Maréchal Pétain since 1930, but no more. It has decided to scrap the name of the street and has invited local people to come up with an alternative. What makes it so unusual is that this was the last street in France named after Pétain.
Belrain is only 40 km from the site of the devastating battle of
Verdun, fought during World War I and it was at Verdun that Pétain made his name, becoming a national hero in the process. Mind you, Pétain nearly didn’t make it. As the battle was about to commence at Verdun, Petain, a notorious womaniser, was nowhere to be found, but one of his staff officers had a very good idea where Petain was, in other words, which of his mistresses he had taken to which hotel in Paris. So it turned out and Pétain was able to make it to the front in time to command the French troops.
For 20 years after the end of World War I, Pétain managed to retain the affections of the French
people and after France was defeated by the Germans in 1940, he came the head of state, in charge of a collaborationist government in Vichy, in central France. Until 1942, the central and southern part of France was controlled by the Vichy government and remained free of German troops. But after 1942, these troops occupied the whole of metropolitan France, yet the Vichy government managed to
survive, until the liberation of France in 1944.
Pétain was a remarkable man and it’s astonishing to think that he had a great-uncle who had
served in Napoléon’s Grande Armée. After the end of World War II, Pétain was lucky, because although he was put on trial and sentenced to death, he managed to escape with his life. During World War I, a junior officer under his command happened to be one Charles de Gaulle. By the time that Pétain was sentenced after World War II,de Gaulle was the president of the provisional government of France and it was he who spared Pétain’s life and sentenced him to life imprisonment on account of his age. Pétain died in prison on the Ile d’Yeu, off the west coast of France, in July, 1951, aged 95.
Nearly a century ago, Pétain was the great French hero; today, no-one in France even wants to have a street in their neighbourhood named after him, he is considered such a villain of the World
War II period.
All this brought back memories of our time in Vichy; we knew someone in the Irish diplomatic service who had represented Ireland in Vichy during World War II and her memories were very vivid. So when we got a chance, we decided we’d go and see for ourselves. Vichy is quite easy to get
to; from the Gare de Lyon in Paris, the quickest train will take three hours. The town became renowned during the 19th century for its thermal baths and in the years immediately before World War I, close on 100,000 people a year were going to Vichy to take the waters. Of course today, the name lives on in the Vichy range of beauty products owned by L’Oréal, because you’re worth it.
In addition to the thermal baths, the town saw a great building boom, when many Belle Époque mansions were built and we were able to see the facades of those that housed the various government departments in Vichy during World War II. In the past 20 years or so, much restoration work has been done in Vichy, including revitalisation of the thermal baths and the rejuvenation of the great opera house. These days,Vichy is still quite a small town, with close on 30,000 inhabitants, but it has a great array of facilities for tourists, including a fine selection of restaurants.
We were rather amazed to find that the railway station, itself much improved in recent years, had a very pleasant restaurant, where we could enjoy a very vinous dinner at night in very congenial surroundings. Imagine being able to enjoy such fine dining with excellent wines at a regional railway station in either Ireland or Britain! Once we’d had our meal in the railway station restaurant, what we used to do was cross the tracks by the footbridge; we’d discovered that if you went to the eastern side of the station, within about 1,000 metres, you were in almost open country, which made for a very pleasant late evening walk.
We were lucky as well because the hotel we chose was close to the station. Another big advantage was that our room was so big and had such good facilities that we were able to treat it as a self-catering apartment. We used to have great fun making our own breakfast and then sitting down to enjoy it while watching breakfast television.
Something else I discovered in Vichy was the local library; it was here that I discovered masses of material about François Mitterand, later destined to become a President of France. As a young man, he had joined the Vichy government, working as a mid-level funtionary, looking after the interests of prisoners of war. As I discovered in the library, later in the war, he was active in the resistance and I discovered that he had many code names; later, he became best known for being “Morland”. Mitterand was a fascinating and complex character, a president who left behind a great legacy.
Yet another extraordinary story about him - and there are many - concerned the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in London in 1953. Mitterand attended, as a representative of the French state. He sat
beside Princess Marie Bonaparte and Mitterand passed the time during the coronation being pyschoanalysed by the princess, who was the great-grand niece of Emperor Napoléon I. The princess had had a marvellously interesting career; in the 1920s, one of her main subjects of interest was research into improving female orgasms. No wonder that in 1953, herself and Mitterand talked so much they managed to miss virtually all the coronation ceremony!
But going from Mitterand to the present day, I notice a sense that rebellion is brewing on a
wide scale in France, on both sides of the political divide. Nothing new about la Belle France being so rebellious, except that this time, the revolutionary surges are coming from both left and right. On the left is Jean-Luc Meléchon, who leads the Front de Gauche. During last year’s presidential campaign, he made some of the most dramatic and rabble rousing speeches, although many people were secretly
delighted he didn’t get anywhere.
Instead, the French people have got the biggest presidential turkey of all time, Francois Hollande. The latest story about him concerns the camel he was given as a present in Mali, as a “thank you” to France and French troops for saving the day in that war-torn African country. He tried to get it repatriated to France, but this didn’t work out, so he arranged for it to be looked after by a local family in Timbuktu. It turns out that they have now used the camel as the main ingredient in a Saharan tangine stew. I’m sure that Hollande has really got the hump on this one, or did the family concerned, as a gesture to the donor of the camel, serve it with hollandaise sauce?
Back to the feelings of revolt. In addition to the always restive left wing in France, it now seems that sections of the middle class are fermenting a right wing revolution, as evidenced by such manifestations as the recent massive protests against gay marriage. If right and
left manage to agite separately and create trouble on a big scale, will we see a double reinactment of 1968?
One right wing revolutionary is being commemorated but not celebrated in France, Margaret Thatcher, who died last Monday. Le Figaro, the newspaper and website, came up with a very good
description of her, the iron lady with a heart of stone. What a legacy she left! Sinn Féin wouldn’t be the party it is today in both parts of Ireland if it hadn’t been for Mrs Thatcher. Neither would the process of Scottish devolution got such a following with the result of wiping out the Tories in Scotland, if it hadn’t been for the effects of Thatcherite policies in the 1980s, which destroyed
much of Scottish industry and the legacy of the poll tax. What a legacy she left behind her - many people in England think she was an even greater prime minister than Churchill, while many in Scotland and Ireland think the exact opposite.
But enough of politics! There’s a fascinating outdoor event going on in the 7th arrondissement in Paris from April 11th to 18th. It’s called the La Nuit aux Invalides and it uses the latest audio and 3D video technology to project a Son et Lumiere style interpretation of French history on the façade of the Hotel des Invalides. All it needs is night time weather that’s an improvement on what Paris has been enjoying lately!
And don’t forget the sheep! Four black sheep, who had been made redundant by more intense and competitive farming, have been put the work keeping the grass well trimmed in public places in the 19th arrondissement in Paris. The eco pasture movement has been well established in France for the past decade but in the past two or three years, it had really taken off.
So the sheep are now at work grazing the equivalent of eight tennis courts in the 19th, which is a working class suburb in north-eastern Paris. It’s also home to the Cité de Sciences et de l’Industrie, the largest science museum in Europe. In between their work sessions, the sheep are housed at the Ferme de Paris, the farm owned by the city of Paris in the Bois de Vincennes. No doubt in due course, we’ll see sheep hard at work in many other places in Paris over the next year or two, as this ecologically friendly movement replaces lawn
mowers!What a lovely tag for the city,Paris,where sheep may safely
graze.