles (Figure 6.3). The ossuary was constructed as part of the implementation of the law of 4 April 1873 and was built to house 2059 bodies, 1061 of them German, and 998 of them French, at a total cost of 92,125 francs.47 It was divided into seven crypts, each with a window to the outside, with a passage in the centre and a ventilation chimney at one end. The remains of German soldiers were placed on the left, while their French enemies were on the right. With a total surface area of over 668 square metres and an overall height of 18.6 metres, the ossuary easily dominated the small village cemetery.48 The desire to give the dead a dignified resting-place has always been a problematic aspect of war remembrance. Carefully maintained cemeteries and beautiful funerary monuments can be argued to sanitize the image of war, giving no warning of its brutality.49 In such circumstances, the experience of war might seem trivialized, its traces appearing commonplace rather than overwhelming and frightening.50 The ossuary at

Figure 6.3 Ossuary at Bazeilles

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Bazeilles, however, was designed to produce the opposite effect. It was constructed so that visitors could enter and see the human remains. Because Interior Ministry instructions dictated that exhumed bodies must be treated with dignity, the bones were carefully stacked up, and where possible, skeletons were preserved in one piece; skulls which were separated from skeletons were neatly arranged around the edges of each crypt.51 The effect was truly disturbing. Accounts of visitors’ impressions all record the same horror. Thus in October 1897, Jules Maz´e wrote that ‘at the start it was a terrifying-looking mass grave: heads topped with pointed helmets [. . .] virtually the entire body of a commander or cuirassier, the chest of a captain with a leg, the head of a turco, an arm, a hand, figures with rings . . . ’52 J. Bourgerie, a local man and the owner of the Maison de la derni`ere cartouche, described it in similar terms: The spectacle of this ossuary seizes you, frightens you [. . .] One can see [. . .] whole limbs, legs and arms, still enveloped in the clothing which covered them, and which mitrailleuses separated from bodies, crushed, broken into pieces. It is a pell-mell of skeletons, shin bones, rib cages, the sight of which makes one shudder [. . .] Further on, there is a foot, still in its shoe, elsewhere a hand, clenched in spasms of agony.53 Ren´e Le Boedec, one of the first ossuary guards, described seeing the skeleton of a cavalryman almost entirely intact, only the skull had been pierced by a bullet; he also noted that the fingers on several skeletons were still wearing wedding rings. The remains of two residents of Bazeilles, whose identities were impossible to establish, were clearly discernible as well. Even Le Boedec and his successors who entered the ossuary every day never became desensitized to the experience, finding it deeply ‘terrifying’.54 Of all the ossuaries built by the state, only that in Bazeilles permitted human remains to be seen, which raises the question why. Annette Becker relates the practice of placing the bones of the victims of Bazeilles on display to the popular sanctification of the war dead and the belief in heroic self-sacrifice. The piles of bones were like the sacred relics of saints, Becker suggests, and provided reassurance of future resurrection.55 This contention appears to be corroborated by Thomas Kselman’s view that the remains of the dead, regardless of their state, were the basis for beliefs in resurrection and the immortality of the soul.56 Yet Becker’s

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argument seems more relevant to the ossuary at Loigny, which was modelled on that of Bazeilles, but constructed by a private committee. In Loigny, the message of redemptive death and resurrection was closely tied with the cult of the Sacred Heart. Thus Abb´e Theur´e proposed constructing an ossuary and a chapel with the aim of bringing the object of the cult closer to the place of worship.57 By contrast, the ossuary at Bazeilles was built by an architect who showed no signs of wanting to perpetuate faith in resurrection in any of his work. Of course, the sanctification of the dead might have represented a secular borrowing of religious symbolism, yet the suggestion that their remains might become objects of worship, compelling future generations to return to the battlefield, is not borne out by the responses of those who visited the ossuary. It therefore appears more likely that the intention was to present the martyrdom of Bazeilles’ victims as a source of pity rather than a source of inspiration. Whereas Loigny contained only the remains of the French war dead, the ossuary at Bazeilles had to house German soldiers as well. Had the intention been to suggest that the bones of French soldiers resembled saintly relics, it would have been contradicted by the almost identical sight of German remains. The human remains at Loigny inspired faith among visitors; by contrast, for Bourgerie as for many others, the bones at Bazeilles inspired only fear and revulsion.58 The principal reason for opening up the ossuary at Bazeilles was to show the public what the remains of 2059 victims of war looked like. It reversed the tendency to sanitize the image of death in combat. The exterior of the ossuary conformed to the conventions of presenting an attractive, decorative image of war remembrance, being at once harmonious with its surroundings and strikingly conspicuous. The interior, however, presented the reality of war. The fact that clothing, helmets, and jewellery remained on many skeletons ensured that the dead were recognizable individuals; but the fact that they were grouped together in a heap testified to the suddenness and indiscriminate nature of their deaths. This unusually stark confrontation with death bore a clear anti-war message, testifying to the destructive force of modern warfare. Indeed, Bourgerie suggested that political leaders should visit the ossuary so that they might think twice about sending more men to combat.59 Open expressions of pacifism were rare at a time of patriotic reaction to the defeat, but the ossuary succeeded by transmitting a double message. The piles of bones suggested revulsion with war to some observers while conveying a message of patriotic suffering and resilience to others.

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Resistance identities Within only a few years of the war ending, national perceptions of Bazeilles shifted from images of martyrdom towards notions of the resistance. In part, this indicated a sense of growing confidence, yet it may also have been influenced by efforts to transform controversial episodes into less problematic ones. For the battle over Bazeilles had been a story of incompetence and confusion at the very top of the military leadership. Initially, the orders from Marshal MacMahon had stressed the strategic imperatives of holding onto the village, insisting that General Lebrun’s 12th Corps must defend Bazeilles down to the last man. In fact, it soon became apparent to soldiers as well as their commanders that the Bavarian attack on Bazeilles was merely an attempt to distract the French forces while German troops executed a broad pincer movement surrounding the Sedan area. Not only were the sacrifices worthless, but when General Ducrot took over the leadership of the army from the wounded Marshal MacMahon, he ordered an immediate withdrawal from Bazeilles, despite Lebrun’s protests that his men were mounting a strong resistance. The men who defended the Maison de la derni`ere cartouche thus only became heroes because they were left isolated, cut off from their comrades in the retreat to the plateau of Iges. Leadership of the French army changed hands three times in these critical few hours, bringing disruption and disorder. There was a feeling among some men, which was later articulated by Zola, that the Army of Chˆalons had been a martyr to the failures of its commanders.60 On the face of it, the Maison de la derni`ere cartouche offered a more satisfying vision than the horrors of the ossuary or the controversy of the battle. It held a collection of 5000 objects gathered from the battlefields around Bazeilles displayed in crowded glass cases and wall montages with chandeliers made from bayonets, pistols, bullets, and other armaments.61 To its critics it appeared to trivialize the experience of war, yet the house represented another important facet in the memory of Bazeilles in 1870. It preserved the scene of one of the most famous episodes in the war: the struggle by a handful of men to resist the German attack until they had used their last cartridge. Painted by Alphonse de Neuville in 1873, the Maison de la derni`ere cartouche became a national symbol for the heroism of the French defence against the overwhelming force of the enemy. The Maison de la derni`ere cartouche was one of the last houses to be fought over in Bazeilles. It was an ordinary home belonging to a middleclass family and located at the north end of the main street. As the French marines were ordered to retreat towards Sedan, the 150–200 remaining

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men increased their determination to hold onto each house for as long as possible. Around 60 marines entered the house owned by the Bourgerie family and were soon surrounded.62 In the ensuing onslaught, around 35 of their number lost their lives, but the men continued to resist until they had nothing left to fight with. When they finally surrendered, Captain Lissignolo permitted Commandant Lambert to retain his sword as a symbol of his esteem for the courage and resilience of the defenders. The episode soon became legendary, becoming a consolatory tale of the victory of French bravery at a time of utter despair. Alphonse de Neuville’s painting immortalized the episode in what became the single most important image of the entire war. With the minutely accurate observation of the site that was characteristic of the photographic qualities of his and Detaille’s work, de Neuville reproduced the bedroom in every detail, down to the blue patterned wallpaper. At the same time, however, the depiction of the men defending the house was the product of conversations with Commandant Lambert and his own imagination. Having initially painted only marines, de Neuville reflected that the scene appeared too sombre.63 Adding a turco and an infantryman with red trousers livened up the group and rendered the picture more vivid and alive, even though in reality only marines had been involved. The painting elevated Commandant Lambert to the status of a national hero as he was pictured directing the final shot. By contrast, the man responsible for firing the last cartridge, Captain Aubert, disappeared into obscurity.64 The painting portrayed him as an anonymous figure, almost as a symbol for every rank-and-file soldier who fought to defend France. Being a close associate of D´eroul`ede and a founding member of the Ligue des Patriotes, de Neuville’s work has often been associated with the Gambettist revanchism of the 1870s and early 1880s. To be sure, his endless depictions of the war sought to perpetuate memories of the defeat as a spur to action, but in the early 1870s, La derni`ere cartouche captured and redefined the mood of the defeated nation. It won instant critical acclaim in the Salon of 1873, and was a success with the public as well. Newspapers reproduced the painting so that even those who never visited exhibitions became familiar with it. According to the art critic Eug`ene Montrosier, it ‘electrified’ audiences with its emotive portrayal of the war.65 Another critic claimed that no previous painting had had such a profound effect upon the national spirit, adding that ‘de Neuville, by his simple little painting, was one of those artists, writers, orators, who contributed most effectively in helping us to raise our heads, still in the middle of the Prussian occupation, in the middle of defeat, our wounds

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barely healed’.66 For many, the painting, and thus the house, became the enduring image of 1870. It is difficult to overestimate the power such images had upon public concepts of the war. The symbolism of the painting resonated across the country, and continued to do so until the eve of the First World War. Even Zola did not challenge this version of events, describing the defence of Weiss’s house in La d´ebˆacle in terms that manifestly alluded to La derni`ere cartouche.67 At the same time, however, singling out the resistance at Bazeilles risked becoming a tacit admission that elsewhere such heroism had been lacking. Indeed, Edmond Lepelletier, writing about a similarly spirited act of defiance, asked, ‘is there not a certain degree of shame in that unique example, and if there had been one hundred Chˆateauduns in France, would the defence not have seemed simple?’68 Bazeilles circumvented these concerns, however, because through de Neuville’s painting, it became more than just an isolated incident. Lacking any specific reference to the location, it became a broad symbol of the national resistance, helping to redefine concepts of the French character in wartime. The addition of men from other regiments may have detracted from the accuracy of the depiction, but it created an image of unity that had sometimes been lacking on the battlefield. Officers fight alongside their men in a joint spirit of determination that contrasts sharply with the allegations of betrayal, demoralization, and indiscipline that were prevalent at the time of this and other battles.69 There is a sense of social harmony among the defenders of different rank that contradicts and dismisses the left’s insistence on class antagonism. The point is reinforced by Zola’s description of the defence of Bazeilles, in which ‘bourgeois, workmen, people in overcoats or overalls, all of them were firing frenziedly’.70 In other words, de Neuville’s painting invented a memory that not only brought the army closer to the people but brought the people closer to one another as well. The appeal of La derni`ere cartouche lay in its offer of hope through memories of the resistance. Recollections of defiance in the face of an overwhelming enemy mitigated the defeat and made the nation’s patriotism seem all the more powerful. After the war, it became a kind of contest between French and German war veterans to prove that they had fought for Bazeilles in a worse condition than their enemy. Arguing in the pages of the Parisian press, Captain Tanera claimed that his men had not eaten for 24 hours prior to the battle, while Lieutenant-Colonel ‘Z’ insisted that French troops had been deprived of food for two days.71 Indeed, as Bertrand Taithe has observed, the tales of heroism against

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the odds sometimes bordered on the ridiculous as the army sought to counter accusations of incompetence or defeatism.72 The more futile the encounter appeared, the more valiant the resistance was meant to seem. Memories of the resistance made a virtue of military weakness, turning stories of troops being hopelessly outnumbered into edifying tales of bravery against the odds. The war memorial at Saint-Ange et Torc¸ay, for instance, recalled that although outnumbered ten to one, French soldiers managed to hold off the German advance for five hours.73 The manner with which the defenders met their deaths was important for establishing the spirit of the resistance as well. The 42 French soldiers buried at H´ericourt were deemed to have fought so bravely that their memorial declared: ‘their defeat is a victory’.74 By emphasizing the virtues of the resistance, memories of the collapse were effectively banished; for as Abbot Fr´emont explained in 1891, ‘the heroism of those who fight is independent of the result they obtain. [. . .] Their glory consists not in winning but in dying.’75 Drawing attention to the suffering endured by soldiers and civilians was one way for provincial populations to counter suggestions that they had failed to support the national defence. If aspects of the war record of a particular town lacked glory, they could simply be replaced in the public memory with more appealing tales of bravery. Thus although Dˆ ole did not stage any resistance to the invasion, it was able to stake a claim to heroism after German troops shelled the town killing 20 local residents.76 The defence of Bazeilles was such that it functioned to compensate for less glorious episodes elsewhere. For after the war, there were frequent allegations about the conduct of provincial populations and their attitudes towards the two armies. The Comte de Comminges claimed that in one village he visited, residents ran towards the soldiers with provisions, but when they realized that they were French rather than German, they quickly returned home taking their provisions with them.77 Of course, as St´ephane Audoin-Rouzeau has observed, responses to the war were far from uniform and there was no simple dichotomy between patriotism in the towns and indifference in the countryside. The reactions of local populations towards the invasion forces varied with time and location. In areas directly threatened with invasion, it was not uncommon for local people to demand to be given arms so that they might defend themselves.78 At the same time, however, many mayors also felt it their duty to disarm sedentary National Guards in order to prevent spontaneous acts of resistance that might incur reprisals against the population as a whole.79 Thus in Nancy, Mayor Welche ordered that there must be no resistance to the invasion as the city was insufficiently

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armed, while the mayor of Wissembourg instructed that there should be no resistance for fear of reprisals.80 The depiction of the army’s defiance under fire also served to displace claims that the Paris Commune had been the only true incarnation of the spirit of resistance. The fact that the defenders of the Maison de la derni`ere cartouche survived the battle, surrendering when they finally ran out of ammunition, seemed to demonstrate that patriotism was not synonymous with guerre a` outrance. The regular army in general and the officer corps in particular felt a heavy burden of blame for the defeat, having been accused by volunteer soldiers, National Guards and the left of defeatism and even cowardliness. Indeed, Wolfgang Schivelbusch suggests that the particular brutality with which officers suppressed the Paris Commune reflected their need to rid themselves of their sense of failure and to demolish the idea of the Commune as a symbol of resistance born from the army’s defeat.81 By representing the resistance in such terms, de Neuville vindicated the legitimacy of the surrender, restored the pride of the army, and undermined the claims of the Commune. The portrayal of the national defence crystallized a new political and cultural discourse on the resistance. Unlike the traditional images of whole armies confronting one another on the battlefield, the depiction of a handful of men in La derni`ere cartouche shifted the emphasis from the military to the human qualities of the combatants. The soldiers were not anonymous figures lost in an unknown mass but real people whose suffering and determination were plain to see. It was thus no longer a story of governments and generals but of the French people instead. The fierce defence of this one house symbolized the strength of the determination to defend the nation. The physical power of the enemy, suggested in the blast at the window, was in sharp contrast with the moral strength of the defenders, as they seemed to personify the resilience, ingenuity, and courage of the entire French people. The memories conveyed by the house itself were fundamentally different to those perpetuated by de Neuville. Whereas the painting focused attention on the heroism of the defenders, the house returned the emphasis to the civilian suffering. Those who visited the house found that without the men in the painting, they were confronted with the wreckage of the room and thus the devastation brought by the war. They saw familiar domestic objects in the middle of scenes of destruction. A grandfather clock stood fixed at 11.30, when it had been hit by a bullet, the cracked windowpanes remained, and large, gaping holes in the ceiling and floor gave testimony to the ferocity of the fighting. Visitors to the house in the initial years after the war were said to have been

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so moved by the experience that they stole small pieces of wallpaper, regarding them as sacred relics of the martyred village.82 With so many carefully constructed memories surrounding it, it was easy to forget that the defence of the Maison de la derni`ere cartouche had really happened. Even before de Neuville’s painting, the story had entered the national mythology, functioning as an allegory of French patriotism rather than an episode in military history. It occupied a key position in the patriotic recovery, developing new concepts of French identity centred on the heroic resistance. Yet the men who came to epitomize the resistance had survived, and their re-emergence in 1898 produced a curious confrontation between mutated memories. The ensuing controversy revealed the enduring importance ascribed to the Maison de la derni`ere cartouche as a defining element in post-war patriotism. The problems began with the discovery that the man who had fired the last cartridge, whom everyone had assumed to be dead, was in fact still very much alive. Hitherto, Commandant Lambert had been regarded as the true hero of the episode, thanks largely to de Neuville’s painting. Ending his 28-year silence in December 1898, however, Commandant Aubert publicly challenged Lambert’s version of events, accusing him of seeking credit for the incident. In response, Lambert retorted, ‘so that Jew is not dead yet?’ and promptly unleashed the fury of the Dreyfusard camp.83 Despite the fact that he was really a freethinker, Aubert became a symbolic Jew, representing a victim of the army for Dreyfusards and an enemy of the army for anti-Dreyfusards.84 The story of the Maison de la derni`ere cartouche lay at the heart of the army’s rehabilitation after the defeat; with its reputation again in doubt because of the Dreyfus Affair, the house became important once more. Returning to dissect the incident for its broader significance in the light of the Affair, each side sought to articulate their views on the legitimacy of the popular cult of the army after 1870. It was for this reason that a personal disagreement between two men escalated into a national row, with the Parisian press at its heart. The controversy died down with the death of Aubert, but the allegations of misconduct that surfaced over the course of the quarrel revealed the lengths to which each side was prepared to go in claiming the Maison de la derni`ere cartouche as their own. Indeed, at one point, the anti-Dreyfusard newspaper Le Gaulois felt compelled to caution against the damage being inflicted upon such an important patriotic symbol, warning, ‘that day at Bazeilles is one of the most consolatory in our history: let us not tarnish it’.85 The Dreyfus Affair transformed the house from a symbol of the army’s centrality to the post-war patriotic revival to an emblem of an army

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now under threat. Nationalists thus leapt to its defence in April 1899 when its proprietor threatened to sell it to an ‘indifferent’ new owner. The nationalist poet Franc¸ois Copp´ee protested that the house must be preserved as a site of patriotic pilgrimage essential both for what it symbolized and as a mark of honour for those who died there, claiming ‘we have no more precious relic than the soil and the stones sanctified by the blood of heroes’.86 Le Gaulois therefore launched a public subscription which was met with an immediate and overwhelming response. Within 24 hours, the newspaper had not only secured the support of leading monarchists, nationalists, and a substantial portion of the Parisian press, but had raised over 7000 francs.87 Three days later, Le Gaulois announced that it had raised the 50,000 francs needed to buy the house.88 With Le Gaulois as the new proprietor of the house, however, its transition from a defining symbol of non-partisan patriotism to one of anti-Dreyfusard nationalism was complete. The Dreyfus Affair encouraged the political left to embrace anti-militarism; because the army’s resistance lay at the heart of memories of the war, so the left effectively yielded 1870 to the control of nationalists. In gaining possession of the Maison de la derni`ere cartouche, nationalists also gained possession of one of the most potent symbols of the Franco-Prussian War. Memories of the battle for Bazeilles carried resonance because they offered a means of reconceiving the wider war, the stories of atrocities laying bare the brutality, and the Maison de la derni`ere cartouche representing the resistance against aggression. Yet the impact of Bazeilles went much further, helping to crystallize new concepts of French and German national identities that endured into the twentieth century and were revived in the two world wars. Such experiences influenced the writers of popular patriotic fiction who sought to explain the defeat in terms which were flattering to France and insulting to Germany. Drawing on classical imagery, the war came to resemble a modern-day version of the wars between the Greeks and the barbarians.89 If before 1870 the likes of Elme Caro had identified two Germanys, one idealistic and romantic characterized by Kant, the other cruel and false symbolized by Hegel and Bismarck, the notion was decisively rejected in favour of a nationalist Germany of Treitschke and Strauss in the period thereafter.90 The image of ‘good’ Germans effectively disappeared, and instead they were typically represented either as disciplined military figures or as barbarian, primitive, savage giants. By contrast, the French people were portrayed as enlightened, civilized, audacious, and physically diminutive. Perhaps more than any previous conflict, the Franco-Prussian War was seen to reveal the true character of the people who fought it. Across

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Europe, the war was viewed as a test of the strength, advancement, and destinies of the two belligerent nations. Many sought explanations for the unexpected French collapse not in military analysis but in anthropological and biological diagnoses. To observers in Germany and Britain, the defeat proved not only the ruin of the French people but that racial differences were the decisive factor in determining the fate of nations. Yet while the French defeat cast the nation as one in terminal decline, the German victory was conceived in terms of barbarity and backwardness. Thus the anthropologist Jean-Louis Armand de Quatrefages singled out the Prussian ‘race’ as primitive and savage, while claiming that the French, British, and German peoples were endowed with superior intelligence. Such work contributed towards Prussian-dominated Germany becoming conceived in racial terms, its militarism and barbarity in warfare being regarded as symptoms of a deeper degeneracy.91 The brutality of the German people which was inflicted upon Bazeilles and more generally represented in art, literature, war memorials, and museums served to undermine the legitimacy of their victory. Indeed, Paul and Victor Margueritte insisted that Prussian conduct could not simply have been inspired by desires to avenge Napoleon’s invasion of 1806; the cruelty was so severe that it could only have been motivated by ambitions to wage a racial war which would annihilate the French people.92 In the poems of Paul D´eroul`ede, descriptions of the German character incited anger and revulsion and yet they formed part of the post-1870 cultural mainstream.93 Out of an insistence on German barbarity, there emerged an image of French innocence, borne out by the nation’s martyrdom and resistance. In turn, as the feats of French bravery became more and more impressive, so the levels of German cowardliness had to be increased as well. Only the naturalist writers sought to challenge such images of German brutality. Unlike the patriotic writers, the aim of the naturalists was not simply to convey an anti-German message but rather to offer a social commentary. In particular, the M´edan group showed war to be stronger than the individuals therein. War, they claimed, brought out what was vile, elemental, and instinctive in all people. Thus in L’affaire du grand 7, L´eon Hennique described a French soldier unable to resist the ‘cruel passion of the moment which forces armed people to use their weapons’.94 In this literature, barbaric acts were not determined by nationality, but by the character of the individual and how they responded to the circumstances of war. Both Alphonse Daudet in Robert Helmont and Octave Mirbeau in Le Calvaire described similar scenes in which a lone Frenchman spies a Prussian soldier from his hiding place.

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For Robert Helmont, killing the Prussian in an unprovoked attack is beyond his strength.95 It is almost beyond the narrator of Le Calvaire as well. He pities the Prussian, and admits that he likes him. When he does finally kill him, he is surprised by his own cruelty, and is immediately overcome with guilt and sorrow.96 Several other characters are unable to resist the primitive instinct within them which has been unleashed by war. Helmont’s neighbour Goudeloup confesses that he has murdered several Germans because there is ‘deep down inside me a terrible beast that war has unleashed’.97 Maupassant’s Father Milon becomes obsessed with the idea of killing Germans, while Saint Anthony kills the Prussian billeted on him, stabbing him in a frenzy, ‘like a madman’.98 With nationality no longer the determining factor in behaviour, it became just as likely that German characters would be peaceable as it was that French characters would be violent. In Maupassant’s L’aventure de Walter Schnaffs, the German officer Schnaffs is an overweight, peace-loving father of four who, fearing for his life, hides from a French ambush. All Schnaffs wants to do is to survive by surrendering to the French. He may be a coward, yet in his anxiety and will to live, it is not he who appears absurd, but rather the French soldiers who capture and guard him with 200 men in order to pretend that they have scored a major victory.99 It was equally possible to admit that people of similar social backgrounds might sympathize with one another, despite being on opposing sides in the war. In Boule de suif, Maupassant described the occupation of Rouen, in which Prussian soldiers assist the local women with the household chores, insisting that poor people must help one another because it is only the rich who cause wars.100 For Zola in particular, the experiences of the war did not reveal the degeneration of the German people, but were rather an indication of the inadequacies of the French. Of course, Zola still insisted that the physical appearance of German soldiers determined their personalities, making frequent references to their animal-like features and mannerisms.101 Indeed, he also drew from popular stereotypes when it came to depicting German conduct in the battle for Bazeilles, making the soldiers cheer as a bedridden child is burned alive along with his dead mother.102 Yet these references to primitive German behaviour were balanced out by later comments on French conduct. As Paris burns in the battle to regain control from the Commune, Zola has a German character reflect that ‘once again the Germanic tribes would save the world and sweep away the last remains of Latin corruption’.103 Such thoughts expressed Zola’s own belief that the French defeat was due to its decadence and weaknesses of the Latin race.104 Inspired by Darwinian ideas on evolution,

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Zola insisted that war could bring social benefits as victory came only to those who embraced progress.105 In the context of the post-1871 national revival, questioning the attributes of the French and German people as defined in patriotic representations of the war was tantamount to betrayal. It was deemed particularly inadmissible in relation to the people who fought at Bazeilles. Even Captain Tanera claimed that Zola had gone too far in seeking to explode patriotic myths when he described the motivations of the defenders of Weiss’s house. While de Neuville’s portrayal of the Maison de la derni`ere cartouche helped to define the qualities of the French resistance, Zola’s evocation of the same scene had, in Tanera’s view, Weiss motivated only by bourgeois interest in defending his own home, and Laurent inspired not by patriotism but by his own murderous brutality.106 Critics such as Jules Arnaud thus found La d´ebˆacle to be ‘deceiving’ and ‘demoralizing’; it showed Prussians to be good people but ascribed objectionable attributes to French soldiers, sowing doubt in the souls of the French people and making them lose confidence in themselves.107 Ultimately, of course, the different approaches came down to conflicting intentions. Whereas Zola sought to replace myth with ‘truth’, patriotic writers and artists sought to help rebuild the nation because for them, the purpose of celebrating incidents such as the battle for Bazeilles was simply to show that while France may have been the military loser, it emerged the emphatic moral victor.

7 The Lost Provinces

The diplomatic and domestic tensions caused by the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine have often been considered one of the most problematic legacies of the Franco-Prussian War, preventing the normalization of relations between the two powers and ensuring that the French defeat could not be forgotten regardless of the passage of time. While support for revanche within government and the wider public may have been at best limited, the differentiated shading of Alsace-Lorraine on the maps of France that were introduced into classrooms came to represent a starkly visual symbol of the nation’s refusal to accept the loss as definitive. Despite strong historical, cultural, and linguistic links between Alsace and Germany, in post-1871 patriotic discourse, the ‘lost provinces’ that had been torn away from their ‘mother country’ became nothing less than the epitome of all things French. And as the two regions adapted to their situation by developing much stronger cultural and political identities, so the nationalist insistence upon their Frenchness grew ever stronger. The period between 1871 and 1914 was thus marked by diverging representations of the relationship between France and Alsace-Lorraine. As the cause of the rupture, the war remained a central point of departure in political culture on both sides of the border; within the region itself, however, the events of 1870–1871 were rarely a source of nationalist tension. Indeed, just as the annexed areas developed a new sense of identity, so the parts of Alsace and Lorraine that remained French came to cultivate their own concepts of their relationship with the nation. Where the clashes occurred, therefore, was not so much between France and Germany as between French patriotic and nationalist perspectives and those that emerged within the wider regions of Alsace and Lorraine. 175

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Constructions of French identity had been a national preoccupation throughout the nineteenth century, but with the defeat the debate took on a fresh urgency and significance. The German annexation of AlsaceLorraine prompted the revision of earlier ideas and an emphasis upon the ideological aspects of French nationhood.1 In what was to become a famous exchange between two historians at the centre of the political and cultural constructions of their respective national identities, Theodor Mommsen sought to demonstrate the legitimacy of annexation by arguing that the people of Alsace were not French but Germanic. Responding in October 1870, Fustel de Coulanges countered that while Alsace might have been German in linguistic and racial terms, in its sense of national sentiment it was resolutely French. Twelve years later in another significant pronouncement, Renan pursued the refutation of German ethnocultural considerations with an affirmation of collective will over notions of race or language.2 The annexation thus altered perspectives not only on the status of Alsace-Lorraine, but on concepts of the French nation as well. The cession of Alsace-Lorraine was followed by political and demographic movements as the people of the two provinces were forced to choose on which side of the new border they wished to live. First came the symbolic exit of the deputies of Alsace-Lorraine from the National Assembly at Bordeaux following a declaration of protest drafted by Gambetta, then came the exodus of the thousands who chose to opt for French citizenship and transfer their residency under the terms of Article 3 of the Treaty of Frankfurt. At the deadline for the submission of option declarations in October 1872, almost 160,000 had been received, although only around 50,000 were considered to be valid by the German authorities.3 The flow of emigration continued in the period thereafter, totalling over 150,000 between 1871 and 1885 and around 460,000 between 1871 and 1910.4 A sizeable and significant community of e´ migr´e Alsatians and Lorrainers thus developed in France, keeping memories of the lost provinces alive in politics, art, literature, and even gastronomy. As Dan P. Silverman argues, however, among the people of Alsace-Lorraine, opinion towards the annexation was far from uniform, and with the industrial middle class experiencing a significant loss of power, opposition to German rule may have been more a product of socio-political and economic factors rather than of nationalist feeling.5 While nationalist discourse constructed an unchanging vision of loyalty towards France, within the annexed territories themselves, political opinion gravitated towards three principal perspectives on the annexation. Corresponding broadly to the groupings that had existed prior to

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1871, Bonapartists moved towards autonomist ideas, republicans transferred to the camp of the protestors, while Catholics joined together in a newly politicized bloc. While autonomists worked from a position of accepting the annexation and seeking to improve the situation for the region and protestors categorically rejected it, Catholics were forced into a defensive position owing to Bismarck’s pursuit of Kulturkampf.6 The rise of the Social Democrats in the 1890s shifted the political debate away from the annexation towards social concerns, thus squeezing out the liberal centre and creating new lines of debate and division. The introduction of a new constitution for Alsace-Lorraine in 1911 was intended to develop a more mature political relationship between the Reichsland and the Reich, bringing greater engagement with German national politics even among those who had formerly opposed the annexation. It resulted in the foundation of the Nationalbund, an alliance between Catholics and anti-clerical democrats that undertook to act in the name of regional interests. The new party’s presence on the political map forced others to have to take a positive stance on Alsatian nationalism for fear of losing popular support at the ballot box, even despite the Nationalbund suffering a crushing defeat in the 1911 Landtag elections.7 Thus while in the French imagination, the lost provinces remained infantile, feminized, and dependent, Alsace-Lorraine was developing its own mature, albeit problematic, political and cultural spheres.8 And while French culture perpetuated notions of the region’s enduring connection with the ‘mother country’, by 1910, one-sixth of its population was of German origin.9 At the heart of French claims upon Alsace-Lorraine lay a paradoxical insistence upon the Frenchness of two provinces that had remained culturally distinct ever since their incorporation into the nation. Prior to 1870, Alsace had been construed by the likes of Edmond About and Erckmann-Chatrian in terms that acknowledged its proximity with notions of German identity.10 Attempts by the Second Empire to widen the use of the French language were met with resistance, meaning that most of Alsace continued to speak German-related dialects at the time of annexation. During the war itself, there were signs of French national sentiment, but it manifested itself largely as a response to perceptions of the German occupier as the enemy.11 Anecdotal evidence underlines the fragility of the region’s loyalty towards France; according to Samuel James Capper, in September 1871 many Alsatians seemed not only reconciled to the annexation but they harboured no ill feeling towards Germany nor any real desire to remain French.12 Contrary to the myths put forward in political and cultural discourse in France

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itself, those who fled from the annexation were not always welcomed as loyal citizens of their ‘mother country’. Ignorance about the nature of Alsatian culture and dialect meant that e´ migr´es were sometimes subjected to abuse, with prominent figures such as Scheurer-Kestner even being accused by nationalists of being German.13 In view of the complex and ambiguous relationship between France and Alsace-Lorraine, questions may therefore be raised as to how images of the annexed provinces as quintessentially French came to be so pervasive.

