A full mailbox is a happy mailbox! World through postcards, postcrossing and covers

Monday 7 January 2019

0195 Column of the Goddess - Lille - historical & touristic card


Sent : 31.12.2018
Received 07.01.2019
Travel time 8 days

Sender Marianne via Postcrossing, merci! :)





It is about a monument: French name : La colonne Lilloise (meaning - column of the Goddess).

Wiki:  The Column of the Goddess is the popular name given by the citizens of Lille (France) to the Memorial of the Siege of 1792. The memorial is still in the center of the Grand′ Place (central square) of Lille, and has been surrounded by a fountain since around 1990.
The siege of September 1792 was one of the many battles fought during the French Revolutionary Wars and considered a major event in the city's history by its inhabitants, despite its relatively low military significance on a wider scale.

A few months earlier, in April 1792, French forces in the same area did not conduct themselves well - fleeing after a skirmish with Austrian forces and afterwards killing their own commander, Théobald Dillon. This might have made the Austrians expect an easy victory, which as it turned out was not the case.

An Austrian army of 20,000 men besieged the city of Lille.[3] Then the city was attacked by Albert Casimir, Duke of Teschen. For nine days and nights, the Austrians bombarded the city without intermission, but had ultimately to raise the siege, faced with the determined resistance of the citizens, led by Mayor François André. The Austrians destroyed many houses and the main church (Saint-Etienne) of the city, which was on the Grand′ Place (today the Place du Général de Gaulle). "The siege of Lille in 1792 was, from a purely military perspective, not a significant event. It is clear that contemporaries sought to exaggerate both the scale and the importance of the Austrian attack on Lille.
More info (in French) :
http://archives.lille.fr/Document-du-moment/p325/1792-Lille-a-bien-merite-de-la-Patrie

No comments:

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...