"Spectres", a sculptural figural composition located on the Chalmont Hill near Oulchy-le-Château in the Aisne department, is one of the most poignant realisations of French artist with Polish roots Paul Landowski (1875-1961). The work stands on the site where the skirmishes decisive for victory during the Second Battle of the Marne in 1918 took place.

The birth of the idea of a monument to the fallen. "Those dead, I will resurrect them".

In 1916, faced with a traumatic experience during his apprenticeship in the French army, Landowski came up with the idea of creating a monumental memorial to commemorate the fallen of the conflict. He developed this idea, annotated in his diary with the words 'Ces morts, je les relèverai' (These dead, I will resurrect them), after the end of the First World War.

Project

Heavily influenced by the pacifist trend, between 1919 and 1923 Landowski designed a monument to seven spectres of soldiers, representing the disparate corps of the army: a young recruit, a sapper, a machine gunner, a grenadier, a colonial officer, an infantryman and an airman. In the midst of them, he placed the naked figure of a young man, fallen in martyrdom, to keep alive the memory of the suffering of civilians thrown into the whirlpool of war. In the distance, he placed an allegory of France, depicted as a woman with a shield bearing the symbolic inscription "Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité" (Liberty, Equality and Fraternity). In 1923, the sculptor found the final arrangement of the figures (diary entry of 25 November) and made a plaster bozetto of the composition.

Realisation of the monument commemorating the second victory over the Marne

In 1928, a competition was held for the design of a monument commemorating the victory over the Marne. Landowski decided to use the site allocated for the competition design to realise the aforementioned composition with pacifist overtones, which he had been planning for many years. On 1 June 1929, he received the commission to realise the monument. Work on the figural composition, carved in granite, was completed in 1933. The following year, work was carried out in the area to revitalise the landscape after the war, in order to give the foundation a picturesque character. The inauguration of the monument took place on 21 July 1935, with the ceremonial unveiling of the sculpture by the then President of the Republic, Albert Lebrun. On the fiftieth anniversary of the event, General Charles de Gaulle paid tribute to the soldiers killed at the Marne.