Representing Alsace-Lorraine In the immediate aftermath of the annexation, the pain of separation dominated cultural representations of Alsace-Lorraine. Whether in Gustave Dor´e’s painting L’Alsace or in Jean-Jacques Henner’s Elle attend, Alsace was presented as a young female in regional costume, at once devastated at the fate which awaited her and fiercely loyal to France. Next came the visions of mass migration as thousands of Alsatians and Lorrainers crossed the border to retain their French citizenship. Many of the images were the work of e´ migr´es; thus Th´eodore Lix painted a scene of departure in Les adieux a` la patrie while Louis-Fr´ed´eric Schutzenberger produced Une famille d’Alsace emigrant en France.14 In literature, Alphonse Daudet’s La vision du juge de Colmar published in 1873 offered a more critical and disturbing perspective, telling the story of a man who chooses material wealth and personal power over his family and nation. The chief protagonist is a judge from Colmar who decides to remain in the annexed territory to retain his post. In a nightmare he witnesses the silent waves of people who seem to resemble refugees rather than emigrants. As they pass him with disgust and anger, he notices his wife and children among them. He then witnesses his own funeral; there are no friends or family present, only Prussians. The speeches are in German and the earth placed on his coffin is Prussian. The dead man cries with shame, feeling that he is being crushed under eternal ridicule.15 One of the principal sources of the post-1871 representation of AlsaceLorraine was the school textbook, Le tour de la France par deux enfants. Introduced into French classrooms in 1877, it was an instant success, with over 6 million copies being sold by 1901.16 Telling the story of Andr´e and Julien, two orphans from annexed Lorraine who cross the border in search of their uncle so that they can claim French citizenship, the book taught children history, law, as well as more practical lessons such as how to use the post office. Above all, however, the boys’ journey sought to instil French sentiment in the aftermath of the defeat,

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acquainting children with regional diversities while insisting upon a strong sense of the nation. The two boys’ search for their uncle serves to symbolize the close relationship between France and Lorraine, suggesting that the lost provinces are immature and unable to cope with separation from their blood relatives. While the boys might be seen as having abandoned the annexed provinces to claim French citizenship, they long to revisit their hometown of Phalsbourg, which resembles the idyll portrayed by Erckmann-Chatrian.17 While avoiding explicit revanchism, the book ensured that millions of schoolchildren grew up having been taught that the defeat had resulted in the loss of not merely an integral part of the nation but that which remained the least altered by the corruptive influences of modern society.18 The journeys of Andr´e and Julien were part of a wider search for national identity within the landscape of France. If the defeat provided the motivation, the spread of tourism, the railways, bicycles, and eventually cars provided the means with which people could acquaint themselves with the nation.19 Landscape painting, which throughout the nineteenth century had sought to construct ideas of French identity, acquired fresh political impetus as an expression of anti-German sentiment.20 For as national consciousness grew, so too did acuity of territorial loss. Travel writing also sought to acquaint increasing numbers of people with the nation and its lost territories and indeed many of the authors dealing with Alsace-Lorraine were themselves e´ migr´es. Journeying around the lost provinces in the early 1900s, Georges Ducrocq presented an image of pious devotion to the memories of 1870–1871 that stood in marked contrast with the partisan squabbling across the border in France.21 Emile Hinzelin, meanwhile, described six students’ ‘pilgrimages’ to sites in Alsace-Lorraine in which they listened to stories of heroism and resistance from local residents. Echoing the sentiments of several other travelogues, Hinzelin attacked the German architectural invasion, which he charged with spoiling the regions’ towns and villages.22 Armed with a heightened appreciation of the beauty of France’s regions, readers were taught that the barbarian wartime assault on French civilization and culture was continuing in the annexed territories. In one of the earliest published accounts of the responses of Alsatians and Lorrainers to the annexation, Edmond About depicted the region as actively resistant to German rule. About described how Alsatians had ceased to speak in their local dialects in public spaces because they could be too easily understood by Germans, and had adopted French instead. Because many Alsatians had only a limited grasp of the French

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language, however, they were sometimes heard claiming not to be able to speak German in broken French that was translated literally from the German.23 Through quiet resistance, About claimed, the Alsatians aimed to undermine the annexation by creating a climate of fear and paranoia among the enemy.24 If in the Third Republic the classroom represented the frontline in the battle to instil French national sentiment, in Alsace-Lorraine it represented the frontline in the struggle to maintain French national sentiment. Thus two of the most enduring images of the rejection of annexation focused upon children’s resistance to the archetypal Prussian schoolteacher. In La derni`ere classe published in 1873, Alphonse Daudet created an emotive evocation of the consequences of separation. The short story describes the switch from French to German education; as the teacher announces that henceforth all lessons will be in German, the children and others in the community regret not having learned to speak French.25 Thirty-eight years later, the Alsatian cartoonist Hansi resumed the narrative, although it was perhaps a measure of how far regional selfconfidence had grown that he chose humour rather than pathos as his weapon. In part reflecting Hansi’s own negative experiences of German education, Mon village portrays the Prussian schoolteacher as a figure of ridicule, unable to gain the respect of his misbehaving Alsatian pupils.26 In their small acts of disobedience, the children draw attention not only to the illegitimacy of the annexation but to the non-German nature of their Alsatian identity as well. At the turn of the twentieth century, 30 years of German rule over Alsace-Lorraine compelled some writers and artists to reconceive their roles in terms that addressed the issues facing both sides of the frontier. In Mon village published in 1911, Hansi sought to portray life in Alsace to a French audience whose younger generations had never known it to be anything other than a part of the German Empire. He therefore chose to play to French preconceptions, portraying characters in costumes commonly associated with Alsace, but worn principally in the area between Wissembourg and Saverne.27 Other writers, however, returned to themes that had scarcely changed since 1870. In Les Oberl´e published in 1901, Ren´e Bazin depicted the enduring legacy of the defeat as an Alsatian family becomes divided over issues of identity. The characters are symbols for a wider narrative of evolving national and regional relationships. Joseph Oberl´e, a veteran of the Army of the Loire, represents a bankrupt older generation responsible for the defeat and reconciled to Germanization. His wife, however, is one of many women to remain faithful to Alsace, sustaining memories of the war and connections with France

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through Catholic pilgrimages. Their son, Jean, represents hope for the future, fleeing home to escape the draft in Germany so that he can serve France instead. Maurice Barr`es dealt with the same subject in Au service de l’Allemagne which was published in 1905. The book tells the story of Ehrmann, an Alsatian whose family continues to speak French, read French history, and celebrate 14 July. In this case, however, Ehrmann resolves to fulfil his military duty to Germany as a doctor while remaining faithful to France in his heart.28 In Colette Baudoche, published in 1909, the eponymous heroine is torn between her loyalty to France and her impending wedding to a German; believing that her generation has a duty to seek justice for past sacrifices, however, Colette realizes that she cannot proceed with the marriage.29 Thus despite the development of distinct political and cultural identities within the annexed territories and the changes that had occurred in France and Germany, almost 40 years after the war had ended, the metaphor of Alsace-Lorraine as a morally strong but physically weak female defiantly resisting a powerful masculine Germany had scarcely evolved in French nationalist discourse. War commemorations in the area of Lorraine that remained French focused principally upon the battles around Metz. Casualties on both sides were high; for France, the toll was 879 officers and 16,128 soldiers killed or wounded, while Germany suffered 715 officers and 15,795 soldiers killed or wounded on 16 August. The fighting two days later was no less bloody: there were 12,273 French and just under 20,000 German casualties.30 Memories of the heavy losses were compounded by recollections of the disastrous siege of Metz in which Marshal Bazaine capitulated without a fight, surrendering 137,000 men of the Army of the Rhine. Acts of war remembrance in Alsace and Lorraine represented a kind of frontline in the battle to gain national legitimacy from the memory of 1870–1871. Along the new frontier, France and Germany immediately marked out their territory not with fortifications but with war memorials.31 In the part of Lorraine that remained under French control, the early 1870s saw monuments being erected in Briey, Pont-`a-Mousson, Toul, and Lun´eville, although it was the Marsla-Tour memorial constructed only a few minutes away from the new German border in 1875 that truly captured the nation’s imagination (Figure 7.1). War remembrance became a symbol at once of tension and of co-operation. Commemorations highlighted the irreconcilability of French and German collective memories of the war, underscoring the relationship between communities on either side of the frontier and undermining reconciliation between the former enemies. At the

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Figure 7.1 Louis Bogino, Monument national de Mars-la-Tour, Mars-la-Tour (Meurthe-et-Moselle) (1875)

same time, however, commemorative acts produced fewer expressions of anti-German sentiment than elsewhere in France. If memories of Lorraine focused around Metz and Mars-la-Tour, memories of Alsace focused on Belfort. The fact that Belfort remained French after 1871 when the rest of Alsace was lost to German annexation

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made it an important symbol for remembering the lost provinces and campaigning for revanche. Under the command of Colonel DenfertRochereau, the siege of Belfort lasted from 3 November 1870 until 16 February 1871. In mid-January General Bourbaki attempted to bring relief with some 100,000 men, but lack of determination, poor weather, inexperience, and the efficacy of German counter-manoeuvres brought only failure.32 When the siege was finally lifted, the undefeated men were permitted to leave the fortress with full military honours. For Belfort’s victory represented a rare moment of glory in what appeared to have been an unmitigated military disaster. Its significance was not lost upon Adolphe Thiers; during the peace negotiations with Germany, he threatened to resign if Bismarck did not agree to French retention of Belfort. The concession was widely hailed as a diplomatic victory for the French leader, meaning that at least part of Alsace had been saved. In reality, however, even though it had not been a major concern for Bismarck, he made heavy demands to compensate for its loss.33 Thiers had to agree to indemnities of five billion francs and the continuing presence of German occupying forces in the east of France until the amount had been fully settled. He also conceded the entry of German troops into Paris on 1 March 1871, claiming, ‘I prefer to see Prussians enter Paris, rather than abandon Belfort to Prussia.’34 In Paris itself, the decision fuelled angry accusations of betrayal by the government and heightened the tensions that were to explode on 18 March. Yet Thiers considered that sacrificing the dignity of Paris was a price worth paying, for in saving Belfort he believed that he was salvaging the pride of the nation. It is perhaps a testimony to the problematic and complex nature of memories of Belfort that four commemorative monuments were erected in memory of its siege in the town itself. The first, erected in 1873, was the simplest and for the local community the most meaningful; comprising an obelisk, it was located in the burial ground for victims of the siege known as the Pr´e Gaspard (Figure 7.2). The second, the Lion de Belfort by Auguste Bartholdi, took the form of a large stone sculpture on the face of the mountain into which the fortress was constructed, and was widely regarded as portraying defiant resistance (Figure 7.3). The third, erected in 1883, was Antonin Merci´e’s Quand Mˆeme (Figure 7.4), which was commissioned to memorialize the two men responsible for saving Belfort from annexation, Thiers and Denfert-Rochereau. The final memorial was the Monument aux Trois Si`eges by Bartholdi; unveiled in 1913, it commemorated Belfort’s long history of resistance in 1813–1814, 1815, and 1870–1871 (Figure 7.5).

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Figure 7.2 Monument aux morts de Belfort, Belfort

Memories of the victory at Belfort soon came to resonate far beyond the eastern regions. Despite the price of its retention having resulted in humiliation for the capital, the municipal council of Paris purchased copies of the Lion de Belfort and Quand Mˆeme as national patriotic symbols, and place Enfert in the fourteenth arrondissement was renamed place Denfert-Rochereau (Figure 7.6). War memoirs, poetry, literature, art, and music celebrated the victory, as the small town was singled out as an

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Figure 7.3

185

Auguste Bartholdi, Lion de Belfort, Belfort (1872–1880)

example to the rest of the country. With the numbers of visitors to the Lion peaking at 23,789 in 1906, tourist guides were published to cater for the growing public interest in Belfort and its surrounding area.35 Indeed, it might even be suggested that if the aftermath of the war saw a cult of the lost provinces, it saw a particular cult of Belfort. The impetus to erect war memorials in the non-annexed areas of Alsace-Lorraine came not only from desires to assert national identity in the face of the enemy across the border, but from the German presence in French and annexed territory as well. Within only a few months of the end of hostilities, Germany began to erect memorials in honour of its fallen soldiers who were buried in France (Figure 7.7). Such actions created tension and embarrassment for local communities who noted that those who had died for France were not receiving similar honours (Figure 7.8). The appearance of German war memorials was unquestionably one of the main motivations for erecting a monument at Mars-la-Tour. A letter from the monument committee to the Interior Minister remarked upon the contrast between ‘a modest iron cross indicating our dead’, and the ‘princely’ German monuments amidst the ‘vast necropolis [ . . . ] where one would search in vain for the regrets of France’.36 In Belfort, the proposal to erect a war memorial emerged at a time when much of the east of France remained under German occupation. In the light of Parisian fury at the terms of Belfort’s retention,

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Figure 7.4 Antonin Merci´e, Quand Mˆeme, Belfort (1878–1883)

Bartholdi suggested to the mayor of Belfort that rather than erect a simple funerary memorial the town needed a monument worthy of its new status in the annals of French patriotism.37 Aiming to convey the defiant spirit of the besieged town, Bartholdi therefore proposed monumentalizing the energy of the defence in the image of a lion ‘hunted down, driven back, and still terrible in its fury’.38 While many of the war memorials erected in the early 1870s were funerary in nature, those erected at Mars-la-Tour and Belfort aimed to project messages of strength and defiance. Indeed, unable to convey

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Figure 7.5

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Auguste Bartholdi, Monument aux trois si`eges, Belfort (1904–1908)

a coherent concept of national identity in the midst of deep political division, the Mars-la-Tour monument did the next best thing: it sought to convey national sentiment. As St´ephane Audoin-Rouzeau observes, national consciousness in Lorraine developed in response to the occupation; while in November 1870, peasants appeared largely indifferent to the national question, by December they started to perceive German troops as barbarian oppressors, and began to regard themselves as being French.39 Erecting a national monument in Mars-la-Tour thus served a

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Figure 7.6 Auguste Bartholdi, Lion de Belfort, Place Denfert-Rochereau, Paris (1880)

Figure 7.7 Bavarian ossuary, Woerth (Bas-Rhin)

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Figure 7.8

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French war grave, Woerth (Bas-Rhin)

dual purpose: it affirmed national sentiment in the face of Germany and it affirmed national sentiment in the face of a complex regional identity. The statue by Louis Bogino conveyed grief, resolute patriotism, subtle revanchism, and even a suggestion of republicanism. It featured a strong female allegory of France towering over and supporting a dying soldier, and as in Merci´e’s Gloria Victis, France honoured her defender with a crown of laurels. An important addition to the group was two children picking up the soldier’s gun, which seemed to suggest that the battle

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would be resumed by the next generation. It was perhaps symptomatic of the political cross-currents of the early 1870s that the statue was variously interpreted as republican, Catholic, aggressive, and peaceable. The allegory of France was particularly ambiguous. It was reminiscent of Jean-Franc¸ois Soitoux’s statue of the Republic of 1848, but the allusion was subtle and no commentator ever confused the Mars-la-Tour statue with images of Marianne.40 Most commentators focused on the maternal aspects of the imagery. Emile Badel described the figure representing France as an ‘admirable mother of resignation, calm, and sovereign majesty!’, while Le Gaulois saw it as an image of ‘strength, tenderness, maternity and hope’.41 The juxtaposition of a maternal figure with a dying man also alluded to the Catholic piet`a. The stoic and resigned facial expression of France was seen by some as a message of the country’s peaceful intentions, but many others believed that the two children suggested hope in future revanche. Bartholdi’s decision to represent Belfort as a lion drew upon ancient associations with power, protectiveness, pride, and steadfastness. He was undoubtedly influenced by the lion dominating the battlefields of Waterloo and the Lion de Lucerne, which paid tribute to the Swiss troops who defended the Tuileries on 10 August 1792.42 Early models show an aggressive-looking lion, standing upright, crushing several arrows beneath its paws, and roaring, but by the time Bartholdi had completed the final maquette, he had settled on a more peaceful image. Set against the fortress rockface, Bartholdi hoped that the 11 metre tall statue would represent a kind of symbolic safeguard for the nation, offering reassurance in defeat and providing comfort in the face of demands for revenge.43 The Lion soon became a metaphor not only for the siege of Belfort but for the entire war. Such was the appeal of Belfort that its monuments became symbols for the region, the capital, and the nation. From the outset, the Catholic Church was heavily involved in influencing memories of the war in Alsace-Lorraine. In Mars-la-Tour, the involvement of the Church was part of a wider agenda of remodelling France in the wake of defeat and civil war. As early as February 1873, the memorial committee issued an appeal to all French priests portraying the project as having been inspired by religious sentiment.44 Yet it was the local priest, Abbot Faller, who became the driving force behind the annual commemorations. Appointed to the parish in 1875 after beginning his career under Bishop Dupont des Loges, from 1885 Faller sought to raise levels of attendance by advertising the event in newspapers across the country. With the figures rising to around 10,000 by 1889 and more than doubling two years later, Faller constructed a cult of the war dead

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and connected it with messages of salvation. He transformed the parish church into a place of worship for fallen soldiers, gathering objects found on the battlefields or donated by families and mounting white marble wall plaques listing the names of the dead. In taking command of the war commemorations, Faller created a symbolic and real link between memories of the war, faithfulness to the lost provinces, and Catholicism. In some respects, Faller’s actions mirrored those of the Catholic clergy in Alsace-Lorraine, whose opposition to Kulturkampf and Germanization served to reinforce sentiments of loyalty towards France. The annexation and Bismarck’s assault on the influence of the Church politicized elements of the clergy in Alsace-Lorraine, making memories of the war a means of attacking the legitimacy of the annexation.45 Catholics used scripture and religious symbols to avoid censorship in their efforts to convey political messages relating to the war. Thus the inscription on the Metz monument employed the words of Judas Machabeus to express shame at the fate that had befallen Metz, while many other memorials used images of Mary to symbolize hope. At Sainte-Marie-aux-Chˆenes, the monument featured Mary looking towards the sky in supplication, her hands held out towards France, while in Batilly the reconstructed church acquired a statue of Notre-Dame des Arm´ees with Mary, allegories of Alsace and Lorraine, and a female figure clutching a tricolour flag.46

Revanche As symbols of the national war effort and the lost provinces, Mars-la-Tour and Belfort were constantly susceptible to the sensitivities of the diplomatic climate. As Bogino was finishing work on the statue for Marsla-Tour in early 1875, tension between Germany and France came to a head in the ‘war in sight’ crisis. On 15 May 1875, the prefect of Meurtheet-Moselle therefore warned that German opinion might misinterpret the forthcoming unveiling ceremony for the monument as an act of French aggression.47 The occasion threatened to revive all the old anger at the annexation and to stir up the already volatile mood of the people of Lorraine; it would thus be dangerous, he argued, In the current state of our relations with Germany, to allow unnecessary pomp and speeches to be delivered at the inauguration [ . . . ] on the extreme frontier and in the face of a population still trembling from the pain of having once been attached to France and listening out for any sounds of war with the insane hope that an immediate war will deliver them back to their fatherland.48

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The ceremony would be especially problematic for the government. The state was implicated at every stage of the project, having provided the bronze for the statue and having donated 5000 francs towards its construction. Officials envisaged a worse-case scenario in which parading troops would be impotent in the face of crowds shouting anti-German slogans. If soldiers intervened, they risked provoking more serious disorder, but if they stood idle, they risked compromising the French government in the eyes of Germany.49 For these reasons, the prefect instructed the Interior Minister to postpone the inauguration ceremony until the diplomatic tension had eased. The ceremony was thus rescheduled to 2 November 1875 in an effort to cloak patriotic and revanchist sentiment with the legitimacy of a funerary service for All Souls’ Day. Nothing was said in public about the reasons for the postponement, as Bogino’s statue simply sat on display on the Champs-Elys´ees in Paris waiting until it was deemed safe to move it to Mars-la-Tour.50 Indeed, the event was given final approval only in late October as the prefect for Meurthe-et-Moselle fought a running battle with the monument committee who were extremely reluctant to tone down plans for a grandiose ceremony.51 By late October, however, the ‘war in sight’ crisis had been overtaken by the debacle in Dijon. On 26 October 1875, the government demolished Paul Cabet’s war memorial in Dijon on the grounds that it was too ‘revolutionary’, and fearing a republican backlash, proclaimed a state of siege in the city. While the Mars monument, with which Cabet was also involved in a minor capacity, was more moderate in tone, its unveiling ceremony witnessed officials and organizers attempting desperately to rein in republican and revanchist excesses. Even so, on two occasions, the 6000-strong crowd burst into spontaneous and conflicting acclamations of the Republic and of France.52 For officials, the ceremony was truly a two-front battle: on one side, they had to combat anti-German sentiment, on the other, they had to fight the extremes of domestic political opinion. Belfort’s status as a patriotic symbol meant that it also fell prey to international politics. Neither the Lion in Belfort nor the replica in Paris was formally unveiled owing to fears of aggravating relations with Germany. According to prefectoral minutes for the Territoire de Belfort, unspecified ‘political circumstances’ prevented any official unveiling for the Lion in Belfort.53 In lieu of any official ceremony, Bartholdi therefore personally financed a small music and lights display on 29 August 1880.54 In Paris, the unveiling ceremony scheduled to take place on 21 September 1880 was cancelled following the intervention of Interior Minister Emmanuel

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Constans.55 The timing of both events was unfortunate. Already in July 1880, French foreign policy threatened to aggravate the former enemy with the decision to send military aid to Greece at a time when it was engaged in border disputes with German-backed Turkey.56 Unveiling ceremonies at such sensitive sites associated with the war risked making the diplomatic situation even worse. Perhaps one of the most surprising aspects of war commemorations in Alsace-Lorraine, however, is that on the whole, rivalries did not spill over into open hostility between the communities. In part it was because border guards carefully monitored movement across the frontier. They were empowered to prevent any uniformed soldiers from entering France and to seize any military insignias, flags, or funerary crowns bearing the imperial colours.57 In part it was also due to a respect for the dead that generally prevailed over the attacks against war graves. Large groups of German veterans regularly crossed the border to pay tribute to their fallen comrades-in-arms without provoking any adverse reactions from the local French population. The visitors were usually discreet, dressing inconspicuously and refraining from making speeches in front of war memorials.58 Overall, there seems to have been little appetite for bellicosity among significant sections of the German population of annexed Lorraine, and indeed French police reported that there was little enthusiasm for Sedan Day celebrations there. Many southern Germans associated the festival with Protestant Prussian domination and were unwilling to antagonize their French-speaking neighbours over it.59 The authorities on both sides of the frontier acted with discretion when it came to accommodating each other’s acts of war remembrance. In 1899, French officials postponed the annual commemorations in Batilly so as not to clash with the unveiling of a memorial in Germanannexed Saint-Privat in the presence of Kaiser Wilhelm II.60 On 16 February 1909, German authorities unveiled another monument in Saint-Privat, but chose to do so at 9 in the morning to prevent large crowds from gathering.61 Later that year, on 19 August Germany erected a memorial to its fallen dragoons in Mars-la-Tour. The German and French governments negotiated an agreement whereby 25 senior representatives of the Prussian guard were permitted to attend the ceremony including Prince Anton, the son of Leopold von Hohenzollern, whose candidacy for the Spanish throne had triggered the Franco-Prussian War. The co-operation between the two countries helped to ensure that such occasions provoked few hostile responses from nationalists in either country.

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The spirit of compromise and co-operation could, however, be a source of tension when those crossing the border planned to do more than simply pay their respects to the dead. For the German authorities, the main source of concern was the mass exodus of French-speaking Lorrainers to Mars-la-Tour each year. The figures varied but up to 8000 people were regularly making the journey in the 1890s. German officials feared that attendance at what they considered to be a revanchist ceremony would undermine the Germanization of annexed Lorraine. They could not, of course, prevent individual civilians from travelling to Mars-la-Tour, but they did sometimes obstruct them and send plainclothed officers to monitor the activities of leading members of the community.62 On the French side, the priority was to guard against real or perceived threats to national security posed by visiting military personnel. The local community around Mars-la-Tour normally tolerated German visitors, but those acting suspiciously and taking too great an interest in the surrounding battlefields were regarded as spies.63 French police also viewed the activities of German officers with suspicion; despite being granted permission to undertake research around Mars-la-Tour in 1897, the behaviour of General W¨ ussow of the historical section of the German High Command was closely and secretly monitored.64 Commemorations to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the war provided another potential flash-point between communities, as the German government used the occasion to hold major celebrations in a bid to mobilize popular support. As a consequence, attendance figures at Mars-la-Tour rose to 25,000, a figure not seen since 1891, when enthusiasm about alliance with Russia was running high. The number of French-speaking Lorrainers making the trip across the border also equalled those of 1891, amounting to approximately 5000.65 Bishop Turinaz and Abbot Binz, who led the French memorial services in Mars-la-Tour and Gravelotte respectively, responded to the situation by delivering particularly bullish orations, even by their standards.66 In Gravelotte, Abbot Binz made little concession to the fact that French officials were present or to the fact that he was speaking on German territory, expressing hope that the lost territories might soon be recovered.67 With patriotic spirits running high on both sides of the border that year, the authorities were especially vigilant, and ultimately helped to retain calm. They urged restraint from their citizens, and security at the frontier was reinforced: a double cordon of gendarmes and a line of customs officials 500 metres long prevented anyone wearing military uniforms or insignias, and even large groups of civilians from passing through. At

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one point, they turned away around 1000 French soldiers who had gathered near to the frontier, so diffusing a potentially difficult stand-off.68 Thus the commemorations of 1895, like those in the years before and after, passed peacefully thanks to the restraint of the majority of those who attended and the co-operation of French and German authorities. In the absence of revanche, the loss of most of Alsace brought many to look towards the newly created Territoire de Belfort to sustain memories of the lost province. Before 1870, the area forming the Territoire de Belfort had been part of the department of Haut-Rhin, but it had always had distinct identity. Most of its people spoke French rather than the Alsatian dialect, and its local costume differed to that traditionally associated with Alsace.69 In the context of the annexation, however, such cultural specificities became a source of tension between those seeing Belfort as a means of remembering Alsace and those wishing to forge a distinct identity for the town. The Lion, Quand Mˆeme, and the Monument aux Trois Si`eges each exemplified the tensions between the identities of Alsace and Belfort. It was controversy over the iconography of Quand Mˆeme, however, that forced the issue to the surface. Originally commissioned to produce a statue to honour Belfort’s liberators, Thiers and Denfert-Rochereau, Merci´e had found it impossible to reconcile the politics of the two men and had quietly decided to pay tribute to the town’s defenders instead. He therefore produced a statue of a woman defiantly swinging a rifle as a mortally wounded soldier fell next to her. Audiences and critics viewing the statue in the Paris Salon hailed it a timely triumph in the same way that they had greeted Gloria Victis almost ten years earlier, but when news broke about the monument in Belfort it provoked uproar. In April 1883, the conservative Journal de Belfort revealed that Merci´e had ‘personified our town [with] the figure of an Alsatian, whose costume is completely at odds with that of our town’.70 Merci´e’s faux pas provoked anger among local residents because it seemed to suggest that continuing Alsatian resistance against German rule was more significant than the successes of Belfort’s wartime defiance.71 The conflation of memories of Alsace and Belfort represented a barometer for public opinion on revanche. When the mood of the nation was belligerent, Belfort’s monuments became synonymous with aspirations for revenge. Indeed, during the Boulanger and Dreyfus Affairs, the replicas of the Lion and Quand Mˆeme in Paris acted as magnets for large crowds of nationalists. In the climate of the nationalist revival of the early 1900s, political cartoons depicted a bullish Lion rising to liberate Alsace-Lorraine. One postcard of 1912 had the Lion peering over the fortress walls towards Germany warning, ‘The Lion is impatient’,

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while the satirical artist Henri Zislin offered an enigmatically confident image of a smiling Lion wearing an Alsatian headdress, entitled ‘The Alsatian Resistance’ in June 1913. Only in times of revanchist quietude were Belfort and Alsace separately acknowledged. Thus the Monument aux Trois Si`eges, which featured the two individually, was designed in the period between 1900 and 1904, a period of nationalist decline following the Dreyfus Affair. Belfort was portrayed carrying a sword as a symbol of the town’s long military history and was looking towards a dominating figure of France who appeared in a protective posture. A figure representing Alsace stood behind them, and seen from a particular angle, appeared to peer out from behind Belfort’s skirts. According to Bartholdi’s widow, the Alsatian was meant to be leading a young warrior towards Belfort, but when viewed from another approach, it appears that that the warrior faces away from Alsace, as though heading to war on his own accord.72 Next to the other figures, Alsace seems small and childlike; with its recovery seeming a distant prospect after 40 years of annexation and a new political and cultural identity developing in Belfort, Bartholdi’s group articulated a view consistent with that held by French nationalists, in which the lost province was both loyal to and dependent upon France for guidance. A snapshot of the views of annexed Alsatians towards Belfort is revealed in the unveiling ceremony for Quand Mˆeme in August 1884. Newspapers claimed that large numbers crossed the border into France, a direct train line from Mulhouse to Belfort undoubtedly helping to make the journey feasible for many. According to Le Voltaire, it was as if everyone in Alsace had decided to travel to ‘this scrap of their land which still calls itself France’.73 Le Matin painted a picture in which annexed Alsatians overwhelmed Belfort; the hotels were so busy that many had to sleep on pavements or camp out near to the railway station.74 Until the construction of the war memorial at Wissembourg in 1909, Belfort offered the nearest site at which annexed Alsatians could pay tribute to those who had died for France in 1870–1871. Thus Belfort became for annexed Alsatians what Mars-la-Tour represented for annexed Lorrainers. The first major French war commemoration in Alsace-Lorraine was held in Metz on 7 September 1871 before crowds of around 40,000 people.75 By the mid-1890s, however, only around 2000 people were attending the ceremony.76 Until the inauguration of a monument at Noisseville in 1908, Metz remained the only occasion for Frenchspeaking Lorrainers to gather in memory of the French dead in the annexed territory. It was thus hardly surprising that each year many

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opted to make the short trip across the frontier to Mars-la-Tour. Yet while the commemorations at Mars-la-Tour represented desires to maintain the links between France and Alsace-Lorraine, those at Noisseville in 1908 symbolized how far annexed Lorraine had come in developing its own identity. In many respects, however, the tone of the commemorations in the two towns was an expression of the wider political mood in the region: just as the commemorations at Mars-la-Tour were not bullish in spirit, so the Noisseville monument was the fruit of co-operation between the French-speaking and German communities. Over 35 years after the bloodshed came reconciliation; the monument emerged from rapprochement between the former enemies as one of several joint ventures between the Souvenir Franc¸ais and the German Vereinigung veterans’ association.77 But while it was initially praised as heralding a new phase in Franco-German relations, the situation deteriorated and construction became plagued by diplomatic controversy. Writing in the late 1920s, the Souvenir Franc¸ais activist Jean-Pierre Jean described regular obstruction not only from German authorities but also from pro-German Lorrainers who alleged that it was a ‘work of revanche and hatred’.78 On 4 October 1908, the monument was unveiled in the presence of representatives of the two governments and their armed forces. Owing to the exceptional nature of the occasion and the tense state of diplomatic relations, the number of people who attended the ceremony appears to have been significantly higher than was ever seen at Mars-la-Tour. Estimates vary enormously, with Count von Zeppelin, the President of Alsace-Lorraine, claiming there were around 25,000 people, Le Gaulois stating that the figure was nearer 70,000–90,000, and German police, who might have been expected to understate the numbers, reporting that around 120,000 were present.79 The iconography of the monument conveyed an ambiguous message about the identity of Lorraine after almost 40 years under German rule. At the top of the pedestal was an allegory of France clutching a flag and supporting a mortally wounded soldier; she appeared less defiant than her counterpart in Mars-la-Tour and the overall impression was more obviously funerary in tone. Yet as William Kidd suggests, the more enduring image was that of Lorraine in mourning which conveyed an expression of regional identity hitherto unseen.80 Being almost as large as the two principal figures and more easily visible at eye-level, the sculptor Emmanuel Hannaux thus implied that soldiers had died as much for Lorraine as for France. The speeches delivered at the unveiling ceremony articulated the monument’s ambiguity. JeanPierre Jean, speaking on behalf of the Souvenir Franc¸ais, played down

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references to Lorraine, emphasizing that soldiers had died for France.81 Canon Henri Collin, the editor of the Francophile newspaper Le Lorrain, offered a different perspective in his service at Metz cathedral, however. While Jean asserted that the fallen were martyrs for France, Collin sought to appropriate them for Lorraine, claiming that ‘the dead whose memory we are honouring, are our dead, we the people of Lorraine’.82 While Collin was not an autonomist, like many, he championed Lorraine particularism as a check against Germanization. More than the monument or the ceremony, the significance of Noisseville lay in how it was perceived by all sides. In order to minimize tensions, German authorities chose to tolerate certain expressions of French nationalism, allowing the tricolour flag to be flown for the first time since the annexation. The event was greeted with mixed responses. In France, the nationalist newspaper Le Gaulois claimed that crowds gathered around the flag attempting to touch it as though it were a religious relic, whereas the moderate republican Le Matin reported that there was no real reaction, and most people displayed little outward emotion.83 Some French newspapers speculated that Lorrainers were afraid to show their true feelings in front of the German authorities; none, however, was prepared to consider that growing support for regional autonomy within the Reich might have left many feeling indifferent towards the appearance of the French flag. Between the French and the German press two very different versions of events emerged. French newspapers portrayed the ceremony as a spontaneous explosion of loyalty to the ‘mother country’, seizing upon relatively minor incidents and presenting them as politically significant. In the months that followed, German attitudes towards the ceremony hardened and the event came to be regarded as a turning-point in the region’s politics. Nationalist newspapers alleged that the monument and its sponsor, the Souvenir Franc¸ais, were simply covers for rekindling French sentiment in annexed Lorraine.84 The policy of rapprochement with France was attacked for endangering Germanization, and was replaced by a policy of repression more in tune with the tone of diplomatic relations. In the years thereafter, commemorations in Noisseville saw none of the privileges of 1908, with French flags, music, medals, and banners all strictly forbidden. Whereas in 1908, German authorities spoke in French out of courtesy to French-speaking Lorrainers, in 1910, Jean-Pierre Jean was prevented from addressing crowds in front of the monument, despite having been granted permission to do so prior to the ceremony.85 Thus the monument at Noisseville, which had tentatively sought to express a sense of annexed Lorraine’s political and cultural

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identity, became a contributory factor in the deterioration of political relations in the region. The second major war memorial to be erected in the annexed territories under the auspices of the Souvenir Franc¸ais was that at Wissembourg in 1909 (Figure 7.9). Following the debacle at Noisseville, German concerns were running high; in the lead-up to the inauguration ceremony, senior officials warned that the Souvenir Franc¸ais was geared solely towards disrupting public order. Having an emotional hold over the

Figure 7.9

Reconstructed monument at Wissembourg (Bas-Rhin)

