Liberty's Torch: The Great Adventure to Build the Statue of Liberty (10 page)

Bartholdi had been back to Colmar for summers and holidays, but he had not lived in his hometown for almost thirty years. He was a professional statue maker whose energy tended to be directed toward his own enterprises exclusively, not worldly events. Given both factors, he was an unlikely man to play military hero.

He arrived to find that the government had made no efforts to stock his town for war, so Bartholdi set about gathering what he could, calling on the inhabitants to relinquish their wine and food. Guns would, of course, be essential, but the government had made only one poorly organized delivery in late August. What weapons the citizens could gather from their own home arsenals they delivered to Colmar’s covered market. Bartholdi put through a request for cartridges. On September 10 the government sent a small number of guns and some gunpowder but both were old and out-of-date.

Bartholdi needed men, but few experienced fighters lived in Colmar. When he needed scouts, he simply chose men who owned horses. As of September 11, Bartholdi’s fighting force consisted of his cobbled-together National Guard.
Franc-tireur
s of St. Denis—literally “free-shooters,” mercenaries who were roaming around the area at the time—joined them. Bartholdi drew a picture of one with long hair, shaggy beard, pants fraying at the knee, and long, pointed boots.

Among the
cartes de visite,
the small photographic business cards that were the rage of the time, given to Bartholdi was one that highlights the eclectic nature of his recruits. This citizen, Émile de Boisluisant, was a “general agent for the center of France, from the United States of America and the Republics of the South.” Not only had he organized snipers at Auvergne; he was “president of the skaters’ club of Clermont-Ferrand,” “organizer of public celebrations” for the poor, and a “composer of patriotic songs.”

Strasbourg, the capital of Alsace, forty-three miles from Colmar, had been under heavy bombardment by the Prussians since August. Along with vast swaths of the city, its Museum of Fine Arts and library of rare manuscripts had been destroyed. Swiss volunteers had entered the city to try to rescue as many people as possible.

Paris prepared for a similar attack. By September 12, the trees in and around Paris had been chopped down to increase the visibility of the approaching enemy. The National Guard took to the ramparts. Bridges leading into Paris had been blown up to slow a Prussian assault. The
New York Times
reported that “singing in the streets has entirely stopped.”

Colmar was a vulnerable border town. Its greatest hope for emerging unscathed from this war was its relative lack of strategic military importance.

On September 12, the German troops advanced for the first time into the Haut-Rhin. The afternoon of the thirteenth, Bartholdi learned that a few soldiers from Baden had arrived in the Alsatian town of Jebsheim, less than seven and a half miles from Colmar. He figured the small contingent of German soldiers might be a group passing through the region, not an enemy intent on causing trouble.

That night, the prefect of the Haut-Rhin reported a few enemy soldiers had gone into Jebsheim for tobacco. French scouts went to the town to check their numbers. The scouts realized the so-called “few soldiers looking for smoking material” were in fact an army of six thousand infantry and cavalry, with artillery.

Bartholdi might have reasonably expected his superior to take charge, but Commander Guisses had apparently gone to visit his son in Brisach. Bartholdi went to the town hall to let the mayor know of the looming threat, but found no one there. He went to the mayor’s commander’s house and found him resting. “I’m exhausted and so are my men. I want to take a bath,” the gentleman said, and delegated all his powers to Bartholdi on the spot.

Distraught, Bartholdi went to the new prefect, J. Grosjean, the civilian leader for the region, who had taken office only eight days before with the declaration of the new republic. The two held a small meeting of town officials and military leaders of the various mercenary groups at the prefecture. Bartholdi asked to be given authority to take action.

Grosjean told him he could take the franc-tireurs of St.-Denis to the Horbourg Bridge, the crossing one mile out from Colmar of the river that wound through town, to try to prevent an attack. He could do so at three o’clock in the morning, but Bartholdi was not to order up the National Guard. Grosjean did not want the whole town woken, as that would create mayhem. Instead Bartholdi would go house to house and gather men who he knew had military experience. Grosjean gave Bartholdi a paper granting him the right to seize ammunition wherever he found it.

Bartholdi left, extremely nervous. He knew that if he did nothing to defend Colmar, he’d be lambasted for cowardice, but his options were few. His men were uneducated, undisciplined, and unarmed. He feared a massacre.

At half past two in the morning, as the town slept in the chill of the autumn night, Bartholdi posted National Guardsmen at the prefecture, at the telegraph office, and at city hall. He made his way through the cobblestone streets, his footsteps more audible at that empty hour, arranging the waking of the men he needed.

He had heard nothing from the scouts. Making his way out to the Horbourg Bridge, he found everything quiet. The modest brick barricades the National Guard had erected stood nearby. He saw Teinturier, the commander of the franc-tireurs, who had been keeping watch at the bridge. Amazingly enough, Teinturier said he wanted to return to town.

“It’s not for today,” he told Bartholdi; “my men are exhausted and me too.”

