Spiesser, Grégoire/Delperier, Louis 1870-1871, un conflit à travers l'image

Volume 17 of the series Les Cahiers de la Compagnie d'Elite. The Franco-Prussian War is a conflict that is hardly known in France today. It must be said that everything was done to erase the defeat that hastened the fall of the Second Empire from history, starting with the removal of this event from history books since the Third Republic. Later, it was supplanted by the bloody but ultimately successful war of 1914-1918 and finally consigned to the archives by the Second World War... and yet there is so much to say about this complex period. What is surprising when one studies this conflict are the paradoxical situations: the weakness of some generals, but the heroism of the soldiers; magnificent military uniforms straight out of the First Empire, but modern new weapons; the intransigence of the Republic and the Catholic piety of the papal Zouaves... Between 19 July 1870 and 28 May 1871, three major periods followed (the Imperial War, the Republican War and the Paris Commune), reflecting the image of 19th-century France searching for its ideal model between empire, monarchy and republic. 1870 also marked the beginning of photography on a large scale: after the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839, the albumin print made it possible for the general public to access images of the real world. Calling card photos (CDVs) were often sent with dedications to relatives. Today, they are sought-after collectors' items, but still quite common. Large photographs showing the conflict, battlefields or soldiers are much rarer and are real treasures collected by a few experts who helped illustrate this work. During the period of the Empire until the fall of Sedan, they are virtually non-existent, but there are a few that were taken during the siege of fortresses, starting with Metz. To imagine the reality of this conflict in every detail, there is nothing more exciting than to rely on a journalistic work on the Franco-Prussian War written 20 years after the conflict. Émile Zola, the author of the Rougon-Macquart saga, is known to have spent 6 to 12 months researching before writing his novels. La débâcle (The Debacle) is no exception. When you read this novel, you are immersed in the conflict, sharing the suffering of the soldiers and imagining the heroism and ordeal of the French army from Wissembourg to the beginning of the Commune. What could be more fascinating than reporting on the Franco-Prussian War, a very real war, as close to the truth as possible, with images, snapshots, supplemented by paintings by the greatest painters and the carefully researched report of the journalist Zola?