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‘spiritual’ mood of the population, officials considered the mere presence of the Souvenir Franc¸ais to represent a threat to the Germanization of the region.86 For their part, however, Alsatians who had been deprived of the opportunity to commemorate those who died for France on their own soil embraced the occasion. According to Georges Ducrocq, who was, of course, keen to stress the region’s commitment to France, there was something akin to a celebratory atmosphere for the unveiling of the monument, with many houses decorated in the colours of Alsace. The performance of the Marseillaise for the first time in 39 years on Alsatian soil was said to have been a particularly emotional high-point.87 It was to be the last occasion that German authorities would be so lenient towards the Souvenir Franc¸ais and the wider French-speaking community, however; thereafter memorial services were heavily supervised. At the inauguration ceremony for the memorial at Trier in 1910, the French-speaking community were made to file past four German monuments, while Jean-Pierre Jean was only permitted to make a speech if he delivered it in German.88 Like many nationalist commentators, Hansi and Barr`es sought to turn the monuments at Noisseville and Wissembourg into symbols of the enduring commitment of Alsace-Lorraine towards France. In Mon village, Hansi depicted the war graves of 1870 as an organic yet distinctive part of the local landscape; in one illustration, the children playing in the foreground are the focus, but in the distance the graves of the turcos and the chasseurs are clearly discernible. In another image, the girls are shown placing flowers on the graves of the dead which according to Hansi the German government wishes they would forget.89 Despite having to work under German rule and indeed being tried for alleged treason in 1914, Hansi asserted that the annexed population remained defiant, claiming that memories persisted in people’s hearts, where no government could reach them.90 Only a few weeks before the unveiling ceremony at Noisseville, Barr`es published Colette Baudoche whose d´enouement takes place at the annual commemorative service in Metz. Alongside the monuments at Mars-la-Tour and Gravelotte, Noisseville became a site of pilgrimage in Barr`es’ search to communicate and connect with the spirit of Lorraine. Invited by pro-French leaders to address a secret meeting after the annual Assumption Day memorial service at Metz cathedral in 1911, Barr`es claimed that there existed in the lost provinces an ‘army of memory’ committed to maintaining the ‘religion of the dead’.91 With his belief that national consciousness was rooted in the soil and the dead, Alsace-Lorraine’s efforts to commemorate those who had fallen for France represented, for Barr`es, the perfect

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tool for insisting that notwithstanding the emergence of autonomist movements, the people of the annexed territories remained steadfast in their devotion to their ‘mother country’. The nationalist revival triggered by the Moroccan crises brought renewed public, political, and cultural interest in Alsace-Lorraine. A fresh wave of publications, paintings, and political speeches fuelled and responded to changing moods in France and Alsace-Lorraine. In 1910, Raymond Poincar´e, a Lorrainer and senator for Meuse, was the first senior politician to address the crowds at Mars-la-Tour, speaking of his hopes for ‘reparative justice’.92 Attendance figures, which had been declining in the early 1900s rose once more to a reported 20,000.93 As the main centre of war commemoration for French Lorraine and annexed Lorraine alike, Mars-la-Tour fulfilled several functions. In the initial years after 1871, it was a means of affirming the Frenchness of the entire Lorraine region in the face of its division and annexation. It was also a way of demonstrating the heroism of France’s war dead and responding to the German glorification of its victorious army. With the introduction of Kulturkampf in 1874, however, war remembrance acquired another meaning. The Catholic Church became the champion of the cult of the dead and a defender against Germanization. The work of Abbot Faller to make Mars-la-Tour a major site of patriotic pilgrimage might be seen as part of this project as each year, thousands of French-speaking Lorrainers made the journey across the frontier to attend the 16 August commemorations and to reaffirm their loyalty to France, to the consternation of German authorities. Of course, the commemorations at Mars-la-Tour were not wholly directed towards the nearby frontier. They also served as a reminder to the rest of France of its dismemberment and the fact that the country had done little to repair the perceived injustice. The cross-party consensus that the loss of Alsace-Lorraine was a tragedy for the nation made the annual ceremony a rare occasion for political moratorium, even if opinions differed on how to remedy the situation. With France and Germany holding diametrically opposed views on the legitimacy of the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, and efforts to shore up the French border defences, it is perhaps surprising that war commemorations did not regularly degenerate into conflict between communities. In part, this was due to the stoicism of the local population and their general respect for the dead, regardless of nationality. Yet it was also largely due to the co-operation of border authorities, who acted with extreme caution and prudence. As the Schnaebel´e border incident of 1887 demonstrated, the sensitive nature of frontier relations meant that it did not take much to

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provoke a major diplomatic dispute. The fact that war commemorations were never responsible for triggering any such incidents was testimony to their successful supervision. The only major source of tension lay in the feeling that restrictions on overt expressions of patriotism deprived people of their right to pay tribute to the men who had given their lives for their countries. As nationalist claims upon the annexed territories reached fever pitch, so the gulf between French images of Alsace-Lorraine and the reality reached its apogee. After 40 years of reading, seeing, and hearing about the devotion of the lost provinces to their ‘mother country’, many French people had no difficulty in accepting Hansi’s caricatures of Alsace as humorous but not unrealistic portrayals of life across the border. For the culturally differentiated region had been bestowed with a degree of Frenchness not seen elsewhere, even though in reality by 1910 just over 87 per cent of the population spoke some form of German as their first language.94

8 Arming the Nation

Reflecting upon the state of the nation after the experiences of l’ann´ee terrible, Thiers felt compelled to declare that with everything having turned ‘rotten’, the army was alone in remaining ‘clean and honourable’.1 It is perhaps a testimony to the intensity of France’s political divisions that in the midst of all the recriminations surrounding the defeat, the army was almost alone in emerging from 1870 to 1871 with its reputation restored. Yet if the regular army became the subject of a cult, the irregular forces that had fought the war became a subject of embarrassment. This chapter explores how discomforting memories of the activities of irregular combatants led elements on the right and moderate left to play down or even refute their successes. At the heart of the problem lay the connections between concepts of the nation-in-arms and notions of popular republicanism. If attempting to revive the spirit that had supposedly driven the nation to repel the foreign enemy in the 1790s had inspired the likes of Gambetta during the war, it looked decidedly less appealing in the period thereafter. For Thiers’ famous formula that the Republic ‘will be conservative, or it will not exist’ summed up the political climate of the 1870s. The backlash against the Commune left moderate republicans having to distance themselves from any associations with social upheaval, and indeed Gambetta pointedly reaffirmed his bourgeois republicanism, rejecting social revolution in favour of a regime based upon the ‘new social strata’. While rhetoric could be easily adjusted in accordance with the political climate, memories proved more difficult to manipulate. The controversy surrounding memories of the defence of Dijon of 30 October 1870, the L´egionnaires du Rhˆone, and Colonel Denfert-Rochereau’s handling of the siege of Belfort might be largely ascribed to the conservatism of the early and mid-1870s 203

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under the Government of Moral Order, but that surrounding Garibaldi’s exploits in the period thereafter suggests that irregular forces continued to be a problematic subject for many republicans. The francs-tireurs were perhaps the most controversial irregular force outside Paris; they were meant to bring havoc and disruption to enemy ranks, but lack of equipment and poor organization limited their military impact. Instead, their major contribution was to spread fear among German soldiers as they became terrified of an unknown, unidentifiable, and often invisible foe. Their expansion into a force of 57,600 men was in no small part due to Gambetta’s calls for the people to rise up and engage in partisan warfare.2 Following the revolution of 4 September 1870, the Government of National Defence came under intense pressure to revive the war effort by evoking the spirit of 1792. Much of the regular army had been captured or was out of action owing to the defeat at Sedan and the siege of Metz, meaning that fresh forces had to be created. On 2 November the government therefore decreed the mobilization of all men between the ages of 21 and 40. As Michael Howard observes, however, attempts to conjure up the spirit of 1792 were a double-edged sword; while the Revolutionary Wars had aroused nationalist sentiment to expel an external enemy, they had also been fought against an internal enemy.3 The parallels with the situation in 1870–1871 were discomfortingly close. Inspired by myths of the e´ lan of the revolutionary armies, from the outset, the ranks of the francs-tireurs were plagued by indiscipline. In an attempt to rein their more dangerous and unpredictable elements into the military effort, on 14 October all irregular forces were incorporated into an auxiliary army, then on 4 November they were placed under the orders of regular army commanders stationed in their areas.4 Such measures did little to resolve the problems and indeed often served to aggravate tensions between regular and irregular forces. Yet it was the defeat and the experiences of the Commune that were to bring irreparable damage to the reputation of France’s irregular forces. Indeed, as Gerd Krumeich argues, even Gambetta did not seek to defend them or the concept of a nation-in-arms in the National Assembly enquiry of 1871.5 Thus like the Parisian National Guard, Garibaldi’s francs-tireurs, the L´egions du Rhˆone, the improvised bands of volunteers that defended Dijon on 30 October 1870, and indeed any force or commander who did not conform to traditional military models were subjects of unease and even embarrassment for all those seeking to re-establish the position of the regular army in the new post-war order.

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The imperatives of the post-Commune political climate led desires to neutralize the perceived threat from the far left to be considered a priority in the national revival. To that end, all but the far left maintained only a conditional assertion of myths of a glorious defeat. Ultimately, the war aggravated the divisions not just between supporters and opponents of the Republic but between different concepts of the Republic as well. For despite the parallels, the crucial difference between 1792–1793 and 1870–1871 is the fact that during the Revolutionary Wars the foreign invasion was one of counter-revolutionary reaction that mobilized all those who supported the Republic in its defence. In the FrancoPrussian War, by contrast, the threat from Germany was to the integrity of the nation; with the left divided over concepts of bourgeois and popular republicanism, there could be little sense of genuine political unity behind the Republic. Any attempt to conduct the defence in accordance with concepts of the nation-in-arms raised problems from the outset; ruling elites feared that sanctioning a people’s war might result in the kind of popular Republic they were so desperate to avoid. Gambetta’s military plans were thus hampered by the political calculations of fellow republicans, but reflecting upon the disasters of l’ann´ee terrible in the period thereafter even he felt compelled to concede that ideas of the nation-in-arms might have been more harmful than beneficial.

Army and republic Perhaps more than anywhere else, memories of the military campaigns around Dijon were inseparably connected with recollections of the republican forces that fought them. The defence of Dijon by irregular forces on 30 October 1870 may not have been one of the most significant episodes in the conflict from a military point of view, but it seemed to exemplify the kind of battle espoused by many republicans. Dijon was one of only a handful of cities to mount their own defence, but in defying army orders to evacuate and retreat, its action came to acquire certain political connotations. Republican accounts charged the army with defeatism, and claimed that whereas General Fauconnet had ordered his troops to abandon Dijon, the people and National Guard had risen to demand rearmament and resistance. The city managed to hold off invading forces for an extra day in what republicans later hailed as an inspiring example of the revolutionary ideal of the people-in-arms.6 Despite the conservative political climate of the early 1870s, the municipal council of Dijon scarcely bothered to mask their intentions in commissioning a monument to the defence of 30 October 1870. Initial

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plans for a funerary memorial to honour the fallen were soon shelved in favour of a public monument that would convey a republican vision of the resistance.7 That the political agenda was both widely known and anticipated is clear from one sculptor’s complaints in December 1871 that the municipal council ‘which claims to be republican’ had been ‘disloyal’ in awarding the commission to a conservative.8 In part, of course, such expectations were a measure of Dijon’s history of civic patriotism and republicanism. The city had resisted both invasion in 1815 and the regimes of the Bourbon monarchy and Louis-Philippe that followed. In 1862 Dijon elected a republican to the Legislative Assembly, and from 1865 many of its municipal councillors were republicans as well. The National Guard had long been a bastion of radicalism; in 1830 its ranks had been at the heart of the republican clubs that emerged in opposition to the Orleanist monarchy.9 While Dijon did not follow the lead of several other major cities in declaring its own Commune, being under German occupation in 1871, its extreme-left elements did lend their support to Communards in the capital through the Alliance R´epublicaine. With such a history of republican activity, what is perhaps most surprising about the monument to the defence of Dijon is not its destruction by the Government of Moral Order in 1875 but rather that it was ever permitted to be erected. Produced by the sculptor Paul Cabet, the monument to the defence of 30 October 1870 comprised a female allegory of the resistance in classical garb, carrying a sword in one hand and a flag in the other (Figure 8.1). Standing at the top of a tall stone column, the allegory seems disproportionately small compared with the figures of two men and a woman holding a child in her arms, all of which appear in basrelief at the base. The monument has attracted scholarly attention as an example of the early Third Republic’s discomfort with republican symbols because in addition to being crowned with the city walls, the female allegory was bestowed with a Phrygian cap. Under the Government of Moral Order, images of Marianne, the female allegory of the Republic, were condemned while the Phrygian cap, a symbol of liberty, revolution, and more recently of the Paris Commune, was banned. Yet the urgent and belligerent manner with which Cabet’s statue was removed suggests that the Phyrigian cap represented only part of the problem. After all, representations of Marianne or any figure wearing a Phrygian cap were regularly removed by the prefects across the country before 1876 without any of the aggression witnessed in Dijon. The root cause of the problem with the Dijon monument thus lies not simply in the iconography but also in the context in which it appeared. As Agulhon observes, the statue

Arming the Nation

Figure 8.1

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Paul Cabet, La r´esistance, Dijon (replica, 1880)

sought to fuse symbols of France and the Republic in a manner that had not been seen in any previous war memorial.10 While any image of Marianne may be deemed to represent a visual symbol of republican France, in the context of Dijon’s resistance and the wider political climate of l’ann´ee terrible, the statue seemed to imply that the defence was as much against a domestic enemy as it was against an external enemy.11 On 21 October 1875, a mere ten days before the unveiling ceremony for the monument was due to take place, the conservative newspaper

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La Cˆote-d’Or published a report describing the allegory of Dijon as a representation of Marianne.12 Fearing that the Radical municipal council had somehow surreptitiously replaced the approved statue with an illegal emblem of republicanism, prefect Albert Souvestre immediately issued orders for its removal, claiming that the ‘revolutionary nature of the substitute statue’ and its Phrygian cap did not ‘conform to the models which had been sanctioned by the government’.13 Unable to find skilled workers willing to dismantle a tribute to their city’s resistance, and with the prefect insisting that the matter be dealt with as a matter of urgency, the chief architect for the department F´elix Vionnois had little alternative than to summon in troops. By an unfortunate coincidence, however, the commander of the division stationed at Dijon happened to be none other than Galliffet, the general whose ruthless suppression of the Paris Commune had made him synonymous with the worst kind of reactionary militarism in the eyes of the left.14 Thus it came to pass that early in the morning of 26 October 1875, around a dozen soldiers attached one loop of rope around the statue’s head and a further two loops around its body. Their intention was to bring the statue down in one piece, and cartloads of hay and manure were spread around the base of the monument to cushion the fall. But as the men pulled the rope, the plan went wrong; ‘Marianne’s’ head snapped off.15 News of the destruction of the monument soon spread, and crowds poured onto place Gray, desperately trying to collect pieces of the shattered marble to take home with them as relics. Concerned that public anger might boil over into civil unrest, the prefect promptly declared a state of siege. Rather than quelling the controversy, the removal of the statue only seemed to make it worse. Previous explorations into the destruction of Cabet’s monument have situated their analyses within the political climate of 1875. Thus Chantal Martinet argues that the incident manifested government hostility towards the particular republican agenda of the Dijon municipal council.16 Indeed the local opposition to the Duc de Broglie’s conservative vision of the constitution which was revealed in the municipal elections of 1875 prompted a tougher government response to rising radicalism in Dijon. Yet while the political context of 1875 must be considered, wider factors were also significant. At the heart of conservative unease with the monument to the defence of Dijon lay discomfort with recollections of the city’s resistance in 1870. In toppling Cabet’s statue, Interior Minister Buffet did not intend simply to target the spread of the relatively moderate republicanism of 1875; his aim was rather to halt the resurgence of the kind of revolutionary republicanism of 1871.

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For many republicans, the defence of Dijon in 1870 represented a clash between the defeatism of the professional army and the patriotism of armed citizens. Upon receiving the news that significant numbers of German forces were approaching Dijon, on 28 October 1870 General Fauconnet ordered the withdrawal of all regular troops and the disarmament of the city’s National Guard. Objecting to having to leave without a fight, some soldiers refused to retreat, while many National Guardsmen held onto their weapons. In post-1870 republican narratives, the events that ensued fitted neatly into the myths of citizen armies that had been a staple of left-wing discourse since the Revolutionary Wars; whereas the regular army had been overwhelmed by defeatism, armed citizens had rushed forward eager to defend their city and nation. Republican eyewitnesses thus described crowds gathering outside the town hall, demanding resistance and leadership. The prefect Louis d’Azincourt therefore took command of the city’s defence and shortly afterwards, National Guardsmen and volunteers moved out to occupy the outlying villages to halt the German advance, while women and children erected barricades in the streets of Dijon.17 On 30 October, German forces advanced with 10,000 men against a motley collection of around 3500 chasseurs, francs-tireurs, sedentary National Guardsmen, and volunteers. Despite being significantly outnumbered, Dijon’s defenders managed to hold off the assault for several hours. On hearing of the improvised resistance, Fauconnet returned to Dijon with reinforcements, only to be killed shortly afterwards in the street fighting. His replacement, Major Regad, lost no time in ordering the troops to retreat to Beaune. It was another major blow for the city’s defenders, who believed that victory was within their grasp; according to one franc-tireur, when Regad attempted to fly the white flag of surrender, indignant Guardsmen fired at it, leaving the major forced to flee the city in disguise.18 In an echo of developments elsewhere, however, another eyewitness noticed that many professional soldiers were far from reluctant to withdraw, feeling resentful at having to operate within a civilian-led resistance.19 By nightfall, Dijon’s defenders appeared to have secured a measure of success; they had forced German troops to engage in dangerous street fighting to gain control of the city house by house. Yet despite the withdrawal of General Beyer’s men, the city’s defenders knew their resistance was unsustainable. Knowing that German forces would respond with fierce bombardment the following day, and knowing that they no longer had the support of the army, the municipal council had little choice but to surrender late that night.20

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Despite the loss of Dijon on 31 October, many republicans believed the defence represented an important symbolic victory. The regular army had revealed itself as defeatist in the face of popular calls for resistance, and great significance was attached to the fact that the city secured terms of surrender usually only granted in recognition of a lengthy siege. It took less than a week for the municipal council to decide to erect a monument to the fallen defenders.21 At first, the events of 30 October seemed merely to exemplify wider divisions over the Republic; in the months that followed, however, the episode came to acquire other meanings. The defiance of citizens and the sedentary National Guard against the army’s calls for surrender bore echoes of events in the capital, and indeed developments in Dijon coincided with insurrection in the streets of Paris following news of the failed sortie from Le Bourget and the capitulation of Metz. In French collective memories, the defence of Dijon thus became a microcosm of the wider political conflicts of l’ann´ee terrible. In view of the linkage in public memories between events in Dijon and insurrection in Paris, it seems odd that the construction of the monument was not scrutinized more closely. It can only be surmised that the moderation of the municipal council in the immediate aftermath of the war led officials to misjudge the potential threat. In 1872, Dijon gained a moderate republican mayor who sought publicly to repudiate radicalism, while for a brief period between 1874 and 1875 the town hall was run by the conservative Anatole Mairet. The municipal council demonstrated an apparent willingness to tone down its militancy, awarding the first prize for the design of the monument to the Catholic architect F´elix Vionnois and the commission to the conservative sculptor Franc¸ois Jouffroy.22 Even after the plans were submitted for prefectoral approval on 18 March 1873, officials expressed no concern about its potential political ramifications.23 But outward appearances were deceptive; if a spirit of compromise reigned publicly, behind the scenes differences emerged between Jouffroy’s conception of the monument and that envisioned by the municipal council. Whereas the latter wanted to convey memories of the heroism of citizens-in-arms, the former insisted upon representing the role played by regular soldiers as well. The municipal council thus suggested that only a National Guardsman and a wounded franc-tireur should feature in the statue, the regular army having played at best a minimal and at worst an obstructive role in the resistance of 30 October 1870. Insisting that the struggle had been ‘unsuccessful’ and that the glorification of irregular combatants was ‘false’, Jouffroy refused to concede to anything that might suggest a political as well as military triumph

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for the left.24 In September 1874, Jouffroy was therefore replaced by Mathurin Moreau and Paul Cabet. As the nephew of the Utopian socialist Etienne Cabet, Paul Cabet was known both as a respected sculptor and a supporter of the left, having spent a period in exile for opposition to Louis-Philippe.25 The fact that the prefect issued no response to Cabet’s appointment might be attributed to mere oversight, were it not for the subsequent failures of the chief architect for the department and the municipal council to anticipate any difficulties with the changed character of the monument. Between April and June 1875, Cabet sent images of the completed statue to Vionnois, but despite being far from sympathetic to republican ideas he either failed to inspect them or did not notice anything problematic.26 The municipal council of Dijon also apparently did not scrutinize its copies of the photographs, seeming not to anticipate any difficulties.27 Such lack of concern with the political implications of the monument might have been due to administrative failings at multiple levels, but perhaps a more convincing explanation is that the controversy resulted not so much from the statue’s appearance as from the significance ascribed to its iconography by its political opponents. Just over a week before La Cˆote-d’Or had issued its denunciation of the statue as a representation of Marianne, the Catholic newspaper Le Bien Public had printed an article clearly stating that the female allegory of Dijon was wearing a Phrygian cap.28 That for eight days the news brought no reaction from the prefect or the press and no public outcry therefore raises questions as to whether the Phrygian cap was in fact the true cause of the controversy. Despite being inextricably associated with violent revolutionary republicanism and being banned by the Government of Moral Order, its appearance in Dijon was greeted with apparent apathy. Indeed, it was not the news that the statue featured a Phrygian cap so much as the announcement that it was worn by a Marianne ‘whose posture and gesture personifies the most savage instincts and the most bloodthirsty demagogy’ that sparked the controversy.29 Other indications that the cap was not the sole root of the problem can be found in correspondence between officials, the mayor of Dijon, and Cabet. In a letter to Mayor Enfert, the prefect highlighted the ‘revolutionary style’ of the statue before making reference to its Phrygian cap, while newspapers reported officials’ claims that ‘it is not just a matter of the cap which shocks us, it is the whole person’.30 Such objections to the style of the statue rather than just one part of it may help to explain why Cabet’s offer to remove the Phrygian cap was not considered an adequate solution to the crisis.

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Essentially, the problem seems to have been with the dynamic movement of the female allegory. As Agulhon has outlined, the tensions between popular and bourgeois republicanism that emerged over the course of the nineteenth century found visual expression in art and sculpture. While movement, passionate expression, and energy signified a revolutionary Republic, a motionless, composed, and stable-looking figure represented a conservative Republic. The problem was, of course, that while the choice of one image over the other had significant political implications, the first tended to be visually more appealing to artists.31 By the 1870s an established set of symbols had created a visual language, even if it was one that was not always wholly understood. The Phrygian cap could only ever be situated on an allegory of liberty; even if the figure was not necessarily labelled as a Marianne, it was inherently associated with notions of revolution and republicanism. Thus despite the fact that Cabet’s statue was meant to represent Dijon, its obvious references to images of popular republicanism suggest that its interpretation as a revolutionary figure cannot have come as a total surprise to those who viewed the plans and photographs or indeed the sculptor. For it was not the first female allegory to be viewed in this manner. The misinterpretation of the monument erected to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Lille’s defence against Austria in 1792 offers a curious precedent for the episode in Dijon. Like that in Dijon, the monument comprised a tall column with a female allegory of the city at the top wearing a crown in the shape of walls. Before long, however, the statue began to be regarded as an allegory of the Republic; local people seemed unaware that a female in classical clothing could represent anything else.32 In many respects Cabet’s allegorical figure carrying a flag in one hand and a weapon in the other was also redolent of the female featured in La libert´e guidant le peuple by Eug`ene Delacroix. The painting’s representation of popular revolution by men, women, and children caused it to be removed from public display in 1831. Even Rude’s bas-relief on the Arc de Triomphe, whose screaming female was meant to be an allegory of war as volunteers depart to defend the nation in 1792, soon became known as the Marseillaise as audiences interpreted it as an image of revolutionary republicanism.33 As a pupil of Rude, Cabet would have been well aware of how his statue might be viewed. He, the monument committee, Vionnois, and the prefect would have known that the statue’s suggestions of popular republicanism represented a challenge to the Government of Moral Order. Because conservatives and moderate republicans viewed the regular army as the guarantor of political and social harmony in the aftermath

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of the Commune, they gave only qualified acknowledgement of the successes of irregular forces. In the parliamentary enquiry into the actions of the Government of National Defence of 1871, monarchists blamed many of the failures on republican privileging of civilian over military expertise. Gambetta and Freycinet were condemned, and many officers who had risen rapidly through the ranks under the republican leadership were demoted. Memories of the defence of Dijon were thus doubly difficult for the right and moderate left, emphasizing Radical visions of the Republic and the army. Yet if erecting the Cabet statue threatened the integrity of conservative and even moderate republican memories, destroying it risked endangering the credibility of Radical memories as well. Many regarded the post-4 September military campaign as a truly national defence, the people armed and inspired, fighting for themselves rather than for an emperor or monarch. Invoking such popular patriotism implicitly legitimized republican concepts of citizenship and the nation. The trouble was that the National Assembly elections of 8 February 1871 had revealed that while urban populations had supported r´esistance a` outrance, rural communities had overwhelmingly endorsed the surrender. Gambetta’s dreams of a nation-in-arms had foundered, and in reality, outside the cities the resolve portrayed in Cabet’s statue had been largely absent. Despite the restrictions imposed upon newspapers in the Cˆ ote-d’Or under the state of emergency and the fact that illustrated publications were forbidden from reproducing any image of the statue, the toppling of the monument attracted considerable press attention across the nation.34 For the left, responsibility fell squarely on the shoulders of the Orleanist champion of conservatism, Interior Minister Louis Buffet, whom many regarded as nothing less than an anti-republican iconoclast. Indeed, Le Si`ecle cited an official statement that seemed to suggest that the statue was unacceptable because it ‘is not the Republic according to the beliefs of M. Buffet. [ . . . ] It is the Republic of new social strata, subversive and aspiring to disorder.’35 It was thus an assault not just on what the government perceived as left extremism but on the kind of bourgeois Republic espoused by the likes of Gambetta as well. In the midst of the crisis, several newspapers raised the spectre of a new kind of civil war, alleging that events in Dijon inaugurated a more wide-ranging assault on the symbols of republicanism.36 While the republican press lambasted Buffet, however, Galliffet escaped with his reputation remarkably untarnished. Despised by many on the left for his brutal treatment of Communard prisoners in 1871, he had undergone a remarkable political transformation in the period thereafter. Having initially been closely

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connected with the Bonapartist regime, from 1874 Galliffet had become allied with Gambetta, although this was probably not known by the Parisian press in October 1875.37 It is rather surprising, therefore, that left-wing newspapers did not ascribe particular significance, even at a symbolic level, to the fact that the destruction of the monument had been performed by the man who had crushed the Commune, preferring to concentrate their criticism on the government instead. Republican success in the legislative elections of 1876 brought changes in government and the beginnings of a fundamental transformation in attitudes towards public monumental art. While MacMahon remained in the Elys´ee Palace, however, any transformation could only come slowly, as moderate republican politicians feared that permitting the spread of Radical symbols might revive far-left insurgent activity and trigger a right-wing backlash. Until 1880, therefore, the Phrygian cap remained, officially at least, a symbol of sedition. By the time Mathurin Moreau set to work on a replacement copy after the death of Cabet in 1876, Radicals had successfully challenged moderate caution in respect of public statuary. The monument unveiled in 1880 was thus a faithful replica of the original, complete with its dynamic posture, eastward direction, defiant expression, and its Phrygian cap. While changes within central government in 1876 heralded the start of a reconciliation with the ideas considered to have been conveyed in Cabet’s statue, in Lyon, tensions between left-wing and conservative memories of the war came to a head in the seize mai crisis. The events of 1877 lay behind the erection of the Monument aux enfants du Rhˆone, which featured a statue by Etienne Pagny of a female allegory of the city holding a flag aloft and pointing the way towards the eastern frontier in a powerful sweeping gesture (Figure 8.2). At her feet, a mortally wounded soldier had fallen but a volunteer L´egionnaire du Rhˆone was shown moving forward with his rifle poised for action, while another figure sounded a bugle calling future generations to combat. Its message seemed clear: France may have lost the battle, but she had not yet lost the war.38 Unveiled on 30 October 1887, its revanchist tone matched the mood of the moment: a few months earlier, Boulanger’s bellicose bravado had caused diplomatic upset with Germany, sending nationalist waves rippling out into the rest of the country. Concerned for the delicate state of diplomatic relations, the Interior Minister thus instructed the city’s mayor not to permit any aggressive speeches or any references to the former enemy at the inauguration ceremony.39 To the government’s relief, the day’s events passed without incident, and crowds largely refrained from shouting nationalist slogans.40 As a spokesman for Mayor Gailleton

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Etienne Pagny, Monument aux enfants du Rhˆone, Lyon (1878–1887)

triumphantly declared, with the unveiling of the monument, the people of Lyon had finally ‘avenged the outrage against the flag’.41 While Lyon lay outside the theatre of conflict, it was deeply divided by the experiences of l’ann´ee terrible. The city had proclaimed the Republic before Paris; there had been an attempted uprising led by the anarchists Bakunin and Cluseret; violence had erupted on 19 December; on 22 March National Guards had attempted to seize control of the town hall; and finally on 30 April internationalist insurgents supporting Paris had

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attempted to proclaim their own Commune. Under the command of the moderate republican mayor H´enon, the city challenged the centralized state, creating its own armies, and manifesting hostility towards the regular army.42 Memories of l’ann´ee terrible in Lyon also reverberated with anti-republican symbolism. In December 1870, Bishop Genhouilac vowed to construct a chapel on the heights of Fourvi`ere, if Lyon were spared from invasion.43 Inspired by the Catholic Church’s portrayal of the crisis as divine punishment for France’s sins, the resulting basilica projected an opposing message about l’ann´ee terrible: whereas the Monument aux enfants du Rhˆone encouraged regeneration through the cult of the nation, the Fourvi`ere basilica sought salvation through the cult of the Sacred Heart. L’ann´ee terrible in Lyon was also viewed through the prism of the city’s rancour about events in the period thereafter. In 1873, the government attempted to bring Moral Order to Lyon, suppressing the power of the central town hall and despatching Joseph Ducros to replace the republican D´esir´e Barodet as prefect-mayor.44 Ducros went on to clash with republicans over their encouragement of civic funerals, but he also became embroiled in a controversy that many on the left considered a more grave assault on the city’s honour. In the midst of the seize mai crisis, the flags belonging to the L´egionnaires du Rhˆone went missing, leading republicans to suspect the hand of Ducros. The allegations not only coloured the tone of later commemorations, but directly shaped the character and significance of the city’s war memorial. For Lyon was represented in a posture reminiscent of images of the flag carriers on the battlefield, and when the mayor’s representative spoke at the unveiling ceremony of the ‘outrage’ against the flag, several newspapers inferred that he was not referring to the humiliating defeat but to the actions of the prefect. Thus in the eyes of many on the left, Lyon’s war memorial may have been a symbol of revenge, but it was not revenge against Germany. The outbreak of war in July 1870 had been greeted without enthusiasm in Lyon, opposition to the Second Empire having culminated in a massive negative vote in the May plebiscite. From the outset, crowds in the city responded to military failure with violent protest: the collapse at Froeschwiller on 10 August led to unrest at Perrache railway station, while defeat at Sedan was rapidly followed by insurrection.45 It took the proclamation of a Republic on 4 September to arouse popular patriotism.46 Volunteers from Lyon and the wider region were organized into five L´egions du Rhˆone and sent to reinforce the Army of the East, while thousands of workers set to work constructing defences. On

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18 December 1870, the L´egionnaires were involved in clashes with 12,000 German troops at Nuits-Saint-Georges in one of the bloodiest battles of the war. The casualties were heavy on both sides, and when the first L´egion fell back to count the cost, it discovered it had lost around half its men.47 When news of the carnage reached Lyon on the morning of 19 December, it provoked uproar in the streets. Rumours of the massacre of the L´egionnaires sparked condemnation of the moderate republican authorities, and amidst the chaos of suspicion and accusations that the patriotic e´ lan of the far left was being stifled by the government and army, the National Guardsman Commandant Arnaud was shot dead.48 The killing became a national symbol of the divisions within the left, initially as a portent of revolutionary violence, and after 1871 as a reminder of the effects of political extremism.49 It served to shape memories of l’ann´ee terrible such that as in Paris, the war in Lyon came to be viewed through the prism of the events that accompanied it. The L´egions du Rhˆone were associated with but never at the heart of extreme-left militancy during l’ann´ee terrible. With volunteers of all political, social, and religious backgrounds, the L´egions were heterogeneous in their makeup. Although their associated veterans’ organizations tended to be left-wing in outlook and to include many militant socialists, this is far from a sufficient explanation for the destruction of their flags.50 The commander of the second L´egion, Colonel Ferrer, was regarded as a controversial figure, having been dismissed from the army by Bazaine in 1863 and being imprisoned in April 1871 for allegedly inciting civil war, but even he was a relatively marginal political figure during and after the war and would scarcely have been the cause of such draconian action by the government.51 Even the city’s National Guard did not share the extreme-left militancy of its Parisian counterpart, remaining largely loyal to the moderate republican Mayor H´enon. The failure of the uprising of 28 September and its suppression by National Guards ensured the marginalization of extreme-left forces and the primacy of municipal freedom over notions of social revolution in the period thereafter.52 Unlike in Paris, notions of guerre a` outrance did not lie behind the March insurrection, which lacked widespread support from the National Guard.53 Thus despite a close connection between war and insurrection, in contrast with Paris, the city’s volunteer combatants were never deeply implicated in violent social and political upheaval. The process by which the flags belonging to the L´egions du Rhˆone came to be destroyed is shrouded in confusion. According to one account, Ducros ordered their removal from the town hall on 2 February 1875 following a meeting between the War and Interior Ministers.54 Another

