Part One:
    The world before 1914 and the outbreak of war

    © Paper and wax. N° inv. : 3 ECO 4.1. Coll. Historial de la Grande Guerre – Péronne (Somme). Photo Yazid Medmoun – Envelope containing French posters relating to the general mobilisation. The package contains one rarely-preserved item: the envelope which contained these four posters (the general mobilisation was announced on 1st August and came into effect on the 2nd), addressed to the mayor of Villiers-Sur-Chize, in the Deux-Sèvres département. The envelope is made of opaque, black paper, as if in mourning at the advent of war.
    © Bronze. N° inv. : 1 OBA 1.1. 900 mm x 550 mm x 430mm. Coll. Historial de la Grande Guerre – Péronne (Somme). Photo Yazid Medmoun – La Paix Armée. Winner of a Gold Medal at the Universal Exposition 1900, Félix Alfred Desruelles sculpted this peculiarly graceless allegory of ‘Peace Bearing Arms.’ The complex web of alliances, the arms race and the transformation of the military capacities of the great powers all conspired to put pre-War Europe in a state of “armed peace.” In this piece, danger is kept at bay by a generously-proportioned Marianne figure, solemnly surveying the horizon; in her left hand she firmly grips both an olive branch and the symbolic national sword of France, its point resting on a book. Law and justice? Culture and civilisation?
    © Paper. 970 mm x 1170mm. N° inv. : 17 MAS 1.1. Coll. Historial de la Grande Guerre – Péronne (Somme). Photo Yazid Medmoun – School poster entitled ‘Contemporary Civilisation.’ Designed to be hung on the walls of French schools, this poster was the work of Ernest Lavisse, “official historian” of the Third Republic. In the central panel, the “expansion of France” features a sweeping view of the port at Algiers, the pride of “Greater France.” The panel immediately above celebrates Science (in France); below, the improved living conditions of the working classes. To either side, progress in both agriculture and industry. Other panels deal with less tangible advances: universal (male) suffrage and conscription; justice and international arbitration (the Hague Convention of 1899); solidarity (the schools’ mutual fund) and social order (the Arras Convention of 1891 whereby the State, for the first time, imposed arbitration to settle a labour dispute in the coalfields). All in all, this panorama exalts a naive faith in the ideal of progress, typical of Republican liberalism in the pre-War years. And of course, an unshakeable faith in that beacon of “contemporary civilisation:” France.
    © Oil on canvas.1010mm x 810mm. N°inv. : 14 FI 44. Coll. Historial de la Grande Guerre – Péronne (Somme). Photo Yazid Medmoun – L’Alsace-Lorraine after 1870. The Myth of Alsace-Lorraine, a myth of Revenge. This painting by Joseph Aubert was completed in 1919 and is entitled ‘The Protestors’. It is one half of a diptych whose other panel is entitled ‘The Liberators’ (the original, formerly on display at the Musée de l’Armée, was destroyed by the Germans in 1940). The painting is a retrospective evocation of the trauma of the “Lost Provinces” taken from France (two Germans are here seen leading away Alsace in chains, while Lorraine prays in the background and, in the foreground, a French soldier who bears a suspicious resemblance to Napoléon III has failed to stop the abduction). Now that the “Lost Provinces” had been restored to France following the victory of 1918, it was time to celebrate the Frenchmen who opposed their loss in 1871: here represented by a group of officers among whom we can recognise the likenesses of Déroulède, Faidherbe, Chanzy and Keller, alongside Gambetta, Clemenceau and Freycinet. This cloying, somewhat misleading allegorical scene hammers home the idea that Alsace and Lorraine were never forgotten or abandoned by the motherland.
