The statues are not God's creatures. Since a week, women and men are in question, criticize, and sometimes degrade, statues representing heroes of France. Even if the president of the Republic stated that the Republic does not " déboulonnera not statues ", the activists will disarm not. At the end of last week, after Napoleon and Charles de Gaulle, the statue of marshal Gallieni, erected at Paris in the 7th district, has been covered with a sheet. The supporters of the revolution to justify their deed : a statue is not a neutral symbol, but policy. Ah, here we are, full of comfort : no one had thought of it. Unfortunately, the statues are not, in a democracy, the avatar of the arbitrary, but the will of the people. Once again, a legal problem is treated in a way that ideological. Where should reign the successful knowledge and ignorance.
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" Who decides the erection of a statue in the public space ? In most cases, this prerogative is at the municipal level. In other words, when a municipality wishes to appoint a street or stand in one place, avenue, street, garden, it obeys its city council. That make up the city council ? The municipal councillors elected in the municipal elections. Who elect these councillors ? The French. Therefore, by a logical and indisputable, the decoration of the public space is the result of the majority rule. Which is certainly not flawless, but its legitimacy is superior to that of any specific claim. Is this to say that "space of memory" is, or should be, static ? No, and moreover he is not, never has been. If nothing had changed since the Seventeenth century, Louis XIV would be the only person represented in Paris. In The Emblems of the Republic, the historian Bernard Richard shows how the French Revolution had made of the appropriation of the public space as a condition of the advent of the Republic. Under the First Empire, the Restoration, the July monarchy, the Second Empire and of course the Third Republic, the symbolic landscape of the country has been one of the redoubts the most contested.
Reconcile 1789, Napoleon Bonaparte and the Bourbons
If the heroes change at the discretion of the princes, a harmony emerges from the reign of Louis-Philippe, at a time when the national narrative is structured. A descendant of Louis XIV is thus able to reconcile 1789, Napoleon Bonaparte and the Bourbons : the Fifth Republic should be able to achieve the synthesis of his century. However, the déboulonnage statues echoes to a past unpleasant, do not say traumatic. After the First world War, the " statuomanie ", to borrow a phrase from Bernard Richard, seizes the country : monuments to the dead, celebrations of heroism in the military, etc., In the Occupation, the law of 11 October 1941 founded a commissioner dedicated to the recovery of " non-ferrous ". The Vichy government and Germany proceed with the removal of the idols and the victims of this company are sometimes surprising. Disappear republicans " Gambetta, Arago, Baudin, Raspail, Hugo, etc ; but also Joseph de Maistre, counter-revolutionary of course, this was going to Vichy, but as a freemason, is unforgivable. In the whole of France, a statue in five is destroyed. And it is the clergy that must be the rescue heroes. "Many of the statues which, it is feared that they are soon threatened Paris itself, both increases the German claims, however, are put into security preventively, for example in the crypt of the Saint-Sulpice church, by a clergy who feared the worst [...]. Among the statues brought to the shelter : the Voltaire of Houdon, removed from the Comédie-Française. "The déboulonnage of the statues is therefore a trauma more recent than we said, and this, even if the "déboulonneurs" of yesterday are, from a political point of view, not comparable to those of today.
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France did not need to see an advisor in the revision of its memory to the extent where she has participated, in the Nineteenth century, to the creation of a material of which the object is to study method with its past : the history. The nation which had, under the French Revolution, at the disposal of the people of its archives cannot be accused of making up his past. Quite the contrary : she is beautiful when she confronts him. It is his genius to produce commentators whose talent exceeds their object : Napoleon, we associate Chateaubriand ; to Louis XIV, Saint-Simon ; Louis XIII, Tallemant des Réaux ! As for the big men, they, too, object of study, that we cross sometimes in the form of statues, nobody is interested in it because they are virtuous, but because they are complex, contestable, and permanent. They will know, it is fatal, their twilight ; but why so much rage to rush this that democracy regulates in the most noble country in the world ?
Bernard Richard, The Emblems of the Republic, Paris, CNRS editions, 2012.
*Arthur Chevallier is the publisher in the Past compounds. His last essay, Napoleon without napoleon Bonaparte (Editions du Cerf), is published in January 2019. The 12 September is out The Taste of Napoleon (Le Petit Mercure), a collection of texts on the Emperor.