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version of events asserts that their disappearance was the result of a letter dated 4 November 1876 from General Bourbaki, the then military governor of Lyon, in which he claimed to be following the orders of the War Minister.55 Either way, the fate of the flags was kept from the municipal council who only began to fear for their safety during the seize mai crisis. In November 1877, the council decided that the flags should be returned to the town hall; but on transmitting the request to the Interior Minister, they learned that they had already been destroyed.56 Given the immense emotional and patriotic value of the flags, especially in the aftermath of the defeat, it seems highly unlikely that their loss could have been a result of some kind of error on the part of a junior official, as was suggested in the debates of the Conseil G´en´eral du Rhˆ one in September 1878.57 Regimental flags had long been endowed with symbolic value; under the Ancien Regime, they were blessed by clergymen before battle, and with the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, they inspired first republican zeal then espirt de corps.58 During and after the war, countless stories emerged of soldiers’ heroic efforts to save their flags, and many had shown they were prepared to die rather than allow them to fall into enemy hands.59 The tattered remnants were often displayed in local museums or deposited in the collections of Les Invalides as sacred relics. The flags of the L´egionnaires seemed particularly significant; echoing the practices and sentiments of the early Revolutionary Wars, they had been sewn by the women of Lyon.60 When the fighting ended, they were handed to Mayor H´enon, who promised that they would be preserved in the municipal archives as evidence of a ‘glorious memory in the midst of the disasters of the fatherland’.61 Their removal and subsequent destruction was thus an immensely significant gesture. In combat, the destruction of flags was an action of last resort, deployed to prevent their capture by the enemy. For a government, it was a drastic measure of defiance rather than surrender. In March 1814, Marshal S´erurier had burned the historic collection of flags at Les Invalides rather than allow them to be seized as victory trophies for Alexander I of Russia. Enquiries into the affair by a succession of prefects offered no reason for the orders, being concerned mainly with establishing that the correct bureaucratic procedures had been followed in the implementation of orders from above. In the eyes of Lyon’s republicans, however, there could be little doubt that the action had been politically motivated. Between 1873 and 1875, the state of emergency that had been in place since 1870 had allowed Ducros to issue a flood of repressive and restrictive orders. The most famous curbed civil funerals, but Ducros also

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forbade grocers from selling wine, purged local government of Radicals, censored the press, and banned Radical gravediggers from entering cemeteries, even for their own family funerals. His administration fostered an atmosphere in which police were encouraged to fabricate left-wing plots so that political opponents could be arrested and imprisoned, a practice that led eventually to Ducros’ removal from office in October 1875.62 Such was his unpopularity that Lyonnais from all political camps came to despise him.63 It was thus hardly surprising that so many blamed Ducros’ malign influence and more generally the regime of Moral Order for the destruction of the flags.64 At the unveiling ceremony for the monument, the representative of the mayor made heavy insinuations to this effect. Indeed, Le Temps interpreted Alexandre Bouffier’s speech on behalf of the mayor as expressing hope that the occasion might help to repair the outrage committed by Ducros.65 Le Progr`es de Lyon reported that Ducros had issued the orders as though ‘in their rage, our former masters wanted to destroy the memory of a glorious past’.66 Le Petit Lyonnais pointed out that as the flag from the siege of Belfort was being welcomed by the crowds, those of the L´egions could have been there as well, had it not been for the fact that a ‘wretch [who] was jealous of the treasure of our old republican city destroyed them’.67 Because of the fragmentary nature of the records, it is difficult to establish a firm explanation for the destruction of the flags. Yet the truth about who was responsible and why they might have issued the orders matters perhaps less than perceptions of the affair. The flags were a symbol of Lyon’s patriotism which was inseparable from its republicanism. They had helped inspire volunteers to sacrifice their lives in the battle of Nuits-Saint-Georges, but the fighting of 18 December had also led to the murder of Commandant Arnaud. They had been appropriated as emblems of republican military success, and thus might have been regarded as a potential rallying-point for the left. Indeed, while handing over his flag on 6 March 1871, Colonel Ferrer had claimed that the second L´egion owed its success on the battlefield to its republican leadership.68 H´enon in turn had replied that the flags would be preserved in the municipal archives as ‘a glorious memory’, adding that it was the duty of all citizens to defend the Republic.69 Indications as to how far the L´egionnaires were considered to pose a threat after the war may be seen in a letter from the prefect to the Interior Minister in August 1877 warning that they posed a ‘real political danger’, and that militant socialists among their number might organize armed resistance to the government.70 The destruction of the flags might, therefore, have been

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considered a means of removing a symbol by which left-wing elements could have derived popular legitimacy in their opposition to the conservative regime. Not fitting the requisite model for a narrative of patriotic glory with the regular army at its heart, Lyon’s not inconsiderable contribution to the war effort was a source of difficulty rather than celebration for supporters of Moral Order. In this context, for the left, the construction of a war memorial represented an effort not merely to honour those who had fought and died, but perhaps more importantly, an attempt to re-establish the legitimacy of the department’s irregular forces against those who had sought to vilify them. It was not just memories of the irregular forces that were a subject of discomfort. Wartime commanders who adhered to republican modes of military thinking also raised difficult questions for moderate republicans as well as conservatives. Colonel Denfert-Rochereau may have led Belfort to victory, but memories of his actions were far from universally acclaimed in the period thereafter. During the siege, the commander of the Belfort garrison had engaged officers in the decision-making process in the belief that it would give them a greater incentive to obey orders. This angered many senior military figures who argued that the practice only encouraged further indiscipline within the army. Yet Denfert emerged from the war insistent that blind obedience was un-republican. Advancing these views in a debate on army recruitment in the Chamber of Deputies on 28 May 1872, he was shouted down by Generals Ducrot and Chanzy.71 In a famous exchange with General Changarnier, the royalist head of the commission on military reforms and staunch defender of army tradition, Denfert claimed that passive obedience had been a primary cause of the disasters; while republican thinking had brought victory at Belfort, conservative thinking had brought defeat and treachery at Metz.72

Garibaldi If controversies surrounding the wartime experiences of Dijon, Lyon, and Belfort were a measure of political conservatism in the initial years following the Commune, recollections of Garibaldi’s defence of Dijon on 21–23 January 1871 demonstrated that problems persisted into the 1890s and early 1900s. Opinion on Garibaldi’s role in commanding the irregular forces of the Army of the Vosges was as sharply divided around Dijon as it was in the rest of France, being celebrated by the far left and opposed by all from the right to moderate left. Following his death in 1881, Radical municipal councils across the country rushed to honour

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his memory, with over 15 major cities naming roads after him, and Paris and Nice erecting statues.73 Unlike the later initiatives in Paris and Nice, the desire to commemorate the military achievements of Garibaldi and those who fought under him in Dijon on 21–23 January 1871 was first voiced in November 1871.74 Mired in controversy from its conception, however, the monument was not unveiled until the left-wing makeup of the municipal council became more amenable to the initiative in the late 1890s. Positioned at a crossroads near place de la R´epublique, the bronze statue by the local sculptor Paul Auban portrayed Garibaldi standing with a sword in one hand and shielding the ‘altar of liberty’ with the other.75 Over the course of its construction, the monument sparked local and national debate about Garibaldi’s role in the events of l’ann´ee terrible, with opinion seeming to coalesce around two polarized concepts of France. For his supporters, he represented yet another victim of ‘reaction, militarism, monarchism, clericalism, and capitalism’, while for his detractors, his universal republicanism and anti-clericalism rendered him nothing less than an enemy of France.76 From the moment Garibaldi entered the war, his military usefulness and political motives were subjected to intense scrutiny. Aged 63 and frequently incapacitated, his arrival presented the Government of National Defence with an awkward dilemma: if they refused his assistance they risked alienating support on the left, but if they accepted it they risked alienating support on the right. Questions surrounding Garibaldi’s reliability surfaced as early as October 1870, when instead of halting a German march at Dˆ ole, his forces became embroiled in minor clashes with the enemy, thereby failing to bring reinforcements to Dijon and contributing to its fall.77 The disaster was rapidly followed by another; on 25 November in defiance of his orders, Garibaldi tried to recapture Dijon accompanied by a mere 5000 men, only to be repelled within three hours. Further allegations of insubordination surfaced over General Cremer’s attack on German forces at Nuits-Saint-Georges on 18 December.78 Encountering stiff resistance, Cremer called upon Garibaldi to send reinforcements, only to receive a mere token force. Critics speculated that Garibaldi had sought deliberately to undermine Cremer in retribution for his refusal to support his assault on Dijon on 26 November.79 On 21 December, Freycinet ordered Garibaldi to relocate his headquarters closer to Dijon; again, however, Garibaldi disobeyed his instructions and remained at Autun. When German forces withdrew from Dijon six days later, Garibaldi was ordered to march on the city backed up by 13,000 men. Once more, however, he responded with inertia, refusing to move because conditions were too cold. Garibaldi

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insisted, at great inconvenience and a delay of 12 days, that special trains be brought in to transport his men. Above all, it was Garibaldi’s actions between 21 and 23 January 1871 that gained the greatest notoriety among his critics. With the city safely in French hands by mid-January, Garibaldi was instructed to push forward towards Bourbaki’s army in the east. Incapacitated by gout, however, Garibaldi refused to leave Dijon. On 17 January German forces began to approach Dijon, and within four days General von Kettler had launched a fresh assault. Notwithstanding the best efforts of the German army, Garibaldi’s men successfully repulsed the attack. With Dijon appearing once more secure, Garibaldi agreed to advance to Dˆ ole to relieve Bourbaki. This time, however, the obstruction came from Garibaldi’s men; when they discovered that enemy forces were blocking their passage they refused to advance any further, thus leaving Bourbaki without the reinforcements he desperately needed and contributing towards the disintegration of the Army of the East. The controversy did not end there. The armistice of 26 January 1871 did not apply to eastern areas; its implementation thus released German forces engaged elsewhere and enabled them to amass around Dijon. Rather than attempting to defend the city, Garibaldi merely fled. If after the defeat the imperatives of the national revival meant that the most minor incidents of heroism were elevated into symbols of patriotic virtue, the same was not the case when it came to Garibaldi’s exploits. The monarchist-dominated National Assembly enquiry into the causes of the defeat accused Garibaldi of betraying French interests at every stage of his involvement in the war. The most severe judgement was reserved for his abandonment of Dijon on 30 January. The enquiry concluded that Garibaldi’s actions were directly responsible for causing a catastrophe equal in magnitude to those at Sedan and Metz.80 In his treatment of Catholics, Garibaldi was accused of attempting to incite civil war.81 The enquiry alleged that men under his command had committed ‘deplorable crimes’, vandalizing churches, imprisoning, insulting, and even dragging priests through the streets.82 Garibaldi received little support from moderate republicans either. Summoned to defend the actions of the Government of National Defence, Freycinet portrayed Garibaldi as having been unwanted and out of control, his personality being such that he ‘escaped hierarchy’ and his calls for a universal Republic being a source of embarrassment.83 Attacks on Garibaldi’s exploits were swiftly followed by questions about his reasons for joining the national defence. Later that year, Robert Middleton published an account of the Army of the Vosges, going so far

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as to allege collusion between Garibaldi’s chief of staff, General Bordone, and the German enemy.84 Suspicions ran deep as Garibaldi’s political enemies recalled that he had fought against France in 1859 and 1867 and that before the revolution of 4 September, he had backed Prussia in opposition to Napoleon III’s support for a Papal State.85 The rise of socialist internationalism in the late 1880s fuelled allegations that Garibaldi had entered the war on the side of revolution rather than on the side of France. Conservative critics thus sought to portray Garibaldi as part of an anti-French international conspiracy. Prior to the unveiling of the monument in 1900, the conservative newspapers Le Bien Public and La Cˆote-d’Or, which had been responsible for the attacks on Cabet’s monument in 1875, published an open letter to Georges Leygues, the Minister of Fine Arts, alleging that as a freemason and ‘apostle of internationalism’, Garibaldi had sought to undermine the integrity of the nation.86 One of the principal aspects of controversy in relation to Garibaldi’s combat record was whether he had deliberately disregarded his orders or whether he had genuinely been constrained by a lack of men and equipment. At the inauguration ceremony for the monument in Dijon in 1900, Pierre Barrallon, the former mayor of Saint-Etienne and former chasseur in the Army of the Vosges, defended Garibaldi by insisting that his men had been consistently outnumbered. In late December 1870, Garibaldi had been unable to bring relief to Bourbaki’s army because he had only 15,000 largely inexperienced men at his disposal against a professional, well-equipped German force of 140,000 men.87 Yet whereas the imperatives of the post-war patriotic revival usually dictated an insistence upon the numerical superiority of the German enemy as a mitigating factor for the defeat, the opposite seemed to be the case for Garibaldi’s battles around Dijon. Indeed, the president of the National Assembly enquiry into the actions of the Government of National Defence repeated Prussian assertions that on 21–23 January they had successfully distracted Garibaldi’s men with a small contingent of 6000 men, creating a veil behind which around 50,000 men had marched unopposed towards Bourbaki’s army.88 The claims were repeated in many newspapers around the time of the unveiling of the monument in 1900.89 In 1898 Henri Toussaint, one of the main opponents of the statue, went a stage further in denying that the defence of Dijon between 21 and 23 January 1871 could legitimately be considered a success.90 The doubts cast upon assertions of a victorious defence of Dijon under Garibaldi resulted in some surprising claims in the surrounding region.

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In 1895, the monument committee in Langres proposed honouring Garibaldi’s actions and those of his son Riciotti in managing to capture a flag from the enemy. Their enthusiasm was dampened, however, by a War Ministry keen to replace their heroic version of events with the less glorious ‘reality’. This ‘reality’, drawn from army records, reaffirmed the politically motivated conclusions of the National Assembly enquiry in asserting that French forces had been attacked by a token force of 4000–5000 men while Manteuffel’s men moved safely eastwards. Officials also refuted claims by Garibaldi’s supporters that the flag was the only one to have been seized in combat, asserting that it had in fact simply been found lying on the ground.91 Talant was also instructed to tone down its claims of French success. In 1894 the monument committee were told to amend their proposed inscription claiming that their town had seen the only capture of a flag from the enemy. The War Ministry informed them that not only had the imperial army at R´ezonville succeeded in doing so in August 1870, but that the heroic nature in which their flag was seized had earned them the L´egion d’honneur.92 Nowhere else witnessed such efforts to diminish claims of French success. In view of the fact that over the course of the period when proposals for the monuments at Langres and Talant were being considered the War Minister changed four times, no individual politician can be said to have had overall responsibility. It seems more likely that the pessimistic evaluations of the incident were a measure of the conservatism of War Ministry officials as well as the scepticism of the army. Despite reforms to the army and civil service, the Dreyfus Affair revealed that the anti-republican tendencies of both institutions remained significant. Following the collapse of the Second Empire, republican efforts to mobilize patriotic sentiment hinged upon the francs-tireurs. Playing heavily on myths of the revolutionary armies and the spirit of e´ lan supposedly awoken with the lev´ee en masse, in late September 1870, the Government of National Defence called upon francs-tireurs to unleash a furious assault upon the enemy. The opportunity to wage guerrilla warfare appealed to many who disliked the discipline of ordinary army life. Their heroic exploits became the staple of patriotic narratives in the period thereafter, grossly exaggerating their actual contribution to the war effort.93 Virtually anyone could join the francs-tireurs, producing in theory at least an army of citizens that seemed to fit republican mythology. When he arrived in France, Garibaldi therefore quickly gathered a motley crew of men and women: revolutionaries young and old joined, their enthusiasm matched only by their indiscipline and opposition to the Catholic Church.94 The improvised units, whose uniforms

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and arms were purchased at the expense of their own communes, represented a threat to the regular army.95 Many professional soldiers were alarmed at even the relatively modest strategic value accorded to the francs-tireurs, believing the ill-equipped and untrained combatants could make little impact against a highly skilled and well-armed German army. Before long, accusations of unruliness and pillaging plagued Garibaldi’s francs-tireurs.96 Even supporters were forced to admit that if they were heroic on battlefield, the same could not be said for their conduct off the battlefield.97 Garibaldi’s forces were among the first to be demobilized in February 1871, and in the debates on army reforms that followed, conservatives and moderate republicans expressed little enthusiasm for their return. The controversy surrounding the military value of Garibaldi’s francstireurs resurfaced in the period leading up to the unveiling of the statue in Dijon. The rise of anti-militarism and the Dreyfus Affair raised fresh questions about the army’s role and its relationship with the Republic. Thus debates on Garibaldi’s francs-tireurs in 1870–1871 turned into debates on the state of the army in 1900. To his enemies on the right, Garibaldi represented everything they despised; as the monarchist newspaper Le Soleil put it, Garibaldi was the ‘hero of Dreyfusards, socialists, Radicals, all the enemies of a permanent and regular army’.98 To his supporters on the left, however, the monument offered a timely reminder that, as Victor Hugo had pointed out to the National Assembly in 1871, Garibaldi was the only general to have remained undefeated. Whereas the likes of MacMahon, Bourbaki, Trochu, Ducrot, and Bazaine had adhered to traditional military doctrines and been defeated, Garibaldi like Denfert-Rochereau had embraced republican notions of e´ lan and initiative and been successful.99 Memories of Garibaldi were also inextricably linked with debates about the status of the Catholic Church under the Republic. Many regarded him as a symbol of anti-clericalism, and opinions on his military and political records were founded almost entirely upon the fact that he had been a bitter opponent of the Pope. His participation in the national defence irritated Catholics who suspected that he and his supporters were using the war merely to further their own political aims. Some even blamed Garibaldi for the defeat, claiming that his entry into the war had caused God to abandon France.100 Because his political views were so militantly upheld and so well-known, any statue of Garibaldi was necessarily interpreted as tacit acquiesce with all aspects of what he stood for, including his anti-clericalism. Thus many conservatives concluded that the monument was an act of provocation that did not

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seek to honour Garibaldi’s questionable military exploits so much as his status as the ‘condottiore of atheism’.101 During the war, the Government of National Defence attempted to return to a mythical vision of the 1790s in which mobilizing the nation-in-arms would unleash patriotic fervour and transform citizens into soldiers. In reality, however, the events of l’ann´ee terrible reminded conservatives and moderate republicans of the dangers of arming the people. The portrayal of the contribution of irregular forces therefore had fundamental implications for the post-war political order. Tainted by associations with the Communes of Paris and elsewhere and more generally by links with revolution and socialism, any celebration of their role risked being interpreted as sanctioning concepts of popular republicanism. With memories of the civil war remaining a painful subject, the right and moderate left considered the stakes sufficiently high to take such draconian action as toppling Cabet’s statue, destroying the flags of the L´egionnaires du Rhˆone, and downgrading or even refuting claims of military success under Denfert-Rochereau and Garibaldi. It is perhaps a testimony to the enduring controversy surrounding Garibaldi’s exploits in Dijon that even though monuments relating to the Franco-Prussian War were exempt from the campaign to extract non-ferrous metal from bronze statues during the Second World War, in 1941 the municipal council allowed it to be melted down and took no moulding of it so that it could never be remade.102

Conclusion

The humiliations of the Franco-Prussian War resonated across France as a blow to national pride. The French army that had once marched inexorably across Europe had been thoroughly routed in 1870–1871. Having aspired to being at the heart of Europe, France had instead found itself friendless, its neighbours watching indifferently while its territory was dismembered. In 1814–1815, French defeat had been at the hands of an alliance of nations; in 1870–1871, it had been at the hands of just one. The gap between the national self-image and the realities of l’ann´ee terrible could scarcely have been greater. In the period immediately thereafter, l’ann´ee terrible shaped the domestic and international position of France as the nation had to deal at once with the peace obligations laid down by Germany and with the re-establishment of political and civil order following the suppression of the Paris Commune. Time brought fresh problems and priorities, however, and in turn the Franco-Prussian War ceased to be a subject of daily concern in political and cultural discourse. Yet as it receded from public attention, so instead it became a core element in French political culture. Defeat and its perceived implications for the state of the nation provided the opportunity and the spur for rival factions to seek to remake France according to their own models. But while all sought to accelerate the national revival, they also needed to maintain the rawness of the pain of the disasters as a force for change. The perpetual reworking of the war at every level of political and cultural activity created an environment saturated with its memory, while unresolved issues such as the loss of Alsace-Lorraine ensured that it could never truly be forgotten. On one level, many artists and writers responded to the crisis by creating patriotic representations of the national defence, seeking to replace 227

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memories of collapse with images of heroic resistance. On another level, changing attitudes towards fallen soldiers converged with claims that French combatants had been the victims of a particularly brutal and unjust enemy to produce unprecedented efforts to honour the war dead. At a time when all political factions considered the machinations of their enemies to have undermined the defence effort, the sacrifice of life was widely considered to have purified the fallen from the contaminations of politics, rendering them examples of the bravery, resilience, duty, and devotion that characterized the French nation. In post-1870 patriotic discourse, the war dead were thus assigned a regenerative role, becoming nothing less than the objects of a new cult. Upholding the memory of the dead therefore became an act of devotion, necessitating the performance of rituals, pilgrimages to sacred sites, and the preservation of relics. The creation of lieux de m´emoire, whether in the form of war memorials, museums, chapels, or demarcated battlefields, offered means of combating the natural drift towards oblivion. Such efforts were intended to help mobilize the masses and propel the nation out of the depths of its despair, and indeed as the war began to fade from public consciousness, new ways were sought to engage future generations in sustaining its memory. The debates over forms of war remembrance reveal the challenges of keeping memories of the collapse alive in a period of national revival. Above all, however, while the imperatives of national recovery may have produced a culture of patriotic mythologizing, it was precisely because memories of the war were so divisive that they remained alive and acute, and what might have been considered its more problematic aspects could not easily be suppressed. Of course, the tensions within public memories were at least partly a product of the fragmented nature of the war itself. The conflict began as an attempt to bolster the flagging fortunes of the Second Empire; when that failed it gave way to a republican-led war of national defence, only then to end in civil war. Combat experience varied widely between professional soldiers, mobilized National Guards and volunteers, and indeed men engaged in the conflict held very different outlooks. Many of those conscripted during the late 1860s were peasants, as were the majority of the 21–40-year-olds who were mobilized into the sedentary National Guard in November 1870. Tending to be conservative in outlook, peasant soldiers were often markedly different to the men belonging to the garde mobile who boasted strongly republican views. Volunteers often entered the war with other motives: francs-tireurs under Garibaldi fought in the name of republicanism and anti-clericalism while Papal Zouaves

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went to battle in the name of patriotism and Catholicism. The war of national defence following the defeat at Sedan may have produced a political truce, but it remained the case that many of those engaged in it were driven by wholly different objectives. Had the lines of division been located simply between republican and anti-republican perceptions of the war, the matter might have been relatively simple. This was far from the case, however. Radical republican memories differed significantly from more moderate republican perspectives on the army, the Paris Commune, the Catholic Church, revanche, and many other subjects. Some nationalists and socialists may have shared a common republicanism and anti-clericalism, but by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the exclusionist, militarist strains of dominant nationalist memories were worlds apart from the internationalist, anti-militarist character of some socialist recollections. Catholic memories were equally complex. At one extreme were the intransigent assertions of national sin, the necessity for expiation and the urgency of political reform to prevent future punishments from God. On a more moderate level, many Catholics also considered themselves to be republicans, and while they may have desired change in the nation’s political trajectory, they interpreted its recent misfortunes in entirely worldly terms. Such were the conditions that saw republican competing with republican, and Catholic rivalling Catholic for control over the memory of the Franco-Prussian War. The problem remained, however, that the exigencies of national and local memories often clashed as well. A handful of episodes acquired national prominence either because examples of heroism or perceptions of German brutality caught the public imagination or because incidents were seized upon to advance particular political ends. Thus in broad terms, the destruction of Bazeilles became a symbol of heroic resistance, Mars-la-Tour became an image of Frenchness on the edge of the new German border, Belfort became synonymous with victory, and Dijon became renowned for its republican resistance. Like so many colourful and appealing Images d’Epinal, these simplistic formulas may have performed a function, but they were often at odds with the memories of those who fought and lived in the areas under question. Indeed, outside observers may have attempted to bring a bullish tone to the war commemorations at Mars-la-Tour, but local communities were largely conciliatory in their relationships with the former enemy. Many also came to look to Belfort to sustain memories of Alsace, but such aspirations clashed with the emergence of a distinct identity within the town itself.

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The war was primarily viewed from the perspective of local experiences. Each episode held significance and together they were transformed into a complex and contradictory national picture. There was thus not one coherent national memory of the war in any meaningful sense but a variety of competing and fragmented ideas, each of which contributed towards new constructions of French identity. The study of such memories can therefore shed light on how groups and individuals created representations of the war not only to define and articulate their ideas upon it, but also to stake a claim within concepts of the nation. Because all sides sought to emphasize their contribution to the war effort, memory brought disparate elements together in a broadly common cause and so furthered the development of national sentiment. Myths of resistance inspired by the experiences of 1870–1871 were integral to constructions of French national identity. In the FrancoPrussian War as in the Second World War, the narrative ran essentially the same course: the nation was said to have been attacked by a brutal German enemy, there were initial setbacks, but honour was eventually redeemed through suffering and the rediscovery of moral strength. Such myths combined two concepts of the French character, namely patriotic resilience and selflessness, and they helped to explain the disparity between the ideal of national greatness and the reality of defeat. The experiences of invasion and occupation in 1870–1871 also helped to crystallize French concepts of the German people and nation. At a time of growing international concern for humanitarianism in war, there emerged in France an image of institutionalized, calculated German cruelty.1 German attempts to suppress France’s patriotic impulse to defend its soil thus appeared in popular myth as an assault not only on civilization but on democracy as well. Memories of the Franco-Prussian War thus had a far-reaching impact, establishing a discourse that shaped French political culture and ideas on national identity. When the nation entered into war against Germany once again in 1914, memories of 1870–1871 returned with renewed acuity. As Jean-Jacques Becker has argued, insofar as there had ever been a generation nurturing thoughts of revanche, most of their number had died by the outbreak of the First World War and it was not at the forefront of public thinking. Nationalism had long been principally concerned with domestic matters, and was of limited significance as a political force.2 At the same time, however, if the Union Sacr´ee that was created in 1914 had its weaknesses, it nonetheless drew strength from a common consensus that it was legitimate to defend the nation against an attack by the old enemy.3 The men who fought in the trenches had all

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been through a republican education system shaped by memories of the collapse of 1870–1871. They operated in an army that had undergone significant structural reform and whose strategic thinking was influenced by the lessons of the defeat. Senior commanders had their own memories of the Franco-Prussian War: Foch recalled witnessing Napoleon III travelling through Metz, Joffre had served in the siege of Paris, and P´etain had decided to enter the army rather than the clergy after being affected by the experiences of l’ann´ee terrible.4 Whatever the mood of the nation at the start of the First World War, halting the German offensive on the Marne contributed significantly towards repairing confidence in the French army, while the return of Alsace-Lorraine laid to rest lingering resentments at the mutilation of the nation. The ceremonial burial of the Unknown Soldier in 1920 was dominated with symbolic efforts to present the victory of 1918 as closure for the trauma of 1870–1871. Before being taken to the Panth´eon, the Unknown Soldier was left for one night at place Denfert-Rochereau, the square in the fourteenth arrondissement of Paris named after the hero of the siege of Belfort and the site of a monument dedicated to the Franco-Prussian War. The following day, the cort`ege was joined by an urn containing the heart of Gambetta, whose memory remained synonymous with the republican patriotism of 1870–1871 and fidelity to Alsace-Lorraine. On either side of the grave under the Arc de Triomphe were plaques bearing inscriptions that made the links between the two wars explicit: the first read, ‘4 September 1870 proclamation of the Republic’, while the second declared, ‘11 November 1918, the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France’.5 Through such words and gestures, the Republic that had been born in defeat in 1870 sought to establish legitimacy through victory over Germany in 1918. The shock of another defeat in 1940 resurrected deeply embedded memories of the traumas of 1870–1871 and once again thoughts turned to notions of decline derived from the belief that war represented a test of national strength and worth.6 In the struggle to make sense of what had befallen the nation in the Second World War, France drew upon a discourse stemming in part from the Franco-Prussian War. Of course in the intervening period, a whole set of new domestic and international challenges had come into play and indeed, it might be argued that the collapse of 1940 acts as a distorting prism by exaggerating the sense in which the painful memories of l’ann´ee terrible lived on notwithstanding victory in the First World War. To be sure, however, many French leaders had doubted that that the peace of 1918 would bring anything other than temporary respite, and indeed it is widely considered that the Union

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Sacr´ee represented merely a fragile and temporary truce in an ongoing set of political struggles. Perhaps more significantly, the collapse of 1940 was perceived and interpreted in terms that returned thoughts to 1870–1871 once again. Memories of the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune had become part of the fabric of French political culture and were particularly pertinent because many of the chief protagonists in the Second World War were of such an age as to feel a direct connection with l’ann´ee terrible. P´etain’s memories of the events of 1870–1871 had a direct influence upon his interpretation of the crisis of 1940. Having been educated by priests whose colleagues had been victims of the Paris Commune, P´etain learned from an early age to despise the far left perhaps even more than the German enemy.7 In the crisis of the collapse of June 1940, P´etain was joined by Weygand in believing that the nation had to be defended against the threat of revolution in the capital. Regarding the army as the guarantor of social and political order and the defender of a set of values antithetical to those of the far left, P´etain and Weygand sought an armistice that would ensure that the defeat was attributed to political rather than military failings. In so doing, they hoped that the army would emerge relatively untainted and would be able to spearhead the national recovery as it had done after 1871.8 In his broadcast of 23 June 1940, P´etain even deployed similar explanations for the downfall to those that had dominated the patriotic myths of the post-1870 period, asserting that the army had been overcome by the sheer force of numbers, but that it had fought bravely and had retained its honour.9 Those observing P´etain’s actions were also struck by the apparent parallels with 1870–1871. In supporting an armistice, P´etain was thinking not merely about defending France against invasion, but of the political order that could be constructed out of the defeat and collapse of the Third Republic. His prioritization of the political over the military thus brought echoes of the machinations of Marshal Bazaine in 1870. Both men had been deeply suspicious of the republican regimes in which they were operating, claiming their ideals were antithetical to the interests of the France they wished to create. Not since 1870 had a military commander and hero seized upon the occasion of their nation’s misfortune to negotiate with the enemy for a peace that would enable the pursuit of a particular political agenda. It was for this reason that Marc Bloch proclaimed that ‘in 1940 Bazaine won’.10 On one level, it might be observed that at both times of crisis the nation turned to military leaders for rescue: in 1873 it looked to Marshal MacMahon and in 1940 it looked to P´etain perhaps because amidst the chaos of collapse, the virtues of sacrifice

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and past glory carried appeal and assurance.11 Indeed as Gildea observes, being implicated in military disasters at Sedan in 1870 and 1940 was no bar to the appointment of MacMahon and General Huntziger to senior government office shortly thereafter.12 On another level, however, P´etain might be considered to have represented the re-emergence of a persistent undercurrent of anti-republicanism that looked upon defeat as an opportunity to roll back the tide of political development. Such a contention does, of course, present too stark a division between support and opposition to republicanism but it also raises questions about the continuities between 1870 and 1940. Despite the consolidation of the Republic and the experiences of the First World War, l’ann´ee terrible continued to cast a dark shadow over narratives of the nation’s past and future, presenting a compellingly disturbing image of political and social disunity, and seeming to suggest that France was on a downward spiral of decline. While for the likes of P´etain memories of l’ann´ee terrible lived on as disasters to avoid repeating, for de Gaulle they left a more ambiguous legacy. Writing about how he ‘thought of France in a certain way’ in a now-famous passage at the start of his war memoirs, de Gaulle evoked painful recollections of his parents’ sadness at the failed sorties from besieged Paris and Bazaine’s capitulation.13 Such memories appear as a deeply embedded trauma deployed by de Gaulle to give pathos to France’s troubled narrative of greatness. The nation’s disasters place its moments of glory into sharper relief and, crucially for de Gaulle, served as reminders that recovery can follow collapse. While reflecting upon the state of the army 20 years earlier, however, de Gaulle had painted a very different picture of the legacy of defeat in 1870–1871. After 1815, de Gaulle argued, France had expected a period of peace and so the cream of its youth had shunned careers in the army. When war erupted in 1870, the nation therefore had only mediocre military commanders to lead it. After the defeat, however, the entire nation devoted its energies to repairing the injustices in a future war against Germany. The most talented of the new generations therefore entered the army, which became the object of a new cult.14 De Gaulle likened the French hostility to war after 1918 to that experienced after 1815, but as Gildea observes, he hoped to transform responses to the defeat of 1940 into those that had accompanied the defeat of 1870–1871.15 In portraying the FrancoPrussian War as having a galvanizing effect upon the nation, de Gaulle ignored its divisiveness not because he did not consider it significant but precisely because in looking to the post-war reconstruction, he hoped to avoid another collapse into civil war. Just as moderate republicans and

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the right in the early Third Republic had sought to advance the patriotic national revival by reducing the Commune to an aberrant phase in French history, so de Gaulle aimed to do the same in relation to Vichy. The rapid and humiliating collapses of 1870–1871 and 1940 had quite distinct causes and occurred in very different contexts, but the latter became connected to the former in public memories because it seemed to suggest a declining national status in terms of France’s position as a world power and in terms of the grandeur of its ideas. The discourse of decline and decadence had been a significant part of French political culture since the Revolution of 1789, but the Franco-Prussian War came as a particularly sharp blow to French pride, bringing the defeat not simply of a regime but of the nation. Notions of superiority and of the French mission to spread the ideas of the Revolution of 1789 appeared discredited by weakness in the face of what was considered a militarily inferior enemy and by the tensions between strands of republican thinking manifested in the sombre days of the civil war. By constructing a narrative of resistance, bravery against the odds, ingenuity, and humanity at one level while engaging in intense political and ideological struggle at another, however, France was able once again to ride through a time of intense turmoil.

