The village of Chaillot was incorporated into Paris in the 19th century. During the rule of the Second Empire, wide arteries were laid out there, some of which converged on the Trocadéro Square, famous for its cafés. In 1956, the monument 'To the Glory of the French Army 1914-1918', by the French sculptor of Polish origin Paul Landowski (1875-1961), was inaugurated on the north-west side of the square. The event marked the end of a 20-year effort to erect a monument at the site.

History of the creation of the monument

On 24 February 1937, the Committee for the National Monument to the French Infantry (Comité National du Monument à l'Infanterie), which had been created the year before, formally requested permission from the Prefect of the Capital Region to locate the monument on the Place Trocadéro, adjacent to the wall of the Passy cemetery.

The 1937 competition

A competition to design a monument in honour of the French infantry was announced in early November 1937. The competition was decided on 27 November 1937 in favour of the French duo - sculptor Louis Henri Bouchard (1875-1960) and architect Albert Drouet (1880-1953). The design for the figural composition, intended to create the illusion of the presence of a poilu (the term for an infantry soldier of the French army during the First World War) in a trench, was presented along with the other seven models submitted to the competition at an exhibition at the Grand Palais from 28 November to 5 December 1937. Although the city council authorised the concept in mid-1939, due to the outbreak of the Second World War the project was never realised.

Post-war implementation

After the war, the decision to create a monument in Trocadéro Square was upheld, with the proviso that the original concept of creating a monument to the glory of the French infantry should be replaced by a more general representation of the French army. The City Council voted on this decision on 22 March 1951.

As a result of these changes, the original complex design by Bouchard and Drouet was abandoned in favour of a new concept proposed by Landowski. The monument, for which the foundation stone was laid on 11 November 1954, was unveiled on 13 May 1956.

Description of the object

Maintaining an Art Déco style, the monument depicts the corps of the French army 1914-1918 accompanied by an allegory of France (central figure of a woman with a shield) and a woman supporting one of her dead comrades in tribute to those who gave their lives for their homeland during the First World War. In this monument, Landowski attempted to combine various episodes and figures from French history, including the fields of Catalauniques, Poitiers, Joan of Arc, Jemmapes, Valmy (featured on the shield), and the iconography of the Christian Pietà. The figures were previously used in a 1930s composition entitled 'Spectres'.