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Paris, May 16, 1871
half-past five in the afternoon
The monumental column in the middle of the Place Vendôme is torn down to the strains of the Marseillaise
The cost of the column
Men have long marked victories and demonstrated their piety by building symbolic penises and vaginas
The Place Vendôme, in the heart of Paris
was to be the setting for a monument to the glory of the French nation
replacing the equestrian statue of Louis XIV, destroyed during the revolution
What ended up being built was a giant willy to the glory of the imperial army
together with a matching foo foo on the Place de l’Etoile
The Vendôme column cost nearly one and a half million francs in total
It consists of 98 granite rings
covered with 425 bronze plaques
forming a bas-relief measuring 220 metres in length
It was built between 1805 and 1810
using the bronze of 1,200 captured enemy cannon
It stands 44 metres tall
and was inspired by Trajan’s Column in Rome
which Napoleon initially intended to move to Paris
hence the statue of Bonaparte dressed as a Roman emperor
that stands pompously atop the column
When the Empire collapsed barely four years after the column was inaugurated
the statue was melted down to go into the equestrian statue of Henri IV on the Pont Neuf
A white flag decorated with a fleur-de-lys replaced it at the top of the column
In 1833, Louis Philippe had a new statue of Napoleon made for the column
this time wearing a frock coat and his famous hat
Thirty years later, Napoleon III had it replaced
with another statue of his uncle in the garb of a Roman emperor
This was the statue that was knocked off its perch on May 16, 1871
The Paris Commune, a popular insurrection that lasted for two months
had decreed on April 12 that the Vendôme column was to be torn down
On May 15th
while soldiers were still trying to regain control of the capital
a slantwise cut was made in the column and it was then partially sawn through
On May 16th
A first attempt was made to bring down the column
with a windlass and two pulleys at three in the afternoon
but one of the pulleys broke
A second attempt was made, bringing the column crashing down
onto a pile of logs and manure, watched by a crowd of onlookers
The Commune was brutally crushed one week later
Over 20,000 Communards were killed and a further 40,000 arrested
many of whom were sent to penal colonies
Gustave Courbet, then aged 52 and an active supporter of the Commune
was one of the first to demand the column’s removal
and as such was held responsible for its destruction
Courbet, an artist with socialist leanings,
had a lifelong preference for painting ordinary folk in their everyday surroundings
Aside from his monumental paintings
the work for which he is best known is The Origin of the World
a close-up of a woman’s genitals
The painting was long displayed only in private salons
it was eventually bought by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan
who hid it behind a sliding panel
Courbet, weakened by painful bouts of piles,
was put on trial for complicity in the popular Paris uprising
and sentenced to pay for the rebuilding of the shattered column, left lying where it fell
His assets were confiscated and he went into exile in Switzerland
He received a bill of 323,091 francs and 68 centimes for the building work
but died on December 31st, 1877
the day before he was due to pay the first tranche of 10,000 francs
The column and statue were back in place by December 1875
In parallel, a handful of fervent Catholics
pressured the government into voting to build a huge basilica in Paris
to expiate the sins of the Commune
The result was Sacré Cœur in Montmartre.
To sum up
the huge bronze *** in the Place Vendôme, built in 1810
to glorify the army of a titchy tyrant
was torn down by a popular uprising in 1871
A pornographic painter with an itchy *** was forced to pay for its reconstruction
and to make amends for the misdeeds of the revolutionaries
a huge meringue was built on top of the hill in Montmartre
Now close your books and put your pens away
translation : Susan Pickford