Notes

Introduction 1. D´epartement de l’Int´erieur, Ex´ecution de la loi du 4 avril 1873 relative aux tombes des militaires morts pendant la guerre de 1870–1871. Rapport pr´esent´e au Pr´esident de la R´epublique, par M. de Marc`ere, Ministre Secr´etaire d’Etat au D´epartement de l’Int´erieur (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1878), p. 299. 2. F. Robichon, ‘Representing the 1870–1871 War, or the Impossible Revanche’, in N. McWilliam and J. Hargrove (eds), Nationalism and French Visual Culture 1870–1914 (New Haven and London: Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 92. 3. E. M. Carrol, French Public Opinion and Foreign Affairs 1870–1914 (London: Cass, 1965), p. 187. 4. E. Renan, La r´eforme intellectuelle et morale in Oeuvres compl`etes, tome 1 (Paris: Calman-Levy Editeurs, 1947), pp. 334–5. 5. A. Confino, ‘Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problem of Method’, American Historical Review, 102 (1997), 1387. 6. M. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, trans. L. A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 52–3. 7. D. Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 194. 8. S. A. Crane, ‘Writing the Individual Back into Collective Memory’, American Historical Review, 102 (1997), 1381–3. 9. Lowenthal, The Past, p. 210. 10. J. Fentress and C. Wickham, Social Memory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 134. 11. H. White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1975), p. 346. 12. P. Nora, ‘La fin de l’histoire-m´emoire’, in P. Nora (ed.), Les lieux de m´emoire, tome 1: La R´epublique (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), pp. x–xx. 13. P. Nora, ‘From Lieux de m´emoire to Realms of Memory’, in P. Nora (ed.), Realms of Memory, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. xvii; Nora, ‘La fin’, p. xxiv. 14. K. L. Klein, ‘On the Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse’, Representations, 69 (2000), 130. 15. Ibid., 138–9. 16. Ibid., 143. 17. J. Winter and A. Prost, The Great War in History: Debates and Controversies, 1914 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 179, 188, 203. 18. P. Hutton, ‘Recent Scholarship on Memory and History’, The History Teacher, 33 (2000), 538. 235

236 Notes 19. Nora, ‘Between Memory’, p. 5. 20. P. Nora, ‘Conflicts and Divisions’, in P. Nora (ed.), Realms of Memory, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 21. 21. Hutton, ‘Recent Scholarship’, p. 538. 22. P. Fritzsche, ‘The Case of Modern Memory’, Journal of Modern History, 73:1 (2001), 87–117. 23. D. J. Sherman, The Construction of Memory in Interwar France (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 4–6. 24. Confino, ‘Collective Memory’, 1400. 25. Ibid., 1393–5. 26. Fentress and Wickham, Social Memory, p. 96. 27. J. Winter and E. Sivan, ‘Setting the Framework’, in J. Winter and E. Sivan (eds), War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 6–10. 28. Confino, ‘Collective Memory’, 1399. 29. G. L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). 30. R. Koshar, From Monuments to Traces: Artefacts of German Memory, 1870–1990 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2000), p. 98. 31. J. Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 32. Winter and Prost, The Great War, p. 181. 33. T. G. Ashplant, G. Dawson, and M. Roper, ‘The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration: Contexts, Structure and Dynamics’, in T. G. Ashplant et al. (eds), The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration (London: Routledge, 2000); A. King, Memorials of the Great War in Britain: The Symbolism and Politics of Remembrance (Oxford and New York: Berg, 1998), p. 6. 34. Winter, Sites, p. 94. 35. King, Memorials, pp. 5–11. 36. Ashplant et al., ‘The Politics’, p. 25. 37. A. Prost, ‘War Memorials of the Great War: Monuments to the Fallen’, in A. Prost (ed.), Republican Identities in War and Peace: Representations of France in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Oxford and London: Berg, 2002). 38. A. Prost, In the Wake of War: Les ‘Anciens Combattants’ and French Society 1914–1939, trans. H. McPhail (Providence and Oxford: Berg, 1992). 39. A. Becker, War and Faith: The Religious Imagination in France, 1914–1930, trans. H. McPhail (Oxford and New York: Berg, 1998). See also K. P. Gorman, ‘The Return of the Dead: Christian Images of Resurrection and the Postwar Cult of Remembrance’, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, 22 (1995), 67–77. 40. A. Becker, ‘From Death to Memory: The National Ossuaries in France After the Great War’, History and Memory, 5:2 (1993), 32–49. 41. D. J. Sherman, ‘Monuments, Mourning and Masculinity in France after World War I’, Gender and History, 8:1 (1996), 84. 42. See G. M. Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); A. Fahs and J. Waugh (eds), The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004).

Notes

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43. See D. J. Sherman, ‘Bodies and Names: The Emergence of Commemoration in Interwar France’, American Historical Review, 6 (1998), 443–66. 44. D. B. Ralston, The Army of the Republic: The Place of the Military in the Political Evolution of France, 1871–1914 (Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1967); R. D. Challener, The French Theory of the Nation in Arms 1866–1939 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955); K. Auspitz, The Radical Bourgeoisie: The Ligue de l’enseignement and the Origins of the Third Republic, 1866–1885 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 45. R. Jonas, France and the Cult of the Sacred Heart: An Epic New Tale for Modern Times (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 2000). 46. B. Joly, ‘La France et la revanche (1871–1914)’, Revue d’histoire mondiale et contemporaine, 46 (1999), 325–48; B. Joly, D´eroul`ede: L’inventeur du nationalisme (Paris: Perrin, 1998); P. M. Rutkoff, Revanche and Revision: The Ligue des Patriotes and the Origins of the Radical Right in France, 1882–1900 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1981). 47. R. Girardet (ed.), Le nationalisme franc¸ais. Anthologie 1871–1914 (Paris: Edition du Seuil, 1992); W. D. Irvine, The Boulanger Affair Reconsidered: Royalism, Boulangism and the Origins of the Radical Right in France (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); B. Jenkins, Nationalism in France: Class and Nation Since 1789 (London and New York: Routledge, 1990); R. R´emond, Les droites en France (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1982); E. Weber, Action Franc¸aise: Royalism and Reaction in Twentieth Century France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962); Z. Sternhell, Ni droite ni gauche: L’id´eologie fasciste en France (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1983). See also A. C. Pinto, ‘Fascist Ideology Revisited: Zeev Sternhell and his Critics’, European History Quarterly, 16 (1986), 465–84; Z. Sternhell, Maurice Barr`es et le nationalisme franc¸ais (Paris: Cahiers de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1972); R. Soucy, Fascism in France: The Case of Maurice Barr`es (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972). 48. G. Krumeich, Armaments and Politics in France on the Eve of the First World War: The Introduction of Three Year Conscription 1913–1914, trans. S. Conn (Wiesbaden: Berg, 1984); J.-J. Becker, 1914, comment les franc¸ais sont entr´es dans la guerre (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1977). 49. C. Digeon, La crise allemande de la pens´ee franc¸aise (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959). 50. F. Robichon, La peinture militaire franc¸aise de 1871 a 1914. Th`ese d‘´etat sous la direction de M. Bruno Foucart soutenu a` l’universit´e de Paris IV-Sorbonne en d´ecembre 1997 (Paris: Bernrd Giovananeli, 1998). 51. R. Thomson, The Troubled Republic: Visual Culture and Social Debate in France 1889–1900 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004). On visual images of the war and Commune produced over the course of l’ann´ee terrible, see J. Milner, Art, War and Revolution in France 1870–1871: Myth, Reportage and Reality (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000); H. Clayson, Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life Under Siege (1870–1871) (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002); N. McWilliam, ‘Race, Remembrance and Revanche: Commemorating the Franco-Prussian War in the Third Republic’, Art History, 19 (1996), 473–98. 52. Prost, ‘War Memorials’, p. 39.

238 Notes 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58.

59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

65.

66.

67.

Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., p. 12. J. Hargrove, ‘Les monuments au tribut de la gloire’, in P. Viallaneix and J. Ehrard (eds), La bataille, l’arm´ee, la gloire 1745–1871: Actes du colloque internationale de Clermont-Ferrand (Clermont-Ferrand: Association des Publications de la Facult´e des Lettres, 1985); J. Hargrove, ‘Qui vive? France! War Monuments from The Defense to the Revanche’, in N. McWilliam and J. Hargrove (eds), Nationalism and French Visual Culture 1870–1914 (New Haven and London: Harvard University Press, 2005). D. G. Troyansky, ‘Memorializing Saint-Quentin: Monuments, Inaugurations and History in the Third Republic’, French History, 13:1 (1999), 48–76. A. Becker, ‘Monuments aux morts apr`es la guerre de s´ecession et la guerre de 1870–1: Un legs de la guerre nationale?’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 167 (1992), 23–40. M. Agulhon, Marianne into Battle: Republican Imagery and Symbolism in France 1789–1880 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 158; see also M. Agulhon, Marianne au pouvoir: L’imagerie et la symbolique r´epublicaines de 1880 a` 1914 (Paris: Flammarion, 1989). B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), p. 7. J. R. Gillis (ed.), Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 8. E. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France 1870– 1914 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977). S. Audoin-Rouzeau, 1870 la France dans la guerre (Paris: Armand Colin, 1989), pp. 136–7, 214, 321–2. E. Hobsbawm, ‘Mass Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870–1914’, in E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); A. Confino, ‘Localities of a Nation: Celebrating Sedan Day in the German Empire’, Tel Aviver Jahrbuch f¨ur Deutsche Geschichte, 26 (1997), 74; see also A. Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: W¨urttemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). D. P. Silverman, Reluctant Union: Alsace-Lorraine and Imperial Germany 1871– 1918 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1972); F. H. Seager, ‘The Alsace-Lorraine Question in France, 1871–1914’, in C. K. Warner (ed.), From Ancien R´egime to the Popular Front (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1969); P. Smith, ‘A la recherche d’une identit´e nationale en Alsace (1870–1918)’, Vingti`eme si`ecle revue d’histoire, 50 (1996), 23–35. F. Roth, La Lorraine annex´ee: Etude sur la pr´esidence de Lorraine dans l’empire allemand (1870–1918) (Nancy: Annales de l’est publi´ees par l’universit´e de Nancy II, 1976); F. Roth, ‘Le Souvenir franc¸ais en Lorraine annex´ee (1907– 1914)’, M´emoires de l’Acad´emie de Metz, 6:1 (1974), 53–69, see also F. Roth, La guerre de 70 (Paris: Fayard, 1990). A. Maas, ‘Kriegerdenkm¨aler und Gendenkfeien um Metz: Formen und Funktion Kollektiver Erinnerung in einer Grenzregion (1870/1–1918)’, in R. Hudemann and R. Wittenbrock (eds), Stadtenwicklung im DeutschFranz¨osisch-Luxemburgischen Grenzraum (19 und 20 Jahrhundert) (Saarbr¨ ucken:

Notes

68.

69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

239

Kommissionverlag SDV Saabr¨ ucker Druckerei und Verlag, 1991); A. Maas, ‘Politische Ikonographie im Deutsch-Franz¨ osischen Spannungsfeld: Die Kriegerdenkm¨aler von 1870/71 auf den Schlachtfeldern um Metz’, in R. Koselleck and M. Jeisman (eds), Der Politische Totenkult in Kriegerdenkm¨aler in der Moderner (Munich: W. Fink, 1994). On French responses to the memory of the Second World War, see H. Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944, trans. A. Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1991). For a critique of this approach, see W. B. Cohen, ‘The Algerian War and French Memory’, Contemporary European History, 9 (2000), 491. Rousso, Vichy Syndrome, p. 304. W. Schivelbusch, The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery, trans. J. Chase (London: Granta, 2003), pp. 1–35. J. Wilkinson, ‘A Choice of Fictions: Historians, Memory and Evidence’, PMLA, 111:1 (1996), 88. Rousso, Vichy Syndrome, pp. 1–11, 219, 272. E. Badel, Mars-la-Tour et son monument national (Mars-la-Tour: Ritter Roscop, 1893), pp. 83–7.

1 Political fallout 1. R. Gildea, The Past in French History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 119–21. 2. On the beliefs that writers had a duty only to present patriotic images of the war, see Le Temps, 29 October 1893; G´en´eral Morel, A propos de ‘La D´ebˆacle’ (Paris: H. Charles-Lavauzelle, 1893), p. 39; J. Arnaud, ‘La D´ebˆacle’ de M. Zola (Nˆımes: Imprimerie de Lessertisseux, 1892), pp. 17, 20. 3. A. Alexandre, Histoire de la peinture militaire en France (Paris: H. Laurens, 1889), pp. 163–213. 4. Anon., M. Alphonse de Neuville. Son tableau ‘Les derni`eres cartouches’ au point de vue du sentiment patriotique (St Omer: Imprimerie de Fleury-Lemaire, 1873), pp. 2–3. 5. J. Milner, Art, War and Revolution in France 1870–1871: Myth, Reportage and Reality (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 203; R. Butler, ‘Nationalism, A New Seriousness, and Rodin: Some Thoughts about French Sculpture in the 1870s’, in H. W. Janson (ed.), La scultura nel XIX secolo (Bologna: CLUEB, 1984), p. 163. 6. J. Richard, Le Salon militaire de 1886 (Premi`ere ann´ee) (Paris: Jules Moutonnet Editeur, 1886), p. 13. 7. F. Robichon, La peinture militaire franc¸aise de 1871 a 1914. Th`ese d’´etat sous la direction de M. Bruno Foucart soutenu a` l’universit´e de Paris IV-Sorbonne en d´ecembre 1997 (Paris: Bernrd Giovananeli, 1998), p. 42. 8. J. Richard, Le Salon militaire de 1887 (Deuxi´eme ann´ee) (Paris: Alphonse Piaget Editeur, 1887), p. 28. 9. Richard, Salon Militaire de 1886, p. 71. 10. Robichon, La peinture, p. 67.

240 Notes 11. C. Digeon, La crise allemande de la pens´ee franc¸aise (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959), p. 53. 12. Ibid., p. 56. 13. In R. Girardet (ed.), Le nationalisme franc¸ais. Anthologie 1871–1914 (Paris: Edition du Seuil, 1992), p. 55. 14. J. Verne, Les cinq cents millions de la B´egum (Paris: Librio, 1997), p. 35. 15. Ibid., p. 48. 16. Robert Tombs cites over one thousand entries relating to the Franco-Prussian War in the catalogue of the Biblioth`eque Nationale between 1894 and 1925, although this figure includes non-French publications. R. Tombs, ‘L’ann´ee terrible’, The Historical Journal, 35 (1992), 713. 17. Gildea, Past, p. 122. 18. Le Si`ecle, 2 September 1883. 19. J.-M. Mayeur and M. Reberioux, The Third Republic from its Origins to the Great War, 1871–1914, trans. J. R. Foster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 86. 20. J. Ozouf and M. Ozouf, ‘Le tour de France par deux enfants’, in P. Nora (ed.), Les lieux de m´emoire, tome 1: La R´epublique (Paris: Gallimard, 1984); J. Strachan, ‘Romance, Religion, and the Republic: Bruno’s Le tour de France par deux enfants’, French History, 18:1 (2004), 96–118. 21. B. Lecoq, ‘Les soci´et´es de gymnastique et de tir dans la France r´epublicaine (1870–1914)’, Revue historique, 276 (1986), 158. 22. P. Arnaud, ‘Dividing and Uniting: Sports Societies and Nationalism, 1870– 1914’, in R. Tombs (ed.), Nationhood and Nationalism in France: From Boulangism to the Great War 1889–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 182, 185. 23. G. Vigarello, ‘The Tour de France’, in P. Nora (ed.), Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past, vol. I (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), pp. 479–80. 24. R. Thomson, The Troubled Republic: Visual Culture and Social Debate in France 1889–1900 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 201; G. L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 141. 25. Thomson, Troubled Republic, p. 204. 26. G. Bastard, Bazeilles dix ans apr`es (Paris: E. Dentu, 1880), p. 192. 27. Gildea, Past, p. 121; A. Mitchell, Victors and Vanquished: The German Influence on Army and Church in France After 1870 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), pp. 20–1. 28. Le Temps, 1 July 1871; Le Figaro, 1 July 1871; Le Petit Journal, 1 July 1871. 29. General du Barail, Mes souvenirs, tome 3: 1864–1879 (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1896), pp. 290–2. 30. Cited in R. Gildea, France 1870–1914 (London and New York: Longman, 1996), pp. 107–8. 31. F. Roth, La guerre de 70 (Paris: Fayard, 1990), p. 563. 32. C. de Freycinet, Souvenirs 1848–1878, 5th edn (Paris: Librairie Ch. Delagrane, 1912), p. 277. 33. Assembl´ee Nationale, Enquˆete parlementaire sur les actes du gouvernement de la d´efense nationale. D´epositions des t´emoins, tome I (Versailles: Cerf et Fils, 1872), p. 558.

Notes

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34. Ibid., p. 207. 35. Ibid., p. 571. 36. Assembl´ee Nationale, Enquˆete parlementaire sur les actes du gouvernement de la d´efense nationale. Rapport, tome III – Le Comte Daru (Paris, Cerf et Fils, 1873), p. 281. 37. Ibid., pp. 428–9. 38. Ibid., p. 431. 39. Ibid., p. 285. 40. M. Howard, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870– 1871 (London: Routledge, 1962), p. 283. 41. G´en´eral E. Ruby and G´en´eral J. Regnault, Bazaine coupable ou victime? A la lumi`ere de documents nouveaux (Paris: J. Peyronnet et Cie Editeurs, 1961), p. 355. 42. G. Wawro, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France in 1870– 1871 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 253. 43. J. P. T. Bury, Gambetta and the National Defence: A Republican Dictatorship in France (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1971), p. 171. 44. Cited in Wawro, Franco-Prussian War, p. 251. 45. Roth, La guerre, p. 563. 46. P. Guedalla, The Two Marshals: Bazaine and P´etain (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1943), p. 230. 47. G´en´eral de Rivi`ere, Proc`es Bazaine. Rapport du G´en´eral de Rivi`ere (Paris: E. Dentu, 1873), p. 267. 48. Ibid., p. 268. 49. Ibid., p. 269. 50. Ibid., p. 269. 51. Ibid., p. 278. 52. Ruby and Regnault, Bazaine, p. 315. 53. Guedalla, Two Marshals, p. 243. 54. Ruby and Regnault, Bazaine, p. 331. 55. Cited in Ibid., p. 354. 56. Field Marshal Count H. von Moltke, The Franco-German War of 1870–1871, vol. 1, trans. C. Bell and H. W. Fischer (London: James R. Osgood McIlvane & Co., 1891), pp. 140–1. 57. R. F. Brown, ‘The Bazaine Affair and Contemporary Public Opinion: Birth of a Political-Military Myth’, Proceedings of the Second Meeting of the Western Society for French History, 2 (1974), 352. 58. L’Univers, 21 December 1873, cited in ibid., 355–6. 59. See F. B´edarida, ‘L’arm´ee franc¸aise et la r´epublique: Les opinions politiques des officiers franc¸ais en 1876–1878’, Revue historique, 232 (1964), 142–3. 60. Roth, La guerre, p. 617. 61. D. B. Ralston, The Army of the Republic: The Place of the Military in the Political Evolution of France, 1871–1914 (Cambridge Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1967), p. 34; Mitchell, Victors, p. 22. 62. Wawro, Franco-Prussian War, p. 41. 63. Mitchell, Victors, p. 36. 64. Ralston, Army, p. 39; Mitchell, Victors, p. 47. 65. G. Krumeich, ‘The Myth of Gambetta and the ‘‘People’s War’’ in Germany and France, 1871–1914’, in S. F¨ orster and J. Nagler (eds), On the Road to Total

242 Notes

66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73.

74. 75.

76.

77.

78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 650–1. Freycinet, Souvenirs, p. 250. Colonel Denfert-Rochereau, Des droits politiques des militaires (Paris: Librairie Germer Bailliere, 1873), p. 20. R. D. Challener, The French Theory of the Nation in Arms 1866–1939 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955), pp. 46–7. Ibid., p. 50. Ibid., pp. 61–4. L. Veuillot, Paris pendant les deux si`eges, 2 vols, vol. 1 (Paris: Librairie de Victor Palm´e, 1871), p. 16. J. McMillan, ‘Introduction’, in J. McMillan (ed.), Modern France 1880–2002 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 6. R. R´emond, ‘La fille aˆın´ee de l’´eglise’, in P. Nora (ed.), Les lieux de m´emoire, tome 3: Les France, vol. 3: De l’archive a` l’embl`eme (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), pp. 541–50. Ibid., pp. 559–63. J. F. McMillan, ‘Rediscovering Louis Veuillot: The Politics of Religious Identity in Nineteenth-Century France’, in N. Harkness et al. (eds), Visions/Revisions: Essays on Nineteenth-Century French Culture (Bern: Peter Lang, 2003), p. 309. R. Anderson, ‘The Conflict in Education: Catholic Secondary Schools (1850–1870): A Reappraisal’, in T. Zeldin (ed.), Conflicts in French Society: Anti-Clericalism, Education and Morals in the Nineteenth Century (London: Allen & Unwin, 1970), p. 89. M. Vovelle, ‘Cultes r´evolutionnaires et religions la¨ıques’, in J. Le Geoff and R. R´emond (eds), Histoire de la France religieuse, tome 3 : Du roi tr`es chr´etien a` la la¨ıcit´e r´epublicaine (Paris: Seuil, 1991), p. 510. R. Jonas, France and the Cult of the Sacred Heart: An Epic New Tale for Modern Times (Berkeley, and London: University of California Press, 2000), p. 163. Veuillot, Paris, p. 15. Jonas, France, p. 149. Abb´e Besson, L’ann´ee d’expiation et de grˆace. Sermons et oraisons fun`ebres (Besanc¸on: Turbergue, 1872), p. 210. R. Harris, Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age (London: Penguin, 1999), pp. 211–21. Jonas, France, p. 200. Besson, L’ann´ee, p. v. A. de Gobineau, Ce qui est arriv´e a` la France en 1870 (Paris: Editions Klincksieck, 1970), pp. 132–8, 139–44, 148–56. A. de Gasparin, La France. Nos fautes, nos p´erils, notre avenir, vol. 2 (Paris: Calmann L´evy Editeur, 1873), p. 31. Ibid., p. 43. E. Renan, La r´eforme intellectuelle et morale in Oeuvres compl`etes, tome 1 (Paris: Calman-Levy Editeurs, 1947), p. 373. Ibid., p. 373. Cited in M. Mohrt, 1870 les intellectuels devant la d´efaite (Lectoure: Le Capucin, 2004), p. 80. Gildea, Past, pp. 112, 122.

Notes

243

92. See P. Nora, ‘Lavisse, instituteur national: Le ‘‘Petit Lavisse’’, e´ vangile de la r´epublique’, in P. Nora (ed.), Les lieux de m´emoire, tome1: La R´epublique (Paris: Gallimard, 1984). 93. Digeon, La crise, p. 224. 94. Renan, La r´eforme, p. 338. 95. M. Agulhon (ed.), ‘Le mythe de Garibaldi en France de 1882 a` nos jours’, Histoire vagabonde, tome II: Id´eologies et politique dans le France de XIXe si`ecle (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), pp. 102–8. 96. Renan, La r´eforme, p. 348. 97. Gobineau, Ce qui est arriv´e, pp. 81–3. 98. Ibid., pp. 97–124. 99. Gasparin, La France, p. 309. 100. Ibid., p. 311. 101. Digeon, La crise, p. 80. 102. Ibid., p. 144. 103. Gasparin, La France, pp. 90, 177; Mohrt, 1870, p. 132. 104. Digeon, La crise, pp. 141, 152, 187–8. 105. Ibid., pp. 199, 234. 106. Z. Sternhell, ‘The Political Culture of Nationalism’, in R. Tombs (ed.), Nationhood and Nationalism in France: From Boulangism to the Great War 1889–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 23, 35, 37. 107. Z. Sternhell, Maurice Barr`es et le nationalisme franc¸ais (Paris: Cahiers de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1972), pp. 29–31. 108. R. Soucy, ‘Barr`es and Fascism’, French Historical Studies, 5 (1967), 80. 109. Girardet, Le nationalisme, p. 15. 110. Tombs, France, p. 313. 111. D. Pick, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder c.1848–c.1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); D. Pick, War Machine: The Rationalisation of Slaughter in the Modern Age (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993). 112. See E. Weber, France Fin de Si`ecle (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1986). 113. See Le Drapeau, 23 January 1886, 6 February 1886. 114. M. Winock, Nationalism, Anti-Semitism and Fascism in France (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 9. 115. Z. Sternhell, ‘Paul D´eroul`ede and the Origins of Modern French Nationalism’, Journal of Contemporary History, 6:4 (1971), 51–2. 116. Ibid., 57. 117. Z. Sternhell, ‘National Socialism and Antisemitism: The Case of Maurice Barr`es’, Journal of Contemporary History, 8:4 (1973), 52. 118. Sternhell, Barr`es, pp. 29, 61. 119. Digeon, La crise, p. 421. 120. M. Barr`es, Sc`enes et doctrines du nationalisme, vol. 1 (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1925), p. 86. 121. D. Carrol, French Literary Fascism: Nationalism, Anti-Semitism, and the Ideology of Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 21. 122. Barr`es, Sc`enes, vol. 1, pp. 84–5.

244 Notes 123. M. Sutton, Nationalism, Positivism and Catholicism: The Politics of Charles Maurras and French Catholics 1890–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 60–1. 124. M. Winock, ‘Socialisme et patriotisme en France 1891–1894’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 20 (1973), 376. 125. Sternhell, ‘D´eroul`ede’, p. 62. 126. E. Weber, Action Franc¸aise: Royalism and Reaction in Twentieth Century France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), p. 9. 127. C. Maurras, Mes id´ees politiques (Paris: Albatross, 1986), pp. 227, 288. 128. A. Chebel d’Appollonia, L’extrˆeme droite en France: De Maurras a` Le Pen (Paris: Editions Complexe, 1996), p. 147. 129. Ibid., p. 149. 130. Digeon, La crise, pp. 387–8. 131. Ibid., p. 506. 132. Ibid., pp. 505–9. 133. B. Joly, ‘La France et la revanche (1871–1914)’, Revue d’histoire mondiale et contemporaine, 46 (1999), 327. 134. Ibid., 332. 135. D. R. Watson, ‘The Nationalist Movement in Paris 1900–1906’, in D. Shapiro (ed.), The Right in France 1890–1919 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1962), p. 65. 136. Roth, La guerre, p. 713.

2

The cult of the dead

1. T. A. Kselman, Death and the Afterlife in Modern France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). 2. P. Ari`es, The Hour of our Death, trans. H. Weaver (New York: Knopf, 1981). 3. M. Vovelle, La mort et l’occident de 1300 a` nos jours (Paris: Gallimard, 1983), pp. 610–13. 4. M. Lass`ere, ‘Le XIXe si`ecle et l’invention du tourisme fun´eraire’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 44 (1997), 601–16. 5. Vovelle, La mort, pp. 640–1, 653–4. 6. G. Mosse, ‘National Cemeteries and National Revival: The Cult of the Fallen Soldiers in Germany’, Journal of Contemporary History, 14:1 (1979), 1. 7. Ibid., 3. 8. P. Contamine, ‘Mourir pour la patrie X-XXe si`ecle’, in P. Nora (ed.), Les lieux de m´emoire, tome 2, vol. 3: La nation (Paris: Gallimard, 1986). 9. I. Strenski, Contesting Sacrifice: Religion, and Social Thought in France (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 58–61. 10. Minist`ere des Anciens Combattants et Victimes de Guerre D´el´egation a` la M´emoire et a` l’Information Historique, 1870–1871 monuments et s´epultures (Paris: Minist`ere des anciens combattants et victimes de guerre, 1996), p. 10. 11. J. d’Arsac, Les Fr`eres des e´ coles chr´etiennes pendant la guerre de 1870–1871 (Paris: J. Grillot, 1892), p. 91. 12. J. Claretie, Cinq ans apr`es. L’Alsace et la Lorraine depuis l’annexion (Paris: Georges Decaux, 1876), p. 279.

Notes

245

13. British Red Cross, Red Cross Operations in the North of France 1870–1872 (London: Spottiswoode & Co., 1872), pp. 87, 106; C. E. Ryan, With an Ambulance During the Franco-German War. Personal Experiences and Adventures with Both Armies 1870–1871 (London: John Murray, 1896), pp. 64–5. 14. J. W. McMichael, Sedan, Bazeilles, and Metz, Being an Account of a Visit to those Places in November 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War (London: C. A. Bartleet, 1871), p. 25. 15. See, for instance, the funeral for two soldiers in Autrecourt (Ardennes) in Chanoine Cerf, L’invasion allemande en Champagne (Lille: Soci´et´e de SaintAugustin, 1899), p. 188. 16. T. Fontane, Souvenirs d’un prisonnier de guerre allemand en 1870 (Paris: Perrin et Cie, 1892), pp. 219–21. 17. H. Rundle, With the Red Cross in the Franco-German War AD 1870–1871 (London: Werner Laurie, 1911), p. 31. 18. H. Dunant, The Origin of the Red Cross, trans. Mrs D. H. Wright (Philadelphia: John C. Winston Co., 1911), pp. 17–22. 19. A. Becker, ‘Monuments aux morts apr`es la guerre de s´ecession et la guerre de 1870–1871: Un legs de la guerre nationale?’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 167 (1992), 26. 20. A. King, Memorials of the Great War in Britain: The Symbolism and Politics of Remembrance (Oxford and New York: Berg, 1998), pp. 184–5. 21. Minist`ere, 1870–1871, 10. 22. On memories of the Prussian Wars of Liberation, see C. Clark, ‘The Wars of Liberation in Prussian Memory: Reflections on the Memorialization of War in Early Nineteenth Century Germany’, The Journal of Modern History, 68 (1996), 550–78. 23. D´epartement de l’Int´erieur, Ex´ecution de la loi du 4 avril 1873 relative aux tombes des militaires morts pendant la guerre de 1870–1871. Rapport pr´esent´e au Pr´esident de la R´epublique, par M. de Marc`ere, Ministre Secr´etaire d’Etat au D´epartement de l’Int´erieur (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1878), pp. 303–4. 24. AN F9 1404, Report on the trial of Jacques Gaspard versus the War Ministry, Civil Tribunal of Belfort, 5 December 1872. 25. AN C 2817, Commission charg´ee d’examiner le projet de loi relatif a` la conservation de tombes des soldats morts pendant la derni`ere guerre, 20, 24 January 1873. 26. A. Ben-Amos, Funerals, Politics, and Memory in Modern France, 1789–1996 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 148. 27. D´epartement, Ex´ecution, pp. 31–2. 28. Anon., Recueil des trait´es, conventions, lois, d´ecrets et autres actes relatifs a` la paix avec l’Allemagne (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1879), p. 477. 29. D´epartement, Ex´ecution, pp. 32, 33, 299, 305. 30. T. A. Kselman, Death and the Afterlife in Modern France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 182–3. 31. Becker, ‘Monuments aux morts’, 27. Memorials erected by public subscriptions, municipal councils, departments, and private committees did, by contrast, often bear the names of the dead. 32. On republican notions of equality within the cemetery, see Kselman, Death, pp. 189–99.

246 Notes 33. ATB 2R 6, Letter from Oberstur Commandant Junge to the Administrator, 3 September 1872. 34. ATB 2R 6, Letter from General Sainte Beuve to the Administrator, 29 October 1886. 35. See, for instance, ATB 2R 6, Letter from the Mayor of Chaux to the Administrator, 6 September 1872; Report, Giromagny Gendarmerie, 7 June 1880; Letter from the Belfort Public Prosecutor to the Administrator, 22 November 1886. 36. ADMM 4M 194, Police report, 4 December 1896. 37. ADC 8R SM 1566, Dijon police report, 5 March 1887. 38. ATB 2R 6, Letter from the Interior Minister to the Administrator, 18 January 1875. 39. ATB 2R 6, Letter from the Interior Minister to the Administrator, 28 February 1879. 40. ATB 2R 6, Letter from the Administrator to the Interior Minister, 12 June 1879. 41. T. Zeldin, France 1848–1945, vol. II: Intellect, Taste and Anxiety (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), pp. 983–4, 994. 42. R. Gibson, ‘Why Republicans and Catholics Couldn’t Stand Each Other in the Nineteenth Century’, in F. Tallett and N. Atkin (eds), Religion, Society and Politics in France since 1789 (London and Rio Grande: Hambleton Press, 1991), p. 111. 43. R. Anderson, ‘The Conflict in Education: Catholic Secondary Schools (1850–1870): A Reappraisal’, in T. Zeldin (ed.), Conflicts in French Society: Anti-Clericalism, Education and Morals in the Nineteenth Century (London: Allen & Unwin, 1970), p. 54. 44. See R. Rémond, L’anticléricalisme en France de 1815 à nos jours (Paris: Fayard, 1976), p. 4. 45. C. Amalvi, ‘Le 14 juillet du des irae à jour de fête’, in P. Nora (ed.), Lieux de mémoire,tome 1: La République (Paris: Gallimard, 1984). 46. R. D. E. Burton, Blood in the City: Violence and Revelation in Paris, 1789–1945 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 176. 47. Ibid., p. 182. 48. See H. Loyrette, ‘La Tour Eiffel’, in P. Nora (ed.), Lieux de mémoire, tome 3: Les France, vol. 3: De l’archive à l’emblème (Paris: Gallimard, 1992). 49. B. Taithe, Citizenship and Wars: France in Turmoil 1870–1871 (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 96. 50. Ibid., p. 107. 51. F. Boulard et al. (eds), Matériaux pour l’histoire religieuse du people français XIXe–XX siècle: Régions de Paris, Haute-Normandie, Pays du Loire centrale (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1982), pp. 147, 319–20, 342, 369. 52. Strenski, Contesting Sacrifice, pp. 50–8. 53. T. Kselman, ‘Funeral Conflicts in Nineteenth Century France’, Comparative Studies in Nineteenth-Century France, 30 (1988), 314. 54. Ibid., 328. 55. Kselman, Death, p. 88. 56. Chanoine E. Guers, R´ecits et souvenirs de 1870–1871. Les soldats franc¸ais dans les prisons d’Allemagne (Paris: Librairie Bloud et Barral, 1890), p. 364.

