Today, 28 July, marks the 182nd anniversary of the sculptor Auguste Dumont's Génie de la Liberté (“Spirit of Freedom”) towering over the Place de la Bastille. Perched on one foot, the winged figure holds the torch of civilisation in his right hand and broken chains in his left.
At the time, the figure did not symbolise Republican Liberty; the choice of a male allegory, which was unusual, was precisely to avoid any overly explicit association with the republic, which was traditionally represented in female form. Secondly, even though it is located on the site of the Bastille royal fortress, whose storming by rioters on 14 July 1789 was one of the events that triggered the French Revolution, it makes even less reference to revolutionary Liberty. No Phrygian cap, therefore, nor any other kind of clothing for that matter. But beyond this liberation from all sartorial constraints, which we will never know if it is the result of a deliberate desire or a lack of inspiration in a difficult context, what kind of liberation does the figure want to talk about?
With the July column on which he stands some 50 m high, he is in fact commemorating the Three Glorious Days, the three revolutionary days of 27, 28 and 29 July 1830 which allowed Louis-Philippe d'Orléans to succeed Charles X as King of the French, putting an end to the Restoration and to the absolute monarchy of divine right. The column, whose shaft bears the names of the 504 victims of the July 1830 revolution, was inaugurated on 28 July 1840 to the sound of Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Funèbre et Triomphale, created for the event. A few years later, the names of the 196 victims of the February 1848 Revolution, which marked the end of the July Monarchy, were added to the July Column.
For more information on the columns of Paris in general, and on the July Column in particular, see Looking Up Paris, chapter "Columns and Towers".
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