"The American Memorial, also known as Liberty in Distress, American Monument or Varredes Monument, is a monument located in Meaux, France. The statue was designed by American sculptor Frederick William MacMonnies and dedicated in 1932 to the Allies of the First World War who fought in the First Battle of the Marne in 1914, during the First World War.
The statue is located in the north-east of Meaux, on the road to Varreddes, near the Museum of the Great War of the country of Meaux built in 2011. It was registered as a historic monument on February 6, 1990.
History
In 1914, during the First World War, troops of the German Empire advanced through northern France towards Paris. In September of that year, near Meaux, the French 6th Army launched an offensive against the German 1st Army. In the ensuing battle, known as the First Battle of the Marne, French and English troops together forced the Germans to withdraw, saving Paris from attack.
In the United States, French sympathizers celebrate this victory. After the end of the war in 1918, a project for a statue to commemorate the battle was born, taking the form of a model competition won by the American sculptor Frederick William MacMonnies. The funds necessary for the construction of the statue were raised in the United States and it was erected as a gift from the Americans to the French people.
In 1922, MacMonnies sculpted a first bronze version of the statue, on the scale of the human body, preserved in the First World War Memorial built the same year in Atlantic City in the United States. The American sculptor Edmondo Quattrocchi created the monument made up of 220 blocks of Lorraine stone and Thomas Hastings created the base. Described as MacMonnies' most ambitious project, the monument also represents his last major commission.
The statue, which took 14 years to build, was inaugurated on September 11, 1932 by French President Albert Lebrun, President of the Chamber of Deputies Édouard Herriot and members of the Association of American Friends of France and the ambulance corps. of the American Field Service.
The statue was registered as a historic monument on February 6, 1990. In 2011, the Museum of the Great War of the country of Meaux was built near the statue.
On June 3, 2021, lightning struck the monument, destroying the upper part of the statue. The French Heritage Society supports the restoration of the monument.
Description
The monument is 26 meters high and each side of the base measures approximately 4.5 meters. The statue represents a personification of Liberty, also evoking Marianne or “defiant France”. She is surrounded by dead and dying people and holds a baby in one hand and a broken sword in the other.
Joseph Joffre's slogan of September 6, 1914 is engraved on the front of the base:
“At a time when the salvation of the country is underway, it is important to remind everyone that it is no longer time to look back; all efforts must be employed to attack and repel the enemy; a troop that can no longer advance will have to keep the ground it has conquered at all costs and be killed on the spot rather than retreat. »
An inscription in English is engraved on the back of the base:
“Here are expressed once again the silent voices of the heroic sons of France who dared and gave everything on the day of mortal peril, who pushed back the tide of imminent disaster and who made the world vibrate with their supreme dedication. » "