Notes

247

57. M. Ozouf, ‘The Panth´eon: The Ecole Normale of the Dead’, in P. Nora (ed.), Realms of Memory, vol. 3: Symbols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), p. 328. 58. Ben-Amos, Funerals, pp. 160–1. 59. Ibid., p. 145. 60. Ibid., pp. 266–7. 61. J. R. Lehning, To be a Citizen: The Political Culture of the Early French Third Republic (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001), pp. 79–80. 62. Abb´e A. Piauger, 13e Anniversaire de la bataille de Loigny 2 d´ecembre 1870. Discours prononc´es le 3 d´ecembre 1883 (Chartres: F. Milan-Leduc, Imprimeur, 1884), p. 10. 63. Le Gaulois, 2 December 1912. 64. Mgr. Turinaz, Discours prononc´e a` l’occasion du vingti`eme anniversaire de la bataille de Gravelotte 19 aoˆut 1890 (Nancy: E. Le Chevalier, 1890), p. 4. 65. See Evˆeque de Poitiers, Oeuvres de Monseigneur l’´evˆeque de Poitiers, vol. 7 (Poitiers: Librairie Oudin Fr`eres, 1879), p. 333. 66. P. de Grandlieu, L’ossuaire de Loigny (Paris: Perrin, 1890), pp. 25–6. 67. Abb´e Besson, L’ann´ee d’expiation et de grˆace. Sermons et oraisons fun`ebres (Besanc¸on: Turbergue, 1872), p. 185. 68. J. Goody and C. Poppi, ‘Flowers and Bones: Approaches to the Dead in Anglo-American and Italian Cemeteries’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 36:1 (1994), 168. 69. See F. Bournand, Le clerg´e pendant la guerre 1870–1871 (Paris: Librairie SaintJoseph, 1891), p. 35. 70. Piauger, 13e Anniversaire, pp. 22–3. 71. Turinaz, Discours, p. 10. 72. R. A. Jonas, ‘Anxiety, Identity and the Displacement of Violence During the Ann´ee Terrible: The Sacred Heart and the Diocese of Nantes 1870–1871’, French Historical Studies, 21:1 (1998), 71. 73. R. Jonas, France and the Cult of the Sacred Heart: An Epic New Tale for Modern Times (Berkeley, and London: University of California Press, 2000), pp. 168–70. 74. AN F9 1373, Report on Loigny, 7 October 1878. 75. Abb´e F. Theur´e, Souvenir du 2 d´ecembre 1870. Loigny, son e´ glise, ses monuments (Chartres: l’Abb´e C. M´etais, 1896), pp. 19–24; AN F9 1373, Report on Loigny, 7 October 1878. 76. Theur´e, Souvenir, p. 23. 77. Goody and Poppi, ‘Flowers’, 158. 78. Ibid., 165–6. 79. Grandlieu, L’ossuaire, p. 25. 80. On notions of resurrection after the First World War, see K. P. Gorman, ‘The Return of the Dead: Christian Images of Resurrection and the Postwar Cult of Remembrance’, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, 22 (1995), 67–77. 81. See D. G. Troyansky, ‘Monumental Politics: National History and Local Memory in French Monuments aux Morts in the Department of the Aisne

248 Notes

82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100.

101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107.

108. 109. 110.

111.

Since 1870’, French Historical Studies, 15:1 (1987), 131; G. Texier, Le monument des fusillés 22 janvier 1891 (Châlons-sur-Marne: Imprimerie de l’union républicaine, 1891), p. 30. Kselman, Death, p. 110; Le Gaulois, 5 December 1899. L’Eclair, 5 November 1887. Ben-Amos, Funerals, p. 205. Ibid., p. 196. Le Figaro, 10 January 1883; Le Si`ecle, 7 January 1883. L’Intransigeant, 10 January 1883; Ben-Amos, Funerals, p. 205. J.-P. Brunet, Saint-Denis la ville rouge 1890–1939 (Paris: Hachette, 1980), p. 49; Le Figaro, 2 November 1893. See, in particular, B. Joly, D´eroul`ede: L’inventeur du nationalisme (Paris: Perrin, 1998). Z. Sternhell, Maurice Barrès et le nationalisme français (Paris: Cahiers de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1972), p. 345. P. Déroulède, Qui vive? France! ‘Quand même’. Notes et discours 1883–1910 (Paris: Bloudet et cie, 1910), p. 4. See, for instance, L’Intransigeant, 1 December 1891; La Justice, 30 November 1891. Le Drapeau, 6 February 1886. P. Guston, The Imagination of Maurice Barrès (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1974), p. 173. Sternhell, Barr`es, p. 307. Guston, Imagination, pp. 177–8. Ibid., pp. 163–5. M. Barr`es, Sc`enes et doctrines du nationalisme, vol. 1 (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1925), p. 96. R. Soucy, ‘Barrès and Fascism’, French Historical Studies, 5 (1967), 82. R. Soucy, Fascism in France: The Case of Maurice Barr`es (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), p. 110; M. Barr`es, L’oeuvre de Maurice Barr`es, annot´ee par Philippe Barr`es, 20 vols, vol. 13 (Paris: Au club de l’honnˆete homme, 1965–1968), p. 313. T. Walter, On Bereavement: The Culture of Grief (Buckingham and Philadelphia: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 60–1. L. Madelin, Croquis lorrains (Paris: Berger-Levrault et cie, 1907), p. viii. M. Barr`es, Colette Baudoche (Paris: Plon, 1911), p. 272. Walter, On Bereavement, pp. 103–5. Barr`es, Sc`enes, vol. 1, p. 95. AN F21 4365, Journal de Bergerac, 12 November 1890. A. Prost (ed.), ‘War Memorials of the Great War: Monuments to the Fallen’, Republican Identities in War and Peace: Representations of France in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Oxford and London: Berg, 2002), pp. 36–9. Gorman, ‘The Return’, 68. A. Becker, War and Faith: The Religious Imagination in France, 1914–1930, trans. H. McPhail (Oxford and New York: Berg, 1998). See also Gorman, ‘The Return’, 67–77; A. Becker, ‘From Death to Memory: The National Ossuaries in France After the Great War’, History and Memory, 5:2 (1993), 32–49. Goody and Poppi, ‘Flowers’, 153.

Notes

249

3 Taboos 1. R. Gildea, The Past in French History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 119–21. 2. M. Wehner, ‘Typologies of Memory and Forgetting Among the Expatriates of Rabaul’, Journal of Pacific History, 37:1 (2002), 57. 3. Ibid., p. 72. 4. P. Aguila, Memory and Amnesia: The Role of the Spanish Civil War in the Transition to Democracy (New York: Berghahn, 2002), p. 18. 5. F. R. Ankersmit, ‘The Sublime Dissociation of the Past: Or How to Be(come) What One is no Longer’, History and Theory, 40:3 (2001), 300–5. 6. P. Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. K. Blamey and D. Pellauer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004), p. 445. 7. Ibid., pp. 440–4. 8. H. Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944, trans. A. Goldhammer (Cambridge Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1991). 9. W. B. Cohen, ‘The Algerian War and French Memory’, Contemporary European History, 9 (2000), 491–2. 10. Ricoeur, Memory, p. 449. 11. The Times, 11 October 1892. 12. R. Girardet (ed.), Le nationalisme franc¸ais. Anthologie 1871–1914 (Paris: Edition du Seuil, 1992), pp. 79–80; A. Dupuy, Sedan et l’enseignement de la revanche (Paris: Institut national de recherche et de documentation p´edagogiques, 1975), p. 27. 13. P. Arnaud, ‘Un exemple de militantisme municipal: Les bataillons scolaires a` Lyon et dans le d´epartement de Rhˆ one (1882–1889)’, in P. Arnaud (ed.), Les athl`etes de la r´epublique: Gymnastique, sport et id´eologie r´epublicaine 1870/1914 (Toulouse: Privat, 1987), pp. 64–81. 14. R. Girardet, La soci´et´e militaire dans la France contemporaine 1815–1939 (Paris: Plon, 1953), p. 181. 15. J. Rabaut, L’anti-militarisme en France 1810–1975: Faits et documents (Paris: Hachette, 1975), pp. 28–9. 16. C. Digeon, La crise allemande de la pens´ee franc¸aise (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959), p. 265. 17. Le Figaro, 24 October 1892; J. Arnaud, ‘La D´ebˆacle’ de M. Zola (Nˆımes: Imprimerie de Lessertisseux, 1892), p. 12. 18. G´en´eral Morel, A propos de ‘La D´ebˆacle’ (Paris: H. Charles-Lavauzelle, 1893), p. 9. 19. E. Zola, ‘Retour du voyage’, Le Figaro, 10 October 1892. 20. Le Si`ecle, 18 August 1872. 21. J. Cathal, L’occupation de Lun´eville par les allemands, 1870–1873 (Paris: BergerLevrault, 1913), p. 14. 22. M. Melleville, Le dernier chapitre de l’histoire de Laon. R´ecit de ce qui c’est pass´e dans cette ville et ses environs avant et pendant l’occupation allemande (Laon: Dumoulin, 1871), pp. 22–3. 23. G´en´eral Lebrun, Guerre de 1870 – Bazeilles – Sedan (Paris: E. Dentu, 1884), p. 153.

250 Notes 24. H. Dichard, Une page de l’histoire du si`ege de Paris par les prussiens. La premi`ere affaire du Bourget (30 octobre 1870) (Paris: Mauger, Capart et cie, 1871), p. 41. 25. A. Duquet, Guerre de 1870–1871. Paris, La Malmaison, Le Bourget, et le trente et un octobre, 21 octobre–1er novembre (Paris: G. Charpentier et E. Fasquelle, 1893), p. 118. 26. J. W. McMichael, Sedan, Bazeilles, and Metz, Being an Account of a Visit to those Places in November 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War (London: C. A. Bartleet, 1871), p. 33; G. Monod, Allemands et franc¸ais. Souvenirs de campagne – Metz, Sedan, et la Loire (Paris: Sandoz et Fischbacher, 1872), p. 50. 27. P. Alexis, ‘La d´ebˆacle’, Gil Blas, 21 June 1892. 28. Morel, A propos, pp. 9–10. 29. Arnaud, ‘La D´ebˆacle’, p. 17. 30. P. Gille, ‘La d´ebˆacle’, Le Figaro, 21 June 1892. 31. AVS H 218, Note on the history of the monument to General Margueritte and his comrades-in-arms, no date, no author. 32. AVS H 218, Meeting of the provisional memorial committee, 22 November 1890. 33. AVS H 218, Minutes of the provisional memorial committee, 27 December 1890. 34. AVS H 218, Minutes of the provisional memorial committee, 22 November 1890. 35. AVS H 218, Letter from Croisy, 1 April 1893. 36. A. Philippoteaux, 1er septembre 1891 Souvenir franc¸ais. Paroles prononc´es au cimeti`ere de Sedan (Sedan: Imprimerie de J. Laroche, 1891), p. 5. 37. AVS H 218, Meeting of the monument committee, 11 October 1892. 38. L’Echo des Ardennes, 12 August 1897. 39. Le Figaro, 25 January 1896; AVS H 218, Letter from Croisy, 29 January 1896. 40. AVS H 218, Letter from Boucher, 22 July 1897. 41. Le Courrier des Ardennes, 24 July 1897; Le Petit Ardennais, 31 July 1897. 42. La R´epublique Franc¸aise, 31 July 1897; Les Ardennes, 30 July 1897. 43. M. Howard, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870– 1871 (London: Routledge, 1962), p. 215. 44. D. de Lonlay, Franc¸ais et allemands. Histoire anecdotique de la guerre de 1870– 1871, vol. I (Paris: Garnier, 1887–1888), pp. 591, 621. 45. E. Zola, The Debacle 1870–1871, trans. L. Tancock (London, 1972), pp. 253–70. 46. F. Robichon, ‘Representing the 1870–1871 War, or the Impossible Revanche’, in N. McWilliam and J. Hargrove (eds), Nationalism and French Visual Culture 1870–1914 (New Haven and London: Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 93. 47. R. Holmes, The Road to Sedan: The French Army 1866–1870 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1984), p. 168. 48. Cited in ibid., p. 226. 49. Ibid., p. 226. 50. D. B. Ralston, The Army of the Republic: The Place of the Military in the Political Evolution of France, 1871–1914 (Cambridge Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1967), pp. 86–7. 51. A. Mitchell, Victors and Vanquished: The German Influence on Army and Church in France After 1870 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), p. 20.

Notes

251

52. F. Lees, ‘Introduction’, in P. Margueritte and V. Margueritte, The Disaster, trans. F. Lees (London: Lotus Library, 1911), p. x. 53. V. Derr´ecagnaix, Histoire de la guerre de 1870 (Paris: Librairie Militaire Dr J. Dumaine, 1871), p. 304. 54. P. Lehautcour, Si`ege de Paris – Le Bourget – Champigny 28 octobre–3 d´ecembre 1870 (Paris: Berger-Levrault et cie, 1898), p. 626. 55. AVS H 218, Minutes of the provisional memorial committee, 4 November 1890. 56. P. Margueritte, Mon p`ere (Paris: Librairie Illustr´ee, 1884), p. 49. 57. B. Joly, D´eroul`ede: L’inventeur du nationalisme (Paris: Perrin, 1998), p. 102. 58. Robichon, ‘Representing’, p. 85. 59. A. Gillois, Galliffet: Le ‘fusilleur de la Commune’ (Paris: Editions France-Empire, 1985), p. 143. 60. Lebrun, Guerre, pp. 124–8. 61. Ralston, Army, pp. 242–8. 62. On the unveiling ceremony, see L’Intransigeant, 2 September 1910; Le Gaulois, 1 September 1910; Le Si`ecle, 3 September 1910. 63. J.-M. Mayeur and M. Reberioux, The Third Republic from its Origins to the Great War, 1871–1914, trans. J. R. Foster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 74. 64. R. Tombs, The Paris Commune 1871 (Harlow: Longman, 1999), p. 193. 65. P. Margueritte and V. Margueritte, Une e´ poque, tome 4: La Commune (Paris: Plon, 1898–1904), pp. 625–6. 66. Tombs, Paris Commune, p. 204. 67. Cited in G. J. S´anchez, Organizing Independence: The Artists Federation of the Paris Commune and its Legacy, 1871–1889 (Lincoln, Nebraska and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 124. 68. J. Milner, Art, War and Revolution in France 1870–1871: Myth, Reportage and Reality (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 162. 69. M. Reb´erioux, ‘Le mur des f´ed´er´es: rouge ‘‘sang crach´e’’ ’, in P. Nora (ed.), Les lieux de m´emoire, tome 1: La R´epublique (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), p. 620. 70. Ibid., pp. 626–37. 71. Howard, Franco-Prussian, pp. 12–13. 72. C.-A. Julien, Histoire de l’Alg´erie contemporaine. La conquˆete et les d´ebuts de la colonisation (1827–1871) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964), p. 455. 73. Howard, Franco-Prussian, p. 102. 74. Julien, Histoire, p. 455. 75. M. Emerit, ‘La question alg´erienne’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 19 (1971), 258. 76. Julien, Histoire, p. 456. 77. Ibid., p. 472. 78. Emerit, ‘La question’, 257. 79. B. Taithe, Citizenship and Wars: France in Turmoil 1870–1871 (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 87. 80. Emerit, ‘La question’, 257. 81. Taithe, Citizenship, p. 88. 82. R. Ayoun, ‘Le d´ecret Cr´emieux et l’insurrection de 1871 en Alg´erie’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 35 (1988), 67. 83. Ibid., 68.

252 Notes 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

96.

Ibid., 75. Julien, Histoire, p. 473. Taithe, Citizenship, p. 90. Emerit, ‘La question’, 261. Taithe, Citizenship, p. 90. Robichon, ‘Representing’, p. 92. J. Claretie, Cinq ans après. L’Alsace et la Lorraine depuis l’annexion (Paris: Georges Decaux, 1876), p. 72. Oncle Hansi, Mon village. Ceux qui n’oublient pas (Paris: H. Floury, 1913), p. 2. Taithe, Citizenship, pp. 89–90. Julien, Histoire, p. 493. G. Pervill´e, ‘L’Alsace et l’Alg´erie: de la r´ealit´e au mythe’, Bulletin de l’association Alsace, m´emoire du mouvement social, 4 (2003), 5–7. D. P. Silverman, Reluctant Union: Alsace-Lorraine and Imperial Germany 1871– 1918 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1972), p. 71. Ibid., p. 69.

4

Memories for the masses

91. 92. 93. 94. 95.

1. E. Fietta, Guide du touriste sur le champ de bataille de Froeschwiller (Strasbourg: Edouard Fietta, 1871), pp. 12, 26. 2. D´epartement de l’Int´erieur, Ex´ecution de la loi du 4 avril 1873 relative aux tombes des militaires morts pendant la guerre de 1870–1871. Rapport pr´esent´e au Pr´esident de la R´epublique, par M. de Marc`ere, Ministre Secr´etaire d’Etat au D´epartement de l’Int´erieur (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1878), p. 299. 3. M. Agulhon, Marianne au pouvoir: L’imagerie et la symbolique r´epublicaines de 1880 a` 1914 (Paris: Flammarion, 1989), p. 132. 4. AN F21 4354, Minutes of the Conseil G´en´eral d’Aisne, 12 April 1899. 5. D. G. Troyansky, ‘Memorializing Saint-Quentin: Monuments, Inaugurations and History in the Third Republic’, French History, 13:1 (1999), 49. 6. AVS H218, Meeting of the monument committee, 11 November 1893. 7. P. Congar, J. Lecaillon, and J. Rousseau (eds), Sedan et le pays sedanais: Vingt si`ecles d’histoire (Paris: Librairie Guenegaud, 1969), p. 527. 8. D. J. Sherman, The Construction of Memory in Interwar France (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 218. 9. G. Texier, Le Monument des fusill´es 22 janvier 1891 (Chˆalons-sur-Marne: Imprimerie de l’union r´epublicaine, 1891), pp. 11–12. 10. Troyansky, ‘Memorializing’, 58. 11. ADC 1M 532, Minutes of the Pasques Municipal Council, 17 May 1891. 12. ADC 1M 532, Minutes of the Pouillenay Municipal Council, 29 May 1898. 13. On the necessity of war memorials to convey easily understood messages, see A. Borg, War Memorials from Antiquity to the Present (London: Leo Cooper, 1991), p. 70. 14. Agulhon, Marianne au pouvoir, p. 234. 15. D. J. Sherman, ‘Art, Commerce, and the Production of Memory in France After World War I’, in J. R. Gillis (ed.), Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 195.

Notes

253

16. Sherman, Construction, p. 181. 17. AN F21 4365, Letter from the Association des combattants de 1870–1871, Nolay 28 January 1898. 18. AN F21 4365, Letter from the Association des combattants de 1870–1871, Nolay, 31 January 1899. 19. See for instance the rejection of requests for funding for the memorial at Chaux (Cˆ ote-d’Or), AN F21 4363, Letter from the Fine Arts Minister to the Prefect of Cˆ ote-d’Or, 19 April 1894. 20. AN F21 4365, Memorandum, no date. 21. AN F21 4365, Memorandum, 8 June 1900. 22. A. King, Memorials of the Great War in Britain: The Symbolism and Politics of Remembrance (Oxford and New York: Berg, 1998), p. 3. 23. Sherman, Construction, pp. 143–5. 24. Ibid., pp. 144–5. 25. See B. Pfaffenberger, ‘Serious Pilgrims and Frivolous Tourists: The Chimera of Tourism and the Pilgrimages of Sri Lanka’, Annals of Tourism Research, 10 (1983), 57–79. 26. E. Cohen, ‘A Phenomenon of Tourist Experience’, Sociology, 13:2 (1979), 182. 27. Ibid., 183–90. 28. T. Walter, ‘War Grave Pilgrimage’, in I. Reader and T. Walter (eds), Pilgrimage in Popular Culture (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993), pp. 71–2. 29. I. Reader, ‘From Asceticism to the Package Tour: The Pilgrim’s Progress in Japan’, Religion, 17 (1987), 143. 30. G. L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 154. 31. D. W. Lloyd, Battlefield Tourism: Pilgrimage and Commemoration of the Great War in Britain, Australia and Canada, 1919–1939 (Oxford: Berg, 1998), p. 19. 32. Walter, ‘War Grave’, p. 82. 33. S. Semmel, ‘Reading the Tangible Past: British Tourism, Collecting and Memory After Waterloo’, Representations, 69 (2000), 11–13. 34. Ibid., 20. 35. C. J. Schepers, Waterloo a Guidebook to the Battlefield, trans. R. Norman (BraineL’Alleud: L´eon Pasteur Publisher, 1892), pp. 10–12. 36. P. Brendon, Thomas Cook: 150 Years of Popular Tourism (London: Secker and Warburg, 1991), pp. 117–18. 37. M. Barr`es, L’oeuvre de Maurice Barr`es, annot´ee par Philippe Barr`es, 20 vols, vol. 5 (Paris: Au club de l’honnˆete homme, 1965–1968), p. 355. 38. C. Malo, Champs de bataille de France (Paris: Hachette et cie, 1899), p. 246. 39. H. Dorizy, Les champs de bataille de 1870. Guide-Album (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1914). 40. G. Bastard, Bazeilles dix ans apr`es (Paris: E. Dentu, 1880), p. 192. 41. Madame A. Arnould, Mars-la-Tour et ses souvenirs (Mars-la-Tour: A. Arnould, 1908), p. 31. 42. Bastard, Bazeilles, p. 192. 43. Barr`es, L’oeuvre, vol. 5, p. 348. 44. A. Planc¸on, Sedan-Bazeilles. Une excursion aux champs de bataille (Paris: H. Lac`ene et H. Oudin Editeurs, 1888), pp. 88–9. 45. G. Ducrocq, La blessure mal ferm´ee. Notes d’un voyageur en Alsace-Lorraine (Paris: Plon, 1911), p. 53.

254 Notes 46. R. Brochet, Trente ans apr`es. Metz et ses champs de bataille (La Rochelle: Imprimerie nouvelle Noel Texier et fils, 1901), p. 31. 47. P. Hugounet, A Froeschwiller 1870–1883 (Paris: Union G´en´eral de la Librairie Charles Bayle et cie, 1883), pp. 6–7. 48. Barr`es, L’oeuvre, vol. 5, p. 354. 49. P. Guston, The Imagination of Maurice Barrès (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1974), pp. 179–80. 50. Ibid., p. 178; Barrès, L’oeuvre, vol. 18, p. 200. 51. La Libre Parole, 17 August 1897. 52. Bastard, Bazeilles, p. 129. 53. See J. d’ Ardenne, L’Ardenne. Guide du touriste et du cycliste (Brussels: Charles Rozez, 1894), pp. 180–3. 54. K. Baedeker, The Rhine Including the Black Forrest and the Vosges, 17th edn (Leipzig and London: Karl Baedeker Publisher, 1911), p. 473. 55. D. MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Schooken Books, 1989), p. 61. 56. K. Baedeker, Northern France, from Belgium and the English Channel to the Loire Excluding Paris and its Environs, 3rd edn (Leipzig and London: K. Baedeker, 1899), pp. 129, 306. 57. Ibid., p. 130. 58. S. Ceccaldi, Le Lion de Belfort, un monument pour l’avenir (Paris: Cit´edis, 1980), pp. 37–9. 59. Ibid., pp. 37–9. 60. E. Riche, ‘Les Belfortains et le Lion (1871–1914)’, M´emoire de Maˆıtrise, Universit´e de Mulhouse (1995–6), p. 98. 61. Ibid., p. 76. 62. Ceccaldi, Le Lion, p. 41. 63. E. Badel, Une journ´ee a` Mars-la-Tour 29 aoˆut 1898 (Nancy: Imprimerie de L. Kreis, 1898), p. 4. 64. E. Badel, Mars-la-Tour et son monument national (Mars-la-Tour: Ritter Roscop, 1893), p. 83. 65. D. Bontemps, ‘L’anniversaire de la bataille de Mars-la-Tour (avant 1914)’, La revue Lorraine populaire, August 1882 edition (1982), 226. 66. On the tone of the ceremonies, see Le Gaulois, 17 August 1893, 18 August 1895. 67. L’Intransigeant, 5 August 1895. 68. L’Intransigeant, 21 August 1894. 69. Reader, ‘From Asceticism’, 43. 70. Badel, Mars-la-Tour, p. 59. 71. Le Gaulois, 2 September 1901. 72. ADC 1 M 532, Letter from the Sub-Prefect of Beaune to the Prefect, 6 July 1900. 73. Le Gaulois, 18 August 1895. 74. C. Barcellini, ‘La comm´emoration de la guerre au mus´ee de l’arm´ee (1914– 1925)’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 51:212 (2003), 10. 75. D. Sherman and I. Rogoff, ‘Introduction: Frameworks for Critical Analysis’, in D. Sherman and I. Rogoff (eds), Museum Culture: Histories, Discourses, Spectacle (London: Routledge, 1995), p. xi. 76. Sherman, Construction, pp. 316–17.

Notes

255

77. S. Crane, ‘Introduction: Of Museums and Memory’, in S. Crane (ed.), Museums and Memory (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), p. 9. 78. Ibid., pp. 6–7. 79. Planc¸on, Sedan-Bazeilles, p. 42. 80. J. Faller, Catalogue du mus´ee militaire de Mars-la-Tour fond´e par monsieur le chanoine Joseph Faller cur´e de Mars-la-Tour (Nancy: Imprimerie de M. Vagner, 1909). 81. E. Badel, Le cur´e de Mars-la-Tour 16 aoˆut 1910. Son oeuvre – son mus´ee (Nancy: Publisher unknown, 1910), p. 13. 82. Ibid., p. 15. 83. ADMM WO 2250, Minutes of the meeting of the conseil de fabrique, Mars-la-Tour, 23 June 1901. 84. Le Gaulois, 4 September 1906; Bastard, Bazeilles, p. 118; Planc¸on, SedanBazeilles, p. 41. 85. Planc¸on, Sedan-Bazeilles, p. 41. 86. AN F7 12445, Article in newspaper, name and date unknown. 87. Ibid. 88. Badel, Le cur´e, p. 22. 89. B. Taithe, Citizenship and Wars: France in Turmoil 1870–1871 (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 25. 90. C. de Lacroix, Les morts pour la patrie. Tombes militaires et monuments e´ lev´es a` la m´emoire des soldats tu´es pendant la guerre (Paris: Published privately, 1891), p. 17. 91. Bulletin de l’association patriotique des anciens combattants de 1870–71 des Alpes Maritimes, 1 (1899), 3–5. 92. AN F21 4413, Letter from the committee for the Monument aux enfants de Haute Vienne, 26 May 1896. 93. M. Merriman, The Red City: Limoges and the French Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 156–7. 94. P. Pommar`ede and C. Salviat, ‘Les monuments aux morts de la guerre de 1870 en Dordogne’, Bulletin de la Soci´et´e historique et arch´eologique du P´erigord, 125 (1998), 337, 347. 95. J. Hargrove, ‘Qui vive? France! War Monuments from The Defense to the Revanche’, in N. McWilliam and J. Hargrove (eds), Nationalism and French Visual Culture 1870–1914 (New Haven and London: Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 65. 96. AMB 1M33, Letter from the deputy mayor of Belfort to Firmin Pons, president of the Association amicale des anciens artilleurs mobiles de la Haute-Garonne a` Toulouse, 9 November 1911. 97. On veterans’ welfare, see B. Taithe, Defeated Flesh: Welfare, Warfare and the Making of Modern France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), pp. 193–207.

5 Legacies of l’ann´ee terrible 1. A. Corbin, ‘Paris-Province’, in P. Nora (ed.), Les lieux de m´emoire, tome 3: Les France, vol. 1: Conflits et partages (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), p. 787. 2. R. Tombs, ‘Paris and the Rural Hordes: An Exploration of Myth and Reality in the French Civil War of 1871’, The Historical Journal, 29 (1986), 797.

256 Notes 3. R. D. E. Burton, Blood in the City: Violence and Revelation in Paris, 1789–1945 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 141. 4. J. M. Roberts, ‘La Commune consid´er´e par la droite: Dimensions d’une mythologie’, Dimensions et r´esonances de l’ann´ee 1871, Colloque, Strasbourg 1971, Revue d’histoire mondiale et contemporaine, 19 (1972), 190–5. 5. Assembl´ee Nationale, Enquˆe te parlementaire sur l’insurrection du 18 mars 1871. Edition contenant in extensio les trois volumes distribu´es a` l’assembl´ee nationale (Paris: Librairie l´egislative A. Wittersheim et cie, 1872), pp. 2–3. 6. Ibid., p. 4. 7. Ibid., p. 5. 8. Ibid., p. 6. 9. Assembl´ee Nationale, Enquˆete, tome III, p. 117. 10. J. M. Roberts, The Paris Commune from the Right (London: Longman, 1973), pp. 29–36. 11. L. Veuillot, Paris pendant les deux si`eges, 2 vols, vol. 1 (Paris: Librairie de Victor Palm´e, 1871), p. 271. 12. R. A. Jonas, ‘Monument as Ex-Voto, Monument as Historiography: The Basilica of Sacr´e Coeur’, French Historical Studies, 18 (1993), 489. 13. Burton, Blood, p. 181. 14. R. Jonas, France and the Cult of the Sacred Heart: An Epic New Tale for Modern Times (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 2000), p. 204. 15. G. J. Becker (ed.), Paris Under Siege 1870–1871: From the Goncourt Journal (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1969), p. 147. 16. A. J. Dals`eme, Paris pendant le si`ege et les soixante-cinq jours de la Commune (Paris: E. Dentu Editeur, 1871), p. 289. 17. E. Zola, The Debacle1870–1871, trans. L. Tancock (London: Penguin, 1972), pp. 457–8. 18. Ibid., p. 458. 19. Ibid., p. 459. 20. Ibid., p. 466. 21. Ibid., pp. 474–81. 22. A. Boime, Art and the French Commune: Imagining Paris After War and Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 45. 23. Ibid., pp. 123–5. 24. J. Milner, Art, War and Revolution in France 1870–1871: Myth, Reportage and Reality (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 206. 25. Boime, Art, pp. 102–6. 26. H. Clayson, Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life Under Siege (1870– 1871) (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 329–41. 27. For claims that Parisian courage helped to salvage the honour of the nation, see D’Arsac, M´emorial, x; J. Adam, Mes illusions et nos souffrances pendant le si`ege de Paris (Paris: Alphonse Lemerre Editeur, 1896), p. 273. 28. V. C. O. Gr´eard, Meissonier: His Life and his Art, trans. M. Lloyd and F. Simmonds (London: Heinemann, 1897), p. 258; Milner, Art, p. 212. 29. C. C. Hungerford, ‘ ‘‘Les choses importantes’’. Meissonier et la peinture d’histoire’, in Mus´ee des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, Ernest Meissonier Retrospective (Lyon: R´eunion des mus´ees nationaux, 1993), pp. 171–4.