    © Lead and card. N° inv. : 29 JOJ 1.1 et 4.1. 285 mm x 290 mm x 70 mm / 345 mm x 478 mm x 75 mm. Coll. Historial de la Grande Guerre – Péronne(Somme). Photo Yazid Medmoun – Box of toy soldiers representing the conquest of Madagascar and the Russo-Japanese war. Military actions were a popular subject for toys and games – and thus figured prominently in the imagination of French children – long before the outbreak of war in 1914. These two boxes of toy soldiers, complete with exotic décors, are testament to this popularity: the first (left) evokes the French conquest of Madagascar, initiated in 1883 then taken up again in 1895, until the island was formally annexed in 1896; the other represents the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905, both at sea and on land, in Manchuria. Familiarisation with warlike activities and the derealisation of violence here go hand in hand.
    © Egg. N° inv. : 240 mm x 120 mm. Coll. Historial de la Grande Guerre – Péronne(Somme). Photo Yazid Medmoun – The African Army. The term ‘African Army’ (French L’armée d’Afrique) was used to refer to all of the French military units stationed in North Africa, including the Zouaves and Spahis featured on this ostrich egg. This item is testament to the military dimension of the “French colonial ideal,” with a martial aesthetic comparable to that which prevailed in mainland France. That aesthetic was definitively destroyed by the harsh realities of modern warfare.
    © Painted metal. N° inv. : 6 ISC 2.2. 365 mm x 300 mm x 80mm. Coll. Historial de la Grande Guerre – Péronne (Somme). Photo Yazid Medmoun – German colonial clock – Reichs Colonial Uhr. This item, manufactured in the early years of the twentieth century by the Badische Uhrenfabrik Furtwangen, brings the technique and decorative tradition of the watchmakers of southern Germany to bear on two objects of contemporary fascination: universal time and colonial expansion. A ribbon in the red, white and black of the national flag, presided over by an imperial eagle, bears the legend: “Colonial clock of the German Empire.” Along with Central European Time (the abbreviation MEZ on the clockface stands for ‘Mitteleuropäische Zeit’, adopted by the German Empire on 1st April 1893 in application of the recommendations of the International Meridian Conference held in Washington D.C. in 1884), the black and red numerals on the dual clockface give the time in the German colonies (Cameroon, Togo, the Marshall Islands, Samoa etc). The banner running along the top side of the clockface contains a quotation from Kaiser Wilhelm II: “The Sun never sets on our Empire.” Towards the bottom left is a red flag, planted in some imagined land which is either freshly-conquered or awaiting the arrival of the Germans. The flag bears another imperial slogan: “Our future lies upon the water.” The colourful décor features some classic stereotypes of the colonial imagination: small houses from south-west Africa, mountains perhaps intended to evoke German possessions in east Africa… The warship shown bottom left hints at the extent to which colonialist expansion and the construction of a powerful navy, initiated in 1898, were popular policies with the German public.
    © N° inv. : 2 AFU 1.2, 22 VAD 1.2 et 17 VAD 3.2. Coll. Historial de la Grande Guerre – Péronne(Somme). Photo Yazid Medmoun – Pipe, flag and mug belonging to German reservists. This painted mug was a reminder of its owner’s glory years, his military service, a period which was supposed to shape him as a man and as a citizen. It speaks to a sense of pride and nostalgia for the years spent in uniform, with a particularly prestigious branch of the army: the cavalry. The presence of an eagle – an old imperial emblem which had been adopted as a national, patriotic symbol – represents loyalty to the Kaiser, the commander in chief of the army, as well as to the fatherland. Throughout the three years of his military service, the regiment would become an adoptive family to the young recruit, and family metaphors were often employed to describe the bonds formed between fellow soldiers. Further emphasising this point, the names of the entire squadron are given here in alphabetical order. The motto which runs around the rim of the mug expresses pride in belonging to the cavalry, as does the ornate lid with its galloping stallion. Finally, in a slightly more nuanced register, one image shows a horseman bidding farewell to his mount: the cavalryman presses his face against the horse’s, stroking his mane and promising to return to the stables if necessary. The pipe also belonged to an early twentieth century reservist, and contains a singular image-within-the-image which serves to