Notes

257

30. R. Tombs, The War Against Paris 1871 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 105–8. 31. Le Figaro, 21 January 1872. 32. Le Gaulois, 1 November 1872; Le Temps, 1 November 1872. 33. D’Arsac, M´emorial, 160; Adam, Mes illusions, p. 152. 34. A. Duquet, Guerre de 1870–1871. Paris, La Malmaison, Le Bourget, et le trente et un octobre, 21 octobre–1er novembre (Paris: G. Charpentier et E. Fasquelle, 1893), p. 120. 35. O. de Vernie, Les trois journ´ees du Bourget. La mort du Commandant Baroche (Paris: Librairie Rouquette, 1871), p. 28. 36. H. Dichard, Une page de l’histoire du si`ege de Paris par les prussiens. La premi`ere affaire du Bourget (30 octobre 1870) (Paris: Mauger, Capart et cie, 1871), p. 41. 37. Duquet, Guerre, pp. 330–1. 38. Anon., Discours prononc´es le 30 octobre 1871 au Bourget par M. Francis Aubert en l’honneur des militaires tu´es au Bourget dans les combats des 28, 29 et 30 octobre 1870 (Paris: Imprimerie Charles Noblet, 1871), p. 10; See also F. Aubert, Le Journal de Chislehurst (Paris: Lachaud, 1873). 39. Anon., Discours prononc´es, p. 11. 40. A. Horne, The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870–1 (London: Macmillan, 1965), p. 234. 41. M. Howard, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870– 1871 (London: Routledge, 1962), p. 366. 42. Commandant Rousset, Histoire g´en´erale de la guerre franco-allemande (1870– 1871) tome 3: Le si`ege de Paris (Paris: Librairie Illustr´ee, 1911), pp. 367–89. 43. Le Figaro, 21 January 1872; Le Si`ecle, 21 January 1872. 44. Le Figaro, 21 January 1873. 45. A. Bataille, M´emorial illustr´e de la guerre de 1870–1871 des deux si`eges de Paris de commune et des deux pr´esidences de M. Thiers et du Mar´echal de Mac-Mahon (Paris: Librairie Nationale, 1878), p. 238; P. Lehautcour, Si`ege de Paris – Le Bourget – Champigny 28 octobre–3 d´ecembre 1870 (Paris: Berger-Levrault et cie, 1898), p. 368. 46. Anon., Commune de Champigny-sur-Marne. Relation de l’inauguration du monument comm´emoratif des batailles des 30 novembre et 1 d´ecembre 1870. Pr´evost-Rousseau (Maire), Le Roy Desclosages (Adjoint), Fabre (Cur´e de Champigny) (Paris: Imprimerie Administration de Paul Dupont, 1873), p. 13. 47. Le Gaulois, 4 December 1873. 48. R. Tombs, The Paris Commune 1871 (Harlow: Longman, 1999), pp. 116–19. 49. Horne, Fall of Paris, p. 307. 50. AP VR 161, Minutes of the Conseil G´en´eral de la Seine, 30 November 1878, and 29 April 1879; AN F1cI 172, Letter from the Prefect of the Seine, 9 January 1879. 51. AP VR 161, List of competition entries. 52. Clayson, Paris, p. 113. 53. Ibid., p. 120. 54. G. Coquiot, Rodin a` l’hˆotel de Biron et a` Meudon (Paris: Librairie Ollendorff, 1917), p. 107. 55. P. Chamouard, ‘Un apr`es-midi d’´et´e 1883: L’inauguration de la statue’, in G. Weill (ed.), La perspective de La D´efense dans l’art et l’histoire (Nanterre: Archives d´epartementales des Hauts-de-Seine, 1983), p. 162.

258 Notes 56. J. R. Lehning, To be a Citizen: The Political Culture of the Early French Third Republic (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 68. 57. L’Intransigeant, 14 August 1883. 58. Gazette de France, 14 August 1883. 59. Tombs, Paris Commune, pp. 77–8. 60. Chamouard, ‘Un apr`es-midi’, p. 165; Le Petit Parisien, 14 August 1883; L’Intransigeant, 14 August 1883. 61. See, for instance, Le Gaulois, 25 November 1879. 62. Gazette de France, 14 August 1883. 63. Gil Blas, 14 August 1883. 64. L’Intransigeant, 14 August 1883. 65. L’Intransigeant, 12 June 1894. 66. On the events of the ceremony, see, for instance, Le Journal, 20 January 1896; L’Intransigeant, 21 January 1896; Le Gaulois, 20 January 1896. 67. P. M. Rutkoff, Revanche and Revision: The Ligue des Patriotes and the Origins of the Radical Right in France, 1882–1900 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1981), p. 117; B. Joly, Dictionnaire biographique et g´eographique du nationalisme franc¸ais (1880–1900): Boulangisme, Ligue des patriotes, mouvements anti-dreyfusards, comit´es antis´emites (Paris: Honor´e Champion Editeur, 1998), pp. 473, 475, 477, 493, 496, 497. 68. L’Intransigeant, 3 December 1889; La Justice, 2 December 1889. 69. B. Joly, D´eroul`ede: L’inventeur du nationalisme (Paris: Perrin, 1998), p. 167. 70. See L’Intransigeant, 1 December 1891 and La Justice, 30 November 1891. 71. AN F7 12870, Police report, 28 October 1901. 72. AN F7 12870, Police report, 9 December 1902. 73. L’Intransigeant, 1 December 1891. 74. Joly, D´eroul`ede, p. 179; L’Intransigeant, 6 December 1892; Le Gaulois, 5 December 1892. 75. Joly, D´eroul`ede, p. 182. 76. L’Intransigeant, 1 December 1891. 77. L’Aurore, 4 December 1900. 78. Joly, D´eroul`ede, p. 275; Le Gaulois, 5 December 1898. 79. AN F7 12458, Police report, 4 December 1899; Le Gaulois, 4 December 1899. 80. Le Temps, 1 November 1898; L’Intransigeant, 31 October 1899; Le Gaulois, 30 October 1899. 81. Joly, D´eroul`ede, p. 53. 82. AN F7 12458, Police report, 2 December 1899; Police report, 4 December 1899. 83. Le Gaulois, 3 December 1900. 84. L’Intransigeant, 27 December 1899. 85. L’Intransigeant, 17 November 1900; AN F7 12870, Police report, 30 November 1900. 86. Le Drapeau, 23 January 1886, 6 February 1886. 87. M. Winock, ‘Socialisme et patriotisme en France 1891–1894’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 20 (1973), 377–8. 88. J.-P. Brunet, Saint-Denis la ville rouge 1890–1939 (Paris: Hachette, 1980), p. 49; Le Figaro, 2 November 1893. 89. L’Intransigeant, 3 November 1894.

Notes 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98.

99. 100. 101. 102.

6

259

L’Intransigeant, 21 August 1894. L’Intransigeant, 12 June 1894. AN F1cI 174, Letter from the prefect of the Seine, 4 September 1899. AN F1cI 174, Meeting of the municipal council of Kremlin-Bicˆetre, 5 February 1898. Winock, ‘Socialisme’, 411. Ibid., 377, 413–15. Z. Sternhell, ‘National Socialism and Antisemitism: The Case of Maurice Barr`es’, Journal of Contemporary History, 8:4 (1973), 47–66 L’Intransigeant, 27 December 1895. D. R. Watson, ‘The Nationalist Movement in Paris 1900–1906’, in D. Shapiro (ed.), The Right in France 1890–1919 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1962), pp. 80–4. Cited in Joly, D´eroul`ede, p. 360. Ibid., p. 362. E. M. Carrol, French Public Opinion and Foreign Affairs 1870–1914 (London: Cass, 1965), p. 254. Cited in ibid., p. 254.

Martyrdom and resistance

1. On French responses to the memory of the Second World War, see, for instance, H. Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944, trans. A. Goldhammer (Cambridge Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1991); R. J. B. Bosworth, Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima: History Writing and the Second World War (London: Routledge, 1993). 2. While occurring in a very different context, the treatment of Oradoursur-Glane after the Second World War makes an interesting comparison with approaches to Bazeilles after 1870. See S. Farmer, Martyred Village: Commemorating the 1944 Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). 3. R. Gildea, The Past in French History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 112. 4. M. Howard, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870– 1871 (London: Routledge, 1962), pp. 207–10. 5. R. Sinsoilliez, Commandant Aubert: Les derni`eres cartouches Bazeilles 1870 (Cond´e-sur-Noireau: Corlet, 1999), pp. 37–9. 6. The Times, 16 September 1870; The Times, 8 September 1870. See also Anon., The War Correspondence of the Daily News 1870. Forming a Continuous History of the War Between Germany and France (London and New York: Macmillan and Co., 1871), p. 156. 7. Captain H. Helvig, Operations of the 1. Bavarian Army Corps, under General von der Tann, trans. Captain G. S. Schwabe (London: Henry S. King & Co., 1874), p. 95. 8. Ibid., p. 95. 9. Ibid., p. 95. 10. Sinsoilliez, Commandant Aubert, pp. 37–9.

260 Notes 11. Le Temps, 15 September 1870. 12. Sinsoilliez, Commandant Aubert, pp. 37–9. 13. A. Poittevin, Bazeilles ou les derni`eres cartouches. R´ecit historique de la guerre de 1870–1871 (Epernay: J. Debreuil, 1897), p. 65. 14. S. J. Capper, Wanderings in War Time. Being the Notes of Two Journeys Taken in France and Germany in the Autumn of 1870 and the Spring of 1871 (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1871), pp. 246–50. 15. Gil Blas, 21 September 1892; D´epartement de l’Int´erieur, Ex´ecution de la loi du 4 avril 1873 relative aux tombes des militaires morts pendant la guerre de 1870– 1871. Rapport pr´esent´e au Pr´esident de la R´epublique, par M. de Marc`ere, Ministre Secr´etaire d’Etat au D´epartement de l’Int´erieur (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1878), p. 284. 16. Soci´et´e Franc¸aise de secours aux bless´es militaires des Arm´ees de terre et de la mer, Recueil des documents sur les exactions, vols et cruaut´es des arm´ees prussiens en France (Bordeaux: Feret et Fils, 1871), p. 9. 17. J. Mary, Les derni`eres cartouches, tome 2: Le roman de l’enfant (Paris: E. Flammarion, 1902), p. 4. 18. E. Zola, The Debacle 1870–1871, trans. L. Tancock (London: Penguin, 1972), p. 244. 19. H. Mitterrand, Zola, tome II: L’homme de Germinal 1871–1893 (Paris: Fayard, 2001), pp. 1082–3. 20. B. Taithe, Defeated Flesh: Welfare, Warfare and the Making of Modern France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), p. 164. 21. Ibid., p. 164. 22. See, for instance, J. Turquan, Les h´eros de la d´efaite. Livre d’or des vaincus, r´ecits de guerre de 1870–1871 (Paris: Librairie Militaire Berger-Levrault et Cie, 1888). 23. Taithe, Defeated, p. 158. 24. The Times, 13 September 1870. 25. M. R. Stoneman, ‘The Bavarian Army and French Civilians in the War of 1870–1871: A Cultural Interpretation’, War in History, 8:3 (2001), 276. 26. J. Horne and A. Kramer, ‘German ‘‘Atrocities’’ and Franco-German Opinion, 1914: The Evidence of German Soldiers’ Diaries’, Journal of Modern History, 66 (1994), 16–17. 27. Howard, Franco-Prussian, p. 251. 28. J.-C. Farcy, La guerre de 1870–1871 en Eure-et-Loir (Chartres: CDDP, 1981), pp. 68–107. 29. Soci´et´e Internationale, Recueil, 23. 30. Field Marshal Count H. von Moltke, The Franco-German War of 1870–1871, vol. 1, trans. C. Bell and H. W. Fischer (London: James R. Osgood McIlvane & Co., 1891), pp. 87–8. 31. Stoneman, ‘Bavarian Army’, 280. 32. On images of the p´etroleuses see E. Thomas, The Women Incendiaries (London: Secker and Warburg, 1967); G. L. Gullickson, Unruly Women of Paris: Images of the Commune (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 159–90. 33. Similar tendencies have been observed in the period after the First World War in Horne and Kramer, ‘German ‘‘Atrocities’’ ’, 12.

Notes

261

34. J. Bourgerie, Bazeilles combats, incendies, massacres (Tours: Imprimerie de P. Bousrez, 1897), pp. 131–2. 35. D. Pick, War Machine: The Rationalisation of Slaughter in the Modern Age (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 97–102. 36. C. Digeon, La crise allemande de la pens´ee franc¸aise (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959), p. 53. 37. For a discussion of the debate surrounding army discipline, see Chapter 8. 38. On the impact of the Geneva Convention in the Franco-Prussian War, see Taithe, Defeated. 39. J. Milner, Art, War and Revolution in France 1870–1871: Myth, Reportage and Reality (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. x, 57. 40. See The Times, 8 September 1870. 41. Cited in Le Temps, 15 September 1870. 42. ‘Nemesis’, Crimes, forfaits, atrocit´es et vols commis par les Prussiens sur le sol de la France (Brussels: Publisher unknown, 1871), p. 24. 43. L. Appleton, Reminiscences of a Visit to the Battle Fields of Sedan, Gravelotte, Spicheren, and W¨orth and the Bombarded Towns of Thionville, Metz, Strasbourg, Bitche etc. (London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co., 1871), pp. 29–30. 44. AN C2817, Commission charg´ee d’examiner le projet de loi relatif a` la conservation de tombes des soldats morts pendant la derni`ere guerre, 20, 24 janvier 1873. 45. G. Bastard, Bazeilles dix ans apr`es (Paris: E. Dentu, 1880), pp. 144–5. 46. Ibid., p. 143. 47. Abb´e E. Fouquet, Bazeilles pendant la guerre de 1870 et le 25e anniversaire (Balan-Sedan: Imprimerie du patronage, 1896), pp. 97–8. 48. Bourgerie, Bazeilles, p. 106. 49. D. W. Lloyd, Battlefield Tourism: Pilgrimage and Commemoration of the Great War in Britain, Australia and Canada, 1919–1939 (Oxford: Berg, 1998), pp. 112–29. 50. G. L. Mosse, Fallen, 126. 51. AN F9 1373, Balan file, Letter from departmental architect Racine, 11 January 1877. 52. Sinsoilliez, Commandant Aubert, p. 72. 53. Bourgerie, Bazeilles, p. 108. 54. A. Meyrac, G´eographie illustr´ee des Ardennes (Charleville: Edouard Jolly, 1900). 55. A. Becker, ‘Monuments aux morts apr`es la guerre de s´ecession et la guerre de 1870–1871: Un legs de la guerre nationale?’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 167 (1992), 30. 56. T. A. Kselman, Death and the Afterlife in Modern France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 75. 57. Abb´e F. Theur´e, Souvenir du 2 d´ecembre 1870. Loigny, son e´ glise, ses monuments (Chartres: l’Abb´e C. M´etais, 1896), pp. 19–24. 58. Bourgerie, Bazeilles, p. 108. 59. Ibid., p. 108. 60. Zola, Debacle, p. 238; Le Figaro, 1 September 1891. 61. J. Bourgerie, Catalogue du mus´ee de Bazeilles (Charleville: A. Pouillard, 1884), p. 20. 62. Poittevin, Bazeilles, pp. 68–70.

262 Notes 63. F. Robichon, L’arm´ee franc¸aise vue par les peintres 1870–1914 (Paris: Herscher/ Minist`ere de la D´efense, 2000), p. 24. 64. Sinsoilliez, Commandant Aubert, pp. 54–6. 65. E. Montrosier, Les peintres militaires (Paris: H. Launette, 1881), p. 10. 66. A. Alexandre, Histoire de la peinture militaire en France (Paris: H. Laurens, 1889), pp. 290–2. 67. Zola, Debacle, pp. 242–8. 68. E. Lepelletier, Emile Zola. Sa vie, son oeuvre (Paris: Mercure de France, 1908), pp. 368–9. 69. See, especially, Zola, Debacle, pp. 44–58; Howard, Franco-Prussian, pp. 213–14. 70. Zola, Debacle, p. 191. 71. Le Figaro, 19 September 1892; Gil Blas, 21 September 1892. 72. B. Taithe, ‘Rhetoric, Propaganda and Memory: Framing the Franco-Prussian War’, in B. Taithe and T. Thornton (eds), Propaganda: Political Rhetoric and Identity 1300–2000 (London: Sutton Publishing, 1999), p. 212. 73. Minist`ere, Inventaire g´en´eral, Province, vol. 4, p. 179. 74. Ibid., p. 197. 75. Abb´e G. Fr´emont, Discours prononc´e le 9 novembre 1891 dans le cath´edrale de Poitiers a` l’occasion du service fun`ebre c´el´ebr´e en l’honneur des soldats morts pour la patrie pendant la guerre franco-allemande de 1870–1 (Poitiers: Imprimerie de Oudin, 1892), p. 10. 76. Turquan, Les h´eros, pp. 319–21. 77. Comte de Comminges, Souvenirs d’enfance et du r´egiment, 1831–1870–1871 (Paris: Plon, 1910), pp. 245–56. 78. S. Audoin-Rouzeau, 1870 la France dans la guerre (Paris: Armand Colin, 1989), pp. 133–7. 79. Ibid., pp. 210–11. 80. L. Lacroix, Journal d’un habitant de Nancy pendant l’invasion de 1870–1871 (Nancy: Vagner, 1873), pp. 51–2. 81. W. Schivelbusch, The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery, trans. J. Chase (London: Granta, 2003), p. 115. 82. Bourgerie, Bazeilles, p. 94. 83. L’Intransigeant, 29 March 1899. 84. L’Aurore, 26 March 1899; L’Intransigeant, 29 March 1899. 85. Le Gaulois, 27 March 1899. 86. Ibid., 28 April 1899. 87. They included Le Drapeau, L’Echo de Paris, L’Eclair, L’Intransigeant, Le Journal, La Libre Parole, Le Matin, Le Petit Journal, La Presse, La Patrie, La R´epublique Franc¸aise, and Le Soir. For full lists see Le Gaulois, 29 April 1899, 30 April 1899. 88. Le Gaulois, 1 May 1899. 89. Schivelbusch, Culture, p. 123 90. Digeon, La crise, pp. 160–2. 91. Pick, War Machine, pp. 88–95. 92. P. Margueritte and V. Margueritte, Une e´ poque, tome 4: La Commune, vol. 4 (Paris: Plon, 1898–1904), p. 37. 93. P. D´eroul`ede, Chants du soldat (Paris: Calmann L´evy, 1875), p. 12. 94. L. Hennique, ‘L’affaire du grand 7’, in E. Zola et al., Les soir´ees de M´edan (Paris: Le livre a` venir, 1981).

Notes

263

95. A. Daudet, Robert Helmont. Journal d’un solitaire (Paris: F. Flammarion, 1897), p. 85. ´ 96. O. Mirbeau, Le calvaire (Paris: Les Editions Nationales, 1934), pp. 63–5. 97. Daudet, Helmont, p. 136. 98. G. de Maupassant, ‘Le p`ere Milon’, in G. de Maupassant, Oeuvres posthumes (Paris: Conard, 1929), p. 5; G. de Maupassant, ‘Saint Anthony’, in G. de Maupassant, 88 Short Stories , trans. E. Boyd and S. Jameson (London: Cassell, 1934). 99. G. de Maupassant, ‘The Capture of Walter Schnaffs’, in G. de Maupassant (ed.), Selected Short Stories (London: Penguin, 1995), pp. 147–55. 100. G. de Maupassant, ‘Boule de Suif’, in Maupassant, Selected, p. 23. 101. Zola, Debacle, p. 250. 102. Ibid., pp. 248–9. 103. Ibid., p. 485. 104. Digeon, La crise, p. 286. 105. The Times, 11 October 1892. 106. Le Figaro, 19 September 1892. 107. Arnaud, La ‘D´ebˆacle’, 17.

7 The lost provinces 1. R. Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (London and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 12. 2. See Renan’s lecture to the Sorbonne delivered in 1882 entitled ‘Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?’ 3. D. P. Silverman, Reluctant Union: Alsace-Lorraine and Imperial Germany 1871–1918 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1972), p. 68. 4. Ibid., p. 69. 5. Ibid., p. 18. 6. Ibid., p. 112. 7. Ibid., pp. 151–9. 8. See also, J.-M. Mayeur, ‘Une m´emoire-fronti`ere: L’Alsace’, in P. Nora (ed.), Les lieux de m´emoire, tome 2: La nation, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), p. 78; P. Smith, ‘A la recherche d’une identit´e nationale en Alsace (1870–1918)’, Vingti`eme si`ecle revue d’histoire, 50 (1996), 28. 9. M. E. Nolan, The Inverted Mirror: Mythologizing the Enemy in France and Germany, 1898–1914 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), p. 71. 10. C. Digeon, La crise allemande de la pens´ee franc¸aise (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959), p. 19. 11. S. Audoin-Rouzeau, 1870 la France dans la guerre (Paris: Armand Colin, 1989), pp. 268–72. 12. S. J. Capper, Wanderings in War Time. Being the Notes of Two Journeys Taken in France and Germany in the Autumn of 1870 and the Spring of 1871 (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1871), p. 69. 13. Nolan, Inverted Mirror, p. 72. 14. J. Milner, Art, War and Revolution in France 1870–1871: Myth, Reportage and Reality (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 195.

264 Notes 15. A. Daudet, ‘La vision du juge de Colmar’, in A. Daudet (ed.), Contes du lundi (Paris: Biblioth`eque Charpentier, 1890), pp. 28–35. 16. J. Ozouf and M. Ozouf, ‘Le tour de France par deux enfants’, in P. Nora (ed.), Les lieux de m´emoire, tome 1: La R´epublique (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), p. 292. 17. Ibid., pp. 294, 303. 18. J. Strachan, ‘Romance Religion, and the Republic: Bruno’s Le tour de France par deux enfants’, French History, 18:1 (2004), 117. 19. R. Thomson, Monet to Matisse: Landscape Painting in France 1874–1914 (Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 1994), pp. 17–20. 20. See R. Brettell, ‘The Impressionist Landscape and the Image of France’, in Los Angeles County Museum of Art, A Day in the Country: Impressionism and the French Landscape (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1984), p. 27. 21. G. Ducrocq, La blessure mal ferm´ee. Notes d’un voyageur en Alsace-Lorraine (Paris: Plon, 1911). 22. Nolan, Inverted Mirror, p. 77. 23. E. About, L’Alsace 1871–1872, 6th edn (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1887), pp. 68–9. 24. Ibid., pp. 69, 77. 25. A. Daudet, ‘La derni`ere cartouche’, in Daudet, Contes, pp. 11–19. 26. R. Perreau, Hansi ou l’Alsace r´ev´el´ee (Meaux: Editions Alsatia, 1962), pp. 39, 95. 27. Ibid., p. 100. 28. M. Barr`es, Au service de l’Allemagne (Paris: Fayard, 1905). 29. M. Barr`es, Colette Baudoche (Paris: Plon, 1911). 30. Official statistics cited in E. Badel, Mars-la-Tour et son monument national (Mars-la-Tour: Ritter Roscop, 1893), pp. 30–1. 31. See A. Henry, B. Houssemand, and J. Nauroy, ‘Les lieux de m´emoire de la guerre de 1870 en pays messin’, Les cahiers lorrains, 3–4 (1992), 335. 32. M. Howard, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870– 1871 (London: Routledge, 1962), p. 426. 33. J. P. T. Bury and R. P. Tombs, Thiers 1797–1877: A Political Life (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986), p. 198. 34. La Presse, 2–4 March 1871. 35. E. Riche, ‘Les Belfortains et le Lion (1871–1914)’, M´emoire de Maˆıtrise, Universit´e de Mulhouse (1995–1996), 98. 36. Conseil Municipal de Mars-la-Tour, Cr´eation d’un chef-lieu de canton en remplacement de Gorze (Moselle annex´e). Erection d’un monument comm´emoratif de la bataille de Mars-la-Tour le 16 aoˆut 1870. Question cantonale. Conseil municipale de Mars-la-Tour s´eance du 3 mars 1872 (Paris: Imprimerie de Michels, 1872), pp. 10–11. 37. AMB 1M 31, Letter from Bartholdi to the Mayor, 16 March 1872. 38. Ibid. 39. Audoin-Rouzeau, 1870, pp. 268–72. 40. W. Kidd, Les monuments aux morts mosellans de 1870 a` nos jours (Metz: Editions Serpenoise, 1999), p. 20. 41. Badel, Mars-la-Tour, p. 64; Le Gaulois, 17 August 1893. 42. S. Ceccaldi, Le Lion de Belfort, un monument pour l’avenir (Paris: Cit´edis, 1980), p. 18. 43. AMB 1M 31, Letter from Bartholdi to the Mayor, 12 April 1872.

Notes

265

44. Letter reproduced in O. Leroy, Mars-la-Tour 16–18 aoˆut 1870 (Paris: Librairie Fischbacher, 1887), p. 64. 45. Silverman, Reluctant, pp. 91–110. 46. A. Maas, ‘Politische Ikonographie im Deutsch-Franz¨ osischen Spannungsfeld: Die Kriegerdenkm¨aler von 1870/1871 auf den Schlachtfeldern um Metz’, in R. Koselleck and M. Jeisman (eds), Der Politische Totenkult in Kriegerdenkm¨aler in der Moderner (Munich: W. Fink, 1994), p. 218. 47. ADMM 1M 670, Letter from the Prefect to the Sub-Prefect 15 May 1875. Letter from the Prefect to the President of the Council 15 May 1875. 48. Ibid. 49. ADMM 1M 670, Letter from the Prefect to the Interior Minister, 31 October 1875. Letter from the Prefect to the Interior Minister, urgent, 1 November 1875. 50. Le Figaro, 15 August 1875. 51. ADMM 1M 670, Telegram from the Interior Minister to the Prefect, marked urgent, 24 October 1875; Telegram from the Sub-Prefect of Briey to the Prefect, 26 October 1875. 52. Gazette de l’Est, 4 November 1875. 53. AMB 1M 31, Minutes of Prefect Council, 2 April 1883. 54. Ceccaldi, Lion, p. 30. 55. Le Gaulois, 22 September 1880; Le Si`ecle, 22 September 1880; La R´epublique Franc¸aise, 23 September 1880. 56. E. M. Carrol, French Public Opinion and Foreign Affairs 1870–1914 (London: Cass, 1965), p. 81. 57. ADMM 4M 219, Report from the Prefect to the Police, 3 July 1896. 58. ADMM 4M 194, Police report, 17 May 1891; Police report, 15 August 1891; Police report, Conflans-Jarny, 18 September 1895; Telegram from Jarny Police to the Prefect, 19 May 1907. 59. ADMM 4M 199, Pagny Police Report, 4 September 1880. 60. ADMM 1M 663, Police Report from Conflans-Jarny, 29 July 1899. 61. ADMM 1M 671, Telegram from the Prefect and Sub-Prefect to the Interior Minister, 16 February 1909. 62. ADMM 1M 663, Report from the Sub-Prefect of Briey, 17 August 1891; F. Roth, Lorraine annex´ee: Etude sur la pr´esidence de Lorraine dans l’empire allemand (1870–1918) (Nancy: Annales de l’est publi´ees par l’universit´e de Nancy II, 1976), p. 427. 63. ADMM 4M 219, Letter from General Jamont, Commander of the 6th army corps, to the Prefect, 9 June 1893. 64. ADMM 4M 219, Report from the Prefect to the Police, 4 November 1897. 65. La Libre Parole, 18 August 1895; ADMM 1M 663, Report from the Sub-Prefect of Briey, 17 August 1891. 66. La Libre Parole, 18 August 1895. For the concern of French officials on the tone and content of Turinaz’s sermons, see ADMM 1M 663, Letter from the Sub-Prefect of Briey to the Prefect, 4 August 1899; Police report for the Interior Minister, 18 August 1902. 67. La R´epublique Franc¸aise, 18 August 1895. 68. La Libre Parole, 17, 18 August 1895. 69. Y. Baradel, Belfort: De l’ancien r´egime au si`ege de 1870–1871 fonction r´egionale – impact national 1780–1870 (Belfort: Metthez, 1993), p. 11.

266 Notes 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

76. 77. 78. 79. 80.

81.

82. 83.

84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94.

8

Journal de Belfort et du Haut-Rhin, 24 January 1883. Italics in the original. La R´epublique, 2 April 1947. AMB 1M 33, Council Minutes, 8 January 1910. Le Voltaire, 2 September 1884. Le Matin, 1 September 1884. A. Maas, ‘Kriegerdenkm¨aler und Gendenkfeien um Metz: Formen und Funktion Kollektiver Erinnerung in einer Grenzregion (1870/1871–1918)’, in R. Hudemann and R. Wittenbrock (eds), Stadtenwicklung im DeutschFranz¨osisch-Luxemburgischen Grenzraum (19 und 20 Jahrhundert) (Saarbr¨ ucken: Kommissionverlag SDV Saabr¨ ucker Druckerei und Verlag, 1991), p. 92. Roth, Lorraine annex´ee, p. 426. Ibid., pp. 110–12. J.-P. Jean, Le livre d’or du Souvenir franc¸ais. Lorraine, Alsace, Luxembourg, Lorraine Sarroise (Metz: Imprimerie des Arts Graphiques Modernes, 1929), p. 10. Roth, Lorraine annex´ee, p. 546; Le Gaulois, 8 October 1908; Jean, Livre d’or, p. 13. W. Kidd, ‘Memory, Memorials and Commemorations of War Memorials in Lorraine, 1908–1988’, in M. Evans and K. Lunn (eds), War and Memory in the Twentieth Century (Oxford and New York: Berg, 1997), p. 144. Anon., Inauguration du monument e´ lev´e a` Mars-la-Tour a` la m´emoire des soldats franc¸ais morts pour la patrie dans les journ´ees des 16 et 18 aoˆut 1870 (Nancy: Berger-Levrault, 1876), pp. 62–3. Ibid., p. 7. Le Gaulois, 8 October 1908; Anon., Inauguration du monument de Noisseville e´ lev´e aux soldats franc¸ais en 1870 sur les champs de bataille a` l’est de Metz (Metz: Imprimerie Lorraine, 1908), pp. 62–3. Ibid., p. 547. Jean, Livre d’or, p. 282. Roth, Lorraine annex´ee, p. 548. Ducrocq, La blessure, pp. 105–6. Jean, Livre d’or, pp. 282–3. Oncle Hansi, Mon village. Ceux qui n’oublient pas (Paris: H. Floury, 1913), p. 2. Ibid., p. 12. Barr`es, Colette Baudoche, pp. 278–86. F. Roth, La Guerre de 70 (Paris: Fayard, 1990), p. 706. L’Intransigeant, 17 August 1910. L. Boswell, ‘From Liberation to Purge Trials in the ‘‘Mythic Provinces’’: Recasting French Identities in Alsace-Lorraine, 1918–1920’, French Historical Studies 23:1 (2000), 131–2.

Arming the nation 1. Cited in A. Horne, The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870–1871 (London: Macmillan, 1965), p. 429. 2. M. Howard, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870– 1871 (London: Routledge, 1962), p. 252; T. Rohkr¨amer, ‘Daily Life on the Front and the Concept of Total War’, in S. F¨ orster and J. Nagler (eds), On the

Notes

3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25.

26.

27. 28. 29. 30.

31.

267

Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 506. Howard, Franco-Prussian, p. 254. Ibid., p. 253. G. Krumeich, ‘The Myth of Gambetta and the ‘‘People’s War’’ in Germany and France, 1871–1914’, in S. F¨ orster and J. Nagler (eds), On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 649. P. Gras, Histoire de Dijon (Toulouse: Privat, 1987), p. 332. AMD 1M 16, Council Minutes, 5 November 1870. Ibid. P. Pilbeam, The 1830 Revolution in France (London: Macmillan, 1991), p. 164. M. Agulhon, Marianne into Battle: Republican Imagery and Symbolism in France 1789–1880 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 158. J. Hargrove, ‘Les monuments au tribut de la gloire’, in P. Viallaneix and J. Ehrard (eds), La bataille, l’arm´ee, la gloire 1745–1871: Actes du colloque internationale de Clermont-Ferrand (Clermont-Ferrand: Association des Publications de la Facult´e des Lettres, 1985), p. 565. La Cˆote-d’Or, 21 October 1875. AMD 1M 16, Letter from the Prefect to the Mayor, 21 October 1875. AMD 1M 16, Letter from Vionnois to Mayor 22 October 10.30 PM. Le Si`ecle, 28 October 1875. C. Martinet, ‘La r´epublique s’installe a` Dijon: Histoire d’une bataille monumentale’, Monuments Historiques, 144 (1986), 69–72. P. A. Dormoy, Les trois batailles de Dijon 30 octobre–26 novembre, 21 janvier (Paris: Librairie militaire E. Dubois, 1894), p. 61. Ibid., p. 60. Dijonnais, t´emoin oculaire, La premi`ere d´efense de Dijon 30 octobre 1870 (Dijon: F Carre, 1879), p. 15. Dormoy, Trois batailles, p. 63. AMD 1M 16, Council Minutes, 5 November 1870. AMD 1M 16, Minutes of the Jury, 12 March 1872. Le Progr`es de la Cˆote-d’Or, 27 October 1875. AMD 1M 16, Letter from Vionnois to the Mayor, 9 January 1873; Letter to the Mayor from Vionnois, 14 March 1874; Letter to the Mayor, 25 April 1874. S. Lami, Dictionnaire des sculpteurs de l’´ecole franc¸aise aux dix-neuvi`eme si`ecle, 4 vols, vol. 1 (Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honor´e Champion, 1914–1919), p. 219. See in particular L’Ev´enement, 26, 30 October 1875; Le Progr`es de la Cˆote-d’Or, 27, 28, 30 October 1875; L’Opinion Nationale, 30 October 1875; La R´epublique Franc¸aise, 1 November 1875. Le Progr`es de la Cˆote-d’Or, 27, 28 October 1875. Le Bien Public, 13 October 1875. Cited in Le Progr`es de la Cˆote-d’Or, 30 October 1875. AMD 1M 16, Letter from the Prefect to the Mayor, 21 October 1875; AMD 1M 16, Letter from Cabet to the Arts Minister, no date; Le Si`ecle, 28 October 1875. Agulhon, Marianne into Battle, p. 84.

268 Notes 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

Ibid., pp. 54–6. Ibid., p. 45. La R´epublique Franc¸aise, 1 November 1875. Le Si`ecle, 28 October 1875. L’Ev´enement, 26 October 1875; Le Figaro, 28 October 1875; La Cˆote d’Or, 27 October 1875. P.-B. Gheusi, La vie et la mort singuli´eres de Gambetta (Paris: Albin Michel Editeur, 1932), p. 190; see also L. Thomas, Le g´en´eral de Galliffet (1830–1909) (Paris: Aux armes de France, 1941). E. Valnas, Le monument des enfants du Rhˆone. D´efenseurs de la patrie en 1870– 1871 inaugur´e a` Lyon le 30 octobre 1887 (Lyon: Librairie G´en´erale Henri Georg, 1887), p. 10. ADR 1M 169, Letter from the Prefect of the Rhˆ one to the Interior Minister, 29 October 1887. ADR 1M 169, Letter from the Prefect of the Rhˆ one to the Interior Minister, 31 October 1887. Valnas, Monument, p. 23. B. Taithe, ‘Slow Revolutionary Deaths: Murder, Silence and Memory in the Early Third Republic’, French History, 17:3 (2003), 284. R. A. Jonas, ‘L’ann´ee terrible, 1870–1871’, in J. Benoist (ed.), Le Sacr´e Coeur de Montmartre: Un voeu national (Paris: D´el´egation de l’action artistique de la Ville de Sedan, 1992), p. 33. B. Benoˆıt, L’identit´e politique de Lyon: Entre violences collectives et m´emoires des e´ lites (1786–1905) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999), p. 78. L. M. Greenberg, Sisters of Liberty: Marseille, Lyon, Paris, and the Reaction to a Centralized State, 1868–1871 (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 221–222. Benoˆıt, L’identit´e, p. 75. Anon., Les enfants du Rhˆone 1870–1871. Nuits, Belfort, Gloria Victis 30 Octobre 1887 (Lyon: Imprimerie de Vitte et Perrussel, 1887), p. 17. P. Valin, M´emoires d’un citoyen concernant les e´ v´enements de Lyon 1870–1871 (Lyon: Veuve F. L´epagnez, 1877), p. 104. Taithe, ‘Slow Revolutionary’, 281. ADR 4M 536, Police Report, 26 September 1880; Police Report, 20 March 1881. J. Mouton, R´eponse a` M. Ferrer. R´ecit historique des op´erations de la 2e l´egion du Rhˆone pendant la guerre de 1870–1871 depuis son organisation jusqu’`a son licenciement (Lyon: J. Nigon, 1871), pp. 7–8; M. Ferrer, Causes de l’arrestation de M. Ferrer ex-colonel de la 2e l´egion du Rhˆone (Lyon: Guignol Illustr´e, 1871), pp. 7–12. Greenberg, Sisters of Liberty, p. 237. Ibid., pp. 254–6. ADR N1041, Conseil G´en´eral du Rhˆ one, session extraordinaire du 23 d´ecembre 1878, pp. 29–42. ADR N1041, Conseil G´en´eral du Rhˆ one, 17–18 September 1878, p. 1236. ADR N1041. Conseil G´en´eral du Rhˆ one, session extraordinaire du 23 d´ecembre 1878, pp. 29–42. ADR N1041, Conseil G´en´eral du Rhˆ one, 17–18 September 1878, p. 1236.

Notes

269

58. J. A. Lynn, ‘Toward an Army of Honor: The Moral Evolution of the French Army, 1789–1815’, French Historical Studies, 16:1 (1989), 165. 59. See, for instance, Le Petit Journal, 31 January 1895. 60. Anon., Enfants, p. 7. 61. ADR N1041, Conseil G´en´eral du Rhˆ one, 17–18 September 1878, p. 1236. 62. J.-C. Wartelle, ‘Lyon 1873: Joseph Ducros, pr´efet de l’ordre moral’, L’histoire, 12 (1979), 9–12. 63. F. Bayard and P. Cayez, Histoire de Lyon du XVIe si`ecle a` nos jours, vol. 2 (Le Coteau: Horvath, 1990), p. 297. 64. AML 468 WP 013 2, Minutes of the Conseil G´en´eral du Rhˆ one, 3 May 1879. 65. Le Temps, 1 November 1887. 66. Le Progr`es de Lyon, 26 October 1887. 67. Le Petit Lyonnais, 31 October 1887 68. Mouton, R´eponse, 97–99. 69. ADR N1041, Conseil G´en´eral du Rhˆ one, 17–18 September 1878, p. 1236. 70. AN F7 12363, Letter from the Prefect of the Rhˆ one, 7 August 1877. 71. W. Serman, ‘Denfert-Rochereau et la discipline dans l’arm´ee franc¸aise entre 1895 et 1874’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 20 (1973), 99. 72. D. B. Ralston, The Army of the Republic: The Place of the Military in the Political Evolution of France, 1871–1914 (Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1967), p. 32; La Fronti`ere, 31 August 1884. 73. M. Agulhon, ‘Le mythe de Garibaldi en France de 1882 a` nos jours’, in M. Agulhon (ed.), Histoire vagabonde, tome II: Id´eologies et politique dans le France de XIXe si`ecle (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), p. 95. 74. AMD 1M 16, Council Minutes, 21 November 1871. 75. AMD 1I1/132, Report, no date, no author. 76. Bulletin Municipal Officiel de la Ville de Paris, 30 March 1900. 77. Dijonnais, La premi`ere, p. 7. 78. R. Molis, Les francs-tireurs et les Garibaldi: Soldats de la r´epublique 1870–1871 en Bourgogne (Paris: Editions Tir´esias, 1995), p. 120. 79. J. Ridley, Garibaldi (London: Constable, 1974), p. 610. 80. H. Toussaint, Garibaldi et l’arm´ee de l’est (Dijon: Imprimerie de Jobard, 1898), p. 29. 81. Assembl´ee Nationale, Enquˆete parlementaire sur les actes du gouvernement de la d´efense nationale. D´epositions des t´emoins, tome IV (Versailles, Cerf et Fils, 1873), p. 9. 82. Ibid., pp. 6–7. 83. Assembl´ee Nationale, Enquˆete parlementaire sur les actes du gouvernement de la d´efense nationale. Rapport, tome III – Le Comte Daru (Paris, Cerf et Fils, 1873), p. 22. 84. R. Middleton, Garibaldi ses op´erations a` l’arm´ee des Vosges (Paris: Amyot, 1871), p. 78. 85. Ridley, Garibaldi, p. 607. 86. P. Levˆeque, ‘Garibaldi vu par la presse Dijonnaise 1849–1900’, Annales de Bourgogne, 54 (1982), 213. 87. P. Barrallon, Comit´e des survivants de l’arm´ee des Vosges. Discours prononc´e aux fˆetes d’inauguration de la statue de Garibaldi, 25–26 mars 1900 (Dijon: Publisher unknown, 1900), p. 22. 88. Assembl´ee Nationale, Enquˆete, tome IV, p. 11.

270 Notes 89. Le Soleil, 27 March 1900; Express de Lyon, 25 March 1900; Le M´emorial (Pau) 28 March 1900. 90. Toussaint, Garibaldi, p. 24. 91. ADC 1M 532, Letter from the Interior Minister to the Prefect, 7 December 1895. 92. ADC 1M 533, Letter from the Interior Minister to the Prefect, 5 June 1894. 93. C. Digeon, La crise allemande de la pens´ee franc¸aise (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959), pp. 53–6. 94. Howard, Franco-Prussian, pp. 253–4. 95. B. Taithe, Citizenship and Wars: France in Turmoil 1870–1871 (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 23. 96. Express de Lyon, 25 March 1900; Le Bien Public (Dijon) 25 March 1900; Le M´emorial (Pau), 28 March 1900. 97. Agulhon, ‘Le mythe’, p. 100; see also A. C. de la Rive, Il Condottiere Giuseppe Garibaldi (1870–1871) (Paris: Albert Savine Editeur, 1892), p. vii. 98. Le Soleil, 27 March 1900. 99. La Petite R´epublique, 27 March 1900. 100. Besson, L’ann´ee, 270. 101. Le M´emorial (Pau) 28 March 1900. 102. P. Poirrier and L. Vadelorge, ‘La statuaire provinciale sous la troisi`eme r´epublique une e´ tude compar´ee: Rouen et Dijon’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 42 (1995), 265.

Conclusion 1. See in particular J. Horne and A. Kramer, ‘German ‘‘Atrocities’’ and FrancoGerman Opinion, 1914: The Evidence of German Soldiers’ Diaries’, Journal of Modern History, 66 (1994), 1–33. 2. J.-J. Becker, 1914, comment les franc¸ais sont entr´es dans la guerre (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1977), pp. 575–6. 3. Ibid., pp. 582–3. 4. A. Horne, The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870–1871 (London: Macmillan, 1965), p. 429; C. Williams, P´etain (London: Little Brown, 2005), pp. 28–34. 5. L. V. Smith, S. Audoin-Rouzeau, and A. Becker, France and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 170–4. 6. P. Jackson, ‘Returning to the Fall of France: Recent Work on the Causes and Consequences of the ‘‘Strange Defeat’’ of 1940’, Modern and Contemporary France, 12:3 (2004), 362–84. 7. Williams, P´etain, pp. 28–34. 8. J. Jackson, The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 104. 9. R. Gildea, The Past in French History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 128. 10. M. Bloch, Etrange d´efaite. T´emoignage e´ crit en 1940 (Paris: Soci´et´e des Editions Franc-Tireur, 1946), p. 131. 11. Ibid., p. 46.

Notes

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12. Gildea, Past, p. 128. 13. C. de Gaulle, War Memoirs, vol. 1: The Call to Honour 1940–1942, trans. J. Griffin (London: Viking Press, 1955), p. 10. 14. C. de Gaulle, Le fil de l’´ep´ee (Paris: Editions Berger-Levrault, 1944), pp. 28, 39–40. 15. Gildea, Past, p. 129.

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Archives Archives D´epartementales de la Cˆ ote-d’Or 1M530, 1M531, 1M532, 1M533, 1M534, 1M535, 1M536, 1M537, 1M538, 8R SM1565, 8R SM1566

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Index About, Edmond, 177, 179–80 Agulhon, Maurice, 8, 14, 108, 206, 212 Alexis, Paul, 82, 83 Algeria, 79, 88, 97–103, 125 Algeria, uprisings of, 79, 97–103, 1871 Alsace, identity, 173, 178–202, 229 Alsace-Lorraine, 2, 3, 5, 12, 16, 22, 26, 29, 30, 31, 48, 50, 54, 60, 72, 74, 84, 102–3, 106, 117–19, 134, 175–202, 227, 231 Amalvi, Christian, 64 American Civil War, 11, 14 amnesia, 25, 55, 77–8 amy, cult of, 17, 26, 31, 80–3, 98, 99, 127, 170, 203 Anderson, Benedict, 14 Ankersmit, F. R., 77 anti-clericalism, 41, 43, 44, 56, 63–4, 66, 70, 75, 102, 132, 135, 139, 151, 177, 221, 225, 228, 229 anti-militarism, 25, 53, 81, 99, 146–9, 171, 225 Arab Bureaux, 99–102 Arc de Triomphe, 59, 139, 212, 231 Ari`es, Philippe, 57 armistice, terms of, 129, 222 army allegations of indiscipline, 33, 44, 45, 81, 82–3, 137, 167, 204, 220, 224 changing attitudes towards, 25–6, 31–41, 52, 80–3, 92–3, 135, 170, 203–20 reforms, 2, 34, 39–40, 66, 80, 88, 220, 225, 231 relationship with National Guard, 3, 135–9, 142–3, 151, 204–17, 228 Army of Chˆalons, 165 Army of the Rhine, 2, 34, 181

Army of Versailles, 31, 37, 129, 135, 139, 143, 149, 151 Army of the Vosges, 220, 222, 223 Auban, Paul, 221 Aubert, Captain, 166, 170 Audoin-Rouzeau, St´ephane, 16, 168, 187 Aumale, Henri d’Orl´eans duc d’, 36–7 Aurelle de Paladines, General Claude Michel d’, 33 Avron, 144, 148 Ayron, Richard, 101 Azincourt, Louis d’, 209 Badel, Emile, 190 Baedeker guides, 119 Baraguay d’Hilliers, Marshal Achille, 35 Barail, General Franc¸ois Charles du, 37 Barrallon, Pierre, 223 Barr`es, Maurice Au service de l’Allemagne, 181 Colette Baudoche, 181, 200 cult of the dead, 73–4, 116, 117–18, 200 nationalism, 47–53, 73–4, 118 Barrias, Ernest, 140–2 Bartholdi, Auguste, 56, 119–20, 140, 183–96 Lion de Belfort, 119–20, 183–96 Monument aux trois si`eges, 183, 187, 195, 196 Bastard, Georges, 116, 118 battlefield visits, 31, 104, 113–21, 228 Bazaine, Marshal Franc¸ois-Achille, 2, 3, 22, 25–6, 34–9, 45, 99, 136, 181, 217, 225, 232, 233 accusations of treason, 34–9, 232, 233 Bazeilles, 18, 26, 69, 84, 85, 90, 91, 106, 119, 121–4, 152–74, 229

292

Index 293 Bazeilles, ossuary, 119, 121, 162–5 Bazin, Ren´e, 30, 180 Becker, Annette, 10, 14, 61, 163 Becker, Jean-Jacques, 230 B´edarida, Franc¸ois, 38 Belfort, 3, 18, 119–20, 127, 182–96, 203, 219–20, 229, 231 retention of, 182–3, 185 Bellanger, Hippolyte, 26 Bellemare, General Carey de, 135–7 Ben-Amos, Avner, 67 Berne-Bellecour, Etienne Prosper, 27, 80 Besson, Abbot, 43–4, 68 Bien Public, Le, 211, 223 Bismarck, Prince Otto von, 1, 2, 171, 177, 183, 191 Blanqui, Auguste, 49, 141, 144 Bloch, Marc, 232 Bogino, Louis, 189, 191–2 Boime, Albert, 133 Boissonet, General, 138 Bonapartism, 8, 22, 26, 32, 37–8, 88, 90–1, 97, 177, 214 Bonnetain, Paul, 81 Bordone, General Philippe Bourdon, 223 Boulanger, General Georges, 13, 22, 23, 27, 48–9, 54, 214 Boulangism, 23, 48–54, 90, 146–51, 195 Bourbaki, General Charles, 3, 183, 218, 222–3, 225 Bourgerie, J., 163–6 Boutigny, Emile, 27 Broglie, Albert duc de, 208 Brown, Robert, 37 brutality, German, 18, 29, 45–6, 84, 154–61, 171–4, 187, 229–30 Buffet, Louis, 208, 213 Buzenval, 50, 73, 129, 134, 136–7, 144, 148 Cabet, Etienne, 211 Cabet, Paul, 192, 206–14, 223, 226 Capper, Samuel James, 177 Carnot, President Sadi, 126

Caro, Elme, 171 Catholic Church ideas of France, 10, 41–4, 55, 63–76, 131–3, 229 patriotism of, 10, 23, 63–76, 190–1, 229 revival of, 43–4, 131 tensions with Republic, 10, 41–4, 55, 63–76, 131–2, 229 views on Paris Commune, 131–9, 151 cavalry, French, 31, 85–91, 98, 115, 116 cemeteries, 56–7, 60, 66, 69–70, 74, 105, 107, 112, 162 Chambord, Henri comte de, 44 Champigny-sur-Marne, 23, 73, 129, 134, 137–8, 144–8 Changarnier, General Nicolas, 220 Chanzy, General Alfred, 71–2, 108, 220 Chaperon, Eug`ene, 27 Chapu, Henri, 140 Charlet, Nicolas, 26 Chasseurs d’Afrique, 85, 88–93, 98 Chˆateaudun, 157, 160, 167 Chauvin, Ren´e, 149 Chuquet, Arthur, 30 Clauswitz, Carl von, 40 Clayson, Hollis, 134, 140 Club Alpin Franc¸ais, 119 Cohen, Erik, 113 collective memory, 5–6, 9, 66–8, 78, 105, 107, 181, 210 Collin, Canon Henri, 198 Colmar, 56, 178 colonial expansion, 4, 22, 48, 49, 54, 79, 98, 102–3 Comte, Auguste, 67, 73 Confino, Alon, 8–9, 16 Constans, Emmanuel, 193 Contamine, Philippe, 57 Copp´ee, Franc¸ois, 171 Corsica, 104, 125 Cˆote-d’Or, La, 208, 211, 223 Courbet, Gustave, 95 Courbevoie, 139, 144, 149 Crane, Susan, 5 Cremer, General Camille, 221 Cr´emieux, Adolphe, 100–1

294 Index Cr´emieux Decree, 99–103 Crimean War, 59 Croisy, On´eysme-Aristide, 85–6, 106, 108–9 cult of the dead, 9–10, 18, 56–76, 108, 113, 127, 190–1, 201, 228 cult of the Sacred Heart, 12, 44, 69, 132, 164, 216 Dals`eme, A. J., 133 Darboy, Archbishop, 43 dead, burial of, 10–11, 58–63, 69–70, 163–4 death, changing attitudes towards, 56–8, 63–76 decadence, 12, 26, 44–54, 127, 129–31, 140, 173, 234 decline, 12, 22, 41, 44–54, 127, 172, 196, 231–4 defeat, concepts of, 4, 20, 25, 27–55, 65, 72–3, 79, 85, 131, 142, 152–3, 172–3, 205, 230, 234 Degas, Edgar, 134 Delacroix, Eug`ene, 134, 212 Delahaye, Ernest Jean, 27, 88 Denfert-Rochereau, Colonel Pierre, 3, 40, 71, 183–4, 195, 203, 220, 225, 226, 231 views on army, 40, 220, 225, 226 Derni`ere Cartouche, La, 26, 119, 166–7 D´eroul`ede, Paul, 30, 50–4, 72–3, 90, 144–50, 166, 172 and nationalism, 50–4, 72–3, 140–50 Descaves, Lucien, 81 Detaille, Edouard, 27–8, 88, 166 Dichard, Henri, 83, 136 Digeon, Claude, 12, 81 Dijon, 3, 18, 192, 203–26, 229 Dor´e, Gustave, 26 Dreyfus Affair, 22–3, 25, 40–1, 51–4, 79, 81, 92–3, 125–6, 145–51, 170–1, 195–6, 224–5 Ducrocq, Georges, 117, 179, 200 Ducros, Joseph, 216–19 Ducrot, General Auguste Alexandre, 87, 91, 137, 165, 220, 225 Dupray, Henry Louis, 27, 88 Duquet, Alfred, 83

elections, 8 February, 3, 34, 99, 213, 1871 Emmanuel d’Alzon, Father, 43 Enfert, Mayor, 211 Erckmann-Chatrian, Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian, 177, 179 Faidherbe, General Louis, 71 Falgui`ere, Alexandre, 140 Faller, Abbot, 120, 124, 190–1, 201 Fauconnet, General, 205, 209 Favre, Jules, 2 Fentress, James, 8 Ferrer, Colonel, 217, 219 Ferry, Jules, 30, 48, 50 F`evre, Henry, 61 Fietta, Edouard, 104 Figaro, Le, 31, 142, 150 First World War, see World War One Floing, 62, 85–93 cavalry charge, 85–93 Foch, Marshal Ferdinand, 213 Fontane, Theodor, 58 Fournier, Bishop, 43–4 Fourvi`ere basilica, 216 France Catholic ideas of, see Catholic Church, ideas of France republican ideas of, 47–50, 55, 63–76, 229 f rancs-tireurs, 15, 29, 136, 155, 157, 204, 209–10, 224–5, 228 Freud, Sigmund, 6, 74, 78 Freycinet, Charles de, 33, 40, 84, 213, 221–2 Friedl¨ander, Saul, 6 Froeschwiller, 25, 82, 102, 104, 117–18, 216 funerals, state, 67–8, 71–2 Fussel, Paul, 9 Fustel de Coulanges, Numa-Denis, 39, 176 Galliffet, General Gaston de, 87–93, 208, 213–14 Galli, Henri, 121, 148

Index 295 Gambetta, L´eon, 2, 3, 4, 33–5, 40, 46, 71, 72, 91, 99, 125, 166, 176, 203–5, 213–14, 231 ideas of nation in arms, 4, 33, 35, 40, 46, 203–5, 213–14 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 99, 204, 220–6, 228 Garibaldi, Riciotti, 224 Gasparin, Comte Ag´enor de, 45, 46, 47 Gaulle, Charles de, 233–4 Gaulois, Le, 147, 170–1, 190, 197, 198 Gazette de France, 143–4, 159 Geneva Convention, 158–9 Genhouilac, Bishop, 216 Germanization of Alsace-Lorraine, 74, 180, 191, 194, 198, 200–1 Germany, influence of, 39, 59 Germany, perceptions of, 18, 29, 45–6, 84, 154–61, 171–4, 187, 229–30 Gil Blas, 144 Gildea, Robert, 8–9, 45, 77, 152, 233 Gillis, John, 14 Girardet, Raoul, 48, 80 Gobineau, Arthur de, 45–6 Goncourt, Edmond de, 132 Government of Moral Order, 22–3, 35, 84, 204, 206, 211–12, 216, 219–20 Government of National Defence, 2, 4, 32–9, 43, 81, 99, 100, 101, 131, 136, 138, 139, 204, 221–6 responsibility for defeat, 4, 32–9, 81 Grandlieu, Philippe de, 70 Gravelotte, 120–1, 125, 194, 200 Grolleron, Paul, 27 guerre a` outrance, 2, 4, 99, 129, 134, 169, 213, 217 gymnastics, 15, 31, 80 Halbwachs, Maurice, 5 Hannaux, Emmanuel, 197 Hanotaux, Gabriel, 30 Hansi, Oncle, 102, 180, 200, 202 Hargrove, June, 13–14 Helias, Yves, 10 Hennique, L´eon, 82, 172 H´enon, Mayor Jacques Louis, 216–19

heroism, concepts of, 9, 27, 29, 57, 67–9, 71, 79, 85, 87–93, 103, 117, 119, 122, 132, 153, 156, 165–71, 201, 210, 222, 224, 228–9 Hinzelin, Emile, 179 Hobsbawm, Eric, 16 Howard, Michael, 34, 204 Hugo, Victor, 47, 67, 225 humanitarianism, 159, 230 Hutton, Patrick, 7 Huysmans, J. K., 82 Hynes, Samuel, 9 impressionism, 27, 133 individual memory, 5 Intransigeant, L’, 142–5, 147 irregular combatants, 3, 81, 99, 203–5, 213, 220, 226 Italian wars of unification, 42–3, 59 Jean, Jean-Pierre, 197–200 Jeanniot, Pierre Georges, 27 J´erˆ ome-Napoleon, Prince, 90 Joan of Arc, 58, 69 Joffre, Marshal Joseph, 231 Jonas, Raymond, 12 Kidd, William, 197 King, Alex, 10 Koshar, Rudy, 9 Krumeich, Gerd, 40, 204 Kselman, Thomas, 57, 163 kulturkampf, 177, 191, 201 Ladmirault, General Louis Paul, 90 Lambert, Commandant, 166, 170 landscape, 114–18 Lavisse, Ernest, 30 law of 4 April, 60, 162, 1873 Le Bourget, 3, 83, 129, 134–6, 144–7, 210 Lebrun, General Barth´elemy-Louis, 83, 91, 165 Legentil, Alexandre, 69 L´egions du Rhˆone, 203, 214–19, 226 Legitimists, 25, 34, 38 Lepelletier, Edmond, 167 Leygues, George, 223 lieux de m´emoire, 6–7, 13, 125, 228

296 Index Ligue des Patriotes, 15, 22, 48, 50, 72–3, 121, 144–50, 166 literature, popular patriotic, 21, 29–30, 157 Lloyd, David, 113 local memory, 5, 10, 13–24, 104–12, 122, 126–8, 229–30 Loigny, 69, 121 Loigny, ossuary, 69, 164 Lonlay, Dick de, 88 Lourdes, 44 Lowenthal, David, 5 Luce, Maximillien, 95–6 Lyon, 44, 71, 81, 130, 214–20 Maas, Annette, 16 MacMahon, Marshal Marie Edme Patrice, 25–6, 31, 34–9, 94, 139, 165, 214, 225, 232–3 Mairet, Anatole, 210 maison de la derni`ere cartouche, 119, 122–4, 163–74 Manet, Edouard, 133 Manteuffel, General Edwin von, 224 Margueritte, General Jean, 87–93 Margueritte, Paul and Victor, 89, 94, 172 Marianne, 8, 14, 108, 134, 190, 206–12 Mars-la-Tour, 2, 18, 23, 116, 118, 120–5, 181–201, 229 martyrdom, 10, 30, 56–8, 67–75, 84, 89, 140, 149, 152–65, 172, 198 Mary, Jules, 155 mass production of war memorials, 108–12, 127 Matin, Le, 196, 198 Maupassant, Guy de, 82, 173 Maurras, Charles, 52–3 McMichael, J. W., 58, 83 Meissonier, Ernest, 95, 134 M´eline, Jules, 86 Merci´e, Antonin, 27–8, 183, 189, 195 Quand Mˆeme, 183, 195 Metz, 2, 3, 16, 25, 34–6, 38, 54, 83, 114, 117–18, 136, 181–2, 191, 196, 198, 200, 204, 210, 220, 222, 231 Michelet, Jules, 47

military art, 13, 26–8, 80, 88, 166–70 Mirbeau, Octave, 172 Moltke, Helmuth von, 37, 137, 157 Mommsen, Theodor, 176 Monet, Claude, 133 Monge, Jules, 101 Monod, Gabriel, 83 Montrosier, Eug`ene, 166 Moral Order, Government of, see Government of Moral Order moral victory, concepts of, 20, 25, 29, 87, 121, 174 Moreau, Mathurin, 211, 214 Morel, General, 82, 83 Moroccan crisis of 1905, impact of, 22, 23, 53, 122, 201 Morot, Aim´e, 88 Mosse, George, 9, 57, 113 museums, 10, 17, 21, 114, 116, 121–7, 172, 218, 228 Napoleonic Wars, 63, 114, 172, 218 Napoleon III, 1, 2, 4, 36–40, 43, 84–5, 90–1, 130, 134, 223 Narc¸ay, Poirier de, 146 National Assembly, Enquiry into actions of Government of National Defence, 30–8, 100–1, 131, 204, 213, 222–4 National Guard, 3–4, 15, 131, 143, 157, 168–9, 204–6, 209–10, 215–17, 228 nationalism, 12, 22–3, 47–54, 57, 72–3, 125–6, 147–8, 171, 177, 198, 230 nationalist revival, 29, 53, 195, 201 national memory, 7, 14–17, 21–2, 230 national sentiment, 2, 8, 12–16, 39, 176–90, 198, 204, 224, 230 nation in arms, 3, 4, 18, 23, 35, 40–1, 59, 142, 156, 203–5, 213, 225 Neuville, Alphonse de, 26–7, 122, 165–70, 174 newspaper reporting, 154–9 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 6, 77 Noisseville, 196–200 Nora, Pierre, 6–8, 13 Nuits-Saint-Georges, 217, 219, 221

Index 297 Oeuvre des Tombes, 159 Ollivier, Emile, 1 Ophuls, Marcel, 17 Opportunists, 22, 48, 50, 54, 72, 101, 141–3, 149 Orleanists, 2, 34, 36, 67, 206, 213 Orl´eans, 3, 33, 69, 138 Pagny, Etienne Monument aux enfants du Rhˆone, 214–20 Pagny, Etienne, 214 Palat, General Barth´elemy-Edmond, 89 Panth´eon, 65, 67, 132 Papal Zouaves, 42, 69, 98, 228 Paris Commune art, 95, 133 impact on memories of Franco-Prussian War, 4, 31, 44, 48–51, 93–103, 130, 135–9, 151, 232 memories of, 4, 12, 18, 26, 31, 38–50, 73, 79–81, 91–103, 129–51, 169, 173, 226, 232 National Assembly enquiry into, 131 suppression of, 22, 32, 80, 94–6, 143, 147, 149, 151, 169, 208, 227 Paris, siege, 3–4, 34, 129–50, 231, 233 Paulin-M´ery, C´esar-Auguste, 146 P´eguy, Charles, 53–4 Pelletan, Camille, 95 Perboyre, Paul Emile L´eon, 27, 80, 88 P`ere Lachaise, 96 Perrault, L´eon, 26 P´etain, Marshal Philippe, 232–3 Petit Journal, Le, 31 Petit Lyonnais, Le, 219 p´etroleuses, 157 Philippoteaux, Auguste, 85 Philippoteaux, Paul Dominique, 27 Phrygian cap, 206–14 Pichio, Ernest, 95 Pie, Bishop, 68 Pissarro, Camille, 133 Pius IX, Pope, 43 Poincar´e, Raymond, 201

positivism, 67, 71, 73–4 Progr`es de Lyon, Le, 219 Prost, Antoine, 7–13, 75, 111–12 Protais, Paul-Alexandre, 27, 90 Prussian Wars of Liberation, 59 Quatrefages, Jean-Louis Armand de, 172 Quinet, Edgar, 47 race, ideas on, 29, 45, 172–4 radicals, 2, 23, 34, 49–50, 52, 54, 96, 142–50, 208–20, 229 Reader, Ian, 113, 121 Red Cross, 155, 159 Regnault, General Jean, 34 Reichshoffen, 43, 73, 88, 118 Renan, Ernest, 4, 32, 45–7, 51–2, 176 Renouvier, Charles, 41, 47 repression of memory, 6, 11, 17, 21, 77–80, 94–6 republicanism, 8, 14, 35–6, 41–4, 46–52, 63–75, 130, 138, 203–26, 228–9, 233 resistance, myths of, 14, 15, 27, 30, 45, 84, 105, 115, 116, 119–20, 122, 126, 136, 139, 152–74, 205–10, 228–34 resistancialist myth, 17, 21 Ress´eguier, Comte de, 33 resurrection of the dead, 68–70, 74, 163–4 revanche, 5, 13, 21–3, 25, 29–31, 47, 50, 53–4, 73, 90, 117, 149, 175, 183, 190–7, 229, 230 Revolution of 1789, 7, 14, 16, 30, 41–4, 46, 50, 52–5, 57–9, 64–7, 129, 234, Revolutionary Wars, 48, 57, 204, 205, 209, 218 R´ezonville, 88, 224 Richard, Jules, 27 Ricoeur, Paul, 87 Robichon, Franc¸ois, 13, 27, 80 Rochefort, Henri, 146–7 Rodin, Auguste, 140 Roth, Franc¸ois, 16 Rouffet, Jules, 88 Rousso, Henry, 8–9, 19–21, 78

298 Index Ruby, General Edmond, 34 Rude, Franc¸ois, 140, 212 Russia, French alliance with, 23, 149, 194 Sacr´e-Coeur of Montmartre, 65, 79, 132 sacrifice, concepts of, 9–10, 16, 18, 56–9, 63–75, 87, 89, 125, 127, 138, 152, 163, 165, 219, 228, 232 Saint-Denis, 72, 132, 135, 149 Saint-Quentin, 14, 106, 107 Salons, exclusion of works from, 27, 95 Sand, George, 47 Schivelbusch, Wolfgang, 20, 169 Schnaebel´e affair, 49, 201 Second Empire, memories of, 2, 4, 34–45, 79, 83–93, 103, 130–1, 142 Second World War, see World War Two secularization, 64, 66–71, 132 Sedan, 2–4, 16, 18, 25, 35–8, 44, 54, 58, 79, 82–91, 106–7, 116, 117–18, 134, 149, 153, 193, 204, 216, 222, 229, 233 S´er´e de Rivi`eres, General Raymond Adolphe, 35–6 Sergent, Lucien Pierre, 27 Sherman, Daniel J., 8, 10, 108, 112, 122 Silverman, Dan P., 176 Sivan, Emmanuel, 9 Social Darwinism, 46, 173 socialism, 51–3, 150, 226 and internationalism, 11, 23, 48–52, 72, 81, 149, 223 socialists, 4, 52–3, 72, 126, 146–51, 211, 217, 219, 225, 229 Soitoux, Jean-Franc¸ois, 190 soldiers’ names, 11, 58–61, 161, 191 Sonis, General Louis Gaston de, 69 Sorel, Albert, 30 Soucy, Robert, 48 Souvenir Franc¸ais, 15, 109, 126, 197–200 Souvestre, Albert, 208 Sternhell, Zeev, 47, 50–1 Strasbourg, statue of, 134

Taine, Hippolyte, 45–51 Taithe, Bertrand, 125, 167 Tann, General von der, 153–4 Temps, Le, 31, 147, 219 Thiers, Adolphe, 2, 4, 22, 25, 31–2, 35, 39, 130, 183, 195, 203 reforms to army, 39 suppression of Paris Commune, 4, 130 Thomson, Richard, 13 Times, The (London), 154 Tour de la France par deux enfants, Le, 30, 178–9 travel literature, 114–20 Treaty of Frankfurt, 59–60, 63, 176 Treitschke, Heinrich von, 171 Trochu, General Louis Jules, 2, 38, 135–7, 225 Troyansky, David, 14, 106 turcos, 98–102, 163, 166, 200 Turenne, Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne vicomte de, 65, 106–7 Turinaz, Bishop, 68, 194 Unknown Soldier, 15, 231 Vendˆ ome column, 59 Verne, Jules, 29 veterans’ associations, 15, 126, 197, 217 Veuillot, Louis, 41, 43, 132 Vichy Syndrome, 8, 19–20 Vinoy, General Joseph, 82, 136 Vionnois, F´elix, 208–12 Vovelle, Michel, 57 Waldeck-Rousseau, Pierre, 91, 143 Walker, James, 88 war dead, burial of, see dead, burial of war graves, 11, 58–63, 106–7, 114–17, 121, 193, 200 vandalism of, 62–3, 121 war memorials functions, 13–23, 105–12 types, 105–12 ‘war in sight’ crisis, 191, 192 war of two Frances, 41, 64 Wawro, Geoffrey, 34

Index 299 Weber, Eugen, 15–16 Wehner, Monica, 77 Weygand, General Maxim, 232 Wickham, Chris, 8 Wilhelm I, 87, 159 Wimpffen, General Emmanuel Felix, 37 Winock, Michel, 52 Winter, Jay, 7, 9 Wissembourg, 2, 43, 82, 98, 115, 119, 169, 180, 196, 199–200 Woerth, 2, 101, 115, 118, 188, 189

World War One, 7–15, 20, 22, 53, 54, 74, 75, 108, 112, 128, 144, 151, 157, 167, 230, 231, 233 World War Two, 8, 17, 18, 78, 152, 226, 230–2 Yarushalmi, Yosef, 6 Zeldin, Theodore, 64 Zeppelin, Count Ferdinand von, 197 Zislin, Henri, 196 Zola, Emile, 17, 79–83, 88, 94, 133, 155–6, 165, 167, 173–4