illustrate the militarisation of everyday life: a soldier wearing the famous pickelhaube helmet is shown nonchalantly smoking his pipe as he strides forward bearing a heavy load. The painted porcelain sheath of the pipe, topped with a domed metallic cover, bears the inscription: “Stop wriggling! Franzos. and Brit., you should come to Germany.” A French soldier, recognisable by his blue greatcoat and ruby-red trousers, along with a British soldier, are shown trying to struggle their way out of captivity, unable to escape the sturdy grip of the virile German infantryman. The tone is playful, but this everyday object nonetheless alludes directly to the enemy, and thus, implicitly, to the threat which the Germans believed they needed to defend against. Another weapon, and another source of pride, feature on the flask which once belonged to a reservist by the name of Lennier, as specified on this personalised souvenir of his military experience. The image shows a troop advancing at a gallop and towing an artillery gun; the caption proclaims that “even the most powerful commander would be lost without us – the goddess of victory doesn’t smile until the cannons start ringing out,” juxtaposing this very modern weapon, which would play a prominent role on all fronts during the Great War, with a classicising reference to ancient divinities. Also worth noting is the continued importance of horses, which feature prominently in this design and played a significant role in artillery units: a 6-gun battery would normally consist of 153 officers and men and 139 horses.
    © N° inv. : 9 MED 22.1, 13 MED 1.1, 4 UNF 144.1 et 9 MED 26.1. Coll. Historial de la Grande Guerre – Péronne (Somme). Photo Yazid Medmoun – Hat and good-luck charms worn by French conscripts. Series of charms and a hat worn by French conscripts after the recruiting session held each spring in the chief town of each district, with attendance compulsory for all young men who had turned twenty in the preceding year (i.e. those turning twenty in 1912 were summoned to attend in the spring of 1913, and enrolled in October of that year). The Military Act of 1905 had made two years of military service a universal obligation (recruits were no longer selected by drawing lots, as mentioned on the oldest of these ribbons, dated 1883). Although the anxiety attached to this process of recruitment and enrolment had diminished over the course of the 19th century, going before the recruitment board (who would designate between 65 and 75% of young men as being “apt for military service”) nonetheless remained an important rite of passage, not least in terms of the prestige it carried with the fairer sex (“apt for girls”). Patriotism, masculine initiation and republican pride are all mixed up in this unique propitiatory ritual.
    © N° inv. : 3 APM 1.1. Coll. Historial de la Grande Guerre – Péronne(Somme). Photo Yazid Medmoun – The Franco-Russian alliance. Celebration of the Franco-Russian alliance: a French naval squadron visited Kronstadt in 1891, and a military convention was signed in 1892 to form a defensive alliance. A Russian fleet then docked at Toulon in October 1893, Tsar Nicholas II visited Paris (1896) and French President Félix Faure travelled to Saint-Petersburg in 1897. Faure is depicted here, shaking hands with the Tsar. This music box plays both the Marseillaise and the Russian national anthem, demonstrating the enthusiasm generated by an alliance which relieved the diplomatic isolation experienced by France since the defeat of 1870. In Germany, meanwhile, this alliance was regarded with mistrust and concerns of being encircled.
    © Faience. N° inv : 1 VAD 113.1. Coll. Historial de la Grande Guerre – Péronne (Somme). Photo Yazid Medmoun – The Boer War (French dish). The Boer War (1899-1902) saw a British expeditionary force of some 300,000 men pitted against the Boer Republics of Transvaal and Orange. Following the annexation of the two states in 1900, the British withstood eighteen months of guerilla combats of the kind immortalised on this French dish, showing the – exceptionally rare – involvement of Boer women in the fighting. The British broke this resistance by taking extreme measures against the Boer population as a whole, including internment in concentration camps (where the mortality rate was terrifying) and the systematic devastation of regions which refused to submit. In this respect, the Boer War demonstrates the increasing use of violence against civilian populations in times of war, as well as the potential for the people to rise up and engage in guerrilla warfare: both of which prefigured certain aspects of the First World War.
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