Bartholdi could not believe this sluggishness. The man wanted to leave his post just as danger threatened. Bartholdi asked him to wait, at least until the scouts returned from Jebsheim. Although he had no authority to make Teinturier stay, he told him that if he was intent on leaving, he would have to go to the prefect for permission. Teinturier promised to do so.

Bartholdi returned to town to confer with whatever officials he could find at city hall and the prefecture.

At 5 a.m. the lookouts still saw nothing. At six thirty Bartholdi changed the soldiers.

At seven o’clock, a scout arrived on the cobblestone streets of Colmar, saying the Prussians had been seen marching in their direction. Bartholdi immediately told him to go find Teinturier, but soon learned that the head of the francs-tireurs had indeed abandoned his post. Bartholdi returned to his house to change into his uniform and eat breakfast, readying himself for the first battle of his life, one he would lead.

When he came back out at half past seven, women and children from the suburbs of Brisach milled in the streets, frantic with the news that Prussians occupied the villages near Holtzwihr, which was halfway between Jebsheim and Colmar. The enemy had come closer by half. Witnesses said those troops were about to cross the Horbourg Bridge.

Residents of Colmar panicked, racing into their houses and stores, slamming doors and bolting the shutters. The snipers of St.-Denis, accompanied by Bartholdi’s selection of the most capable National Guardsmen, headed out to Horbourg Bridge to face the battle.

The bridge did not rise high over the water: it was low and flat, with sides that offered little protection should bullets begin to fly. The snipers were forced to hide behind the brick barricades that the National Guard had cobbled together on the approach to the bridge.

Bartholdi surveyed the scene. Some of the snipers sprawled on the ground. Others pressed together behind a single tree.

Bartholdi then did something most peculiar. He took out his sketchbook and began drawing. He sketched the men, the houses across the river, the leaves on the trees. His drawing reflected what met his eye, to record history, and, if he survived, perhaps serve as a sketch for a future painting.

As the National Guard waited, the Badois approached. Their shells and gunpowder rained down on the first thick-beamed houses of Brisach. A bullet pierced the gas factory. Fighting broke out on both sides of the bridge and in the Semwald forest, where, during peaceful times, lepidopterists and insect hunters liked to roam. Skirmishes ignited near the tile factory, where the National Guard had constructed modest brick barricades.

The snipers at the front line began to beat back the enemy, an extraordinary feat given that six thousand troops with five cannons were descending on this small band. They began to drive them past Horbourg.

Then the mass of Badois troops surged. Bullets rattled across the field. One sniper fell dead at the bridge’s entrance. Several others fell wounded. The ones who could still fight retreated from tree to tree until they came to the large brickyard where the majority of the snipers and National Guardsmen had been stationed. The Germans aimed two cannons directly at them.

When reinforcement of Badois troops came up along the Sundhoffen Bridge, the French fighters knew they had nowhere to turn.

Meanwhile, those franc-tireurs fighting on the bridge suddenly realized new soldiers were joining them. The ragtag National Guardsmen whom Bartholdi had left slumbering in Colmar had heard the tumult and surged toward the barracks, seizing cartridges, many of them trying to learn to lock and load a gun even as they ran toward war.

These additional forces, however, did not change fortunes for Colmar. After a half hour of fighting, the National Guard sounded retreat. There was nothing to do but surrender, and that turned out to be a fortunate decision. Bartholdi would later learn the enemy had been rolling eighteen new cannons.

Three of Bartholdi’s National Guardsmen had been killed in the battle—an innkeeper, a boot maker, and a painter.

His troops rushed back to town to get there before their conquerors could arrive. They sent the franc-tireurs fleeing to the mountains with the hope they might fight again. Before Bartholdi had time to return to his house to tell his mother that Colmar now belonged to the Prussians, the Badois marched into the village in two long lines. A Colmar man in a stupor stumbled out from his house on rue Vauban, yelling in German at the Badois. They shot him, as well as his wife, who tried to save him.

In front of the town hall, the Badois called for the mayor. When he appeared in front of his building, they took him and two of his aides prisoner. They ripped the French colors from the balcony and issued an order that all guns be delivered to the town hall before nine that morning. The houses would be searched and those defying the order would be put to death.

Bartholdi’s next action seems quaintly bourgeois. He returned to his house. “I get lunch at half past twelve,” he wrote in his journal. “In the middle of lunch 17 Baden arrive, I thought to come arrest me. These are simple bailiffs. They are scattered in the yard . . . , they take off their boots, socks (
mais! Horresco referens
[I shudder to tell the story]).” They were there for bread and mattresses.

As night came, the residents of Colmar mourned that they were now fully under German occupation. In the silence that night, they could hear cries ring out:
“Wer da!”
Who goes there?

In his report to his commander, Bartholdi wrote, “I am very grateful, sir, for the kind words that you kindly address to me at this occasion. The responsibility was unexpected for me and heavy for my little experience; I tried to do well, without having been able to do much about it by myself.” He went on to praise the captains of the other crews for their good work, with the exception of the leaders who had abandoned him to the task.

Bartholdi also at this point kept what appeared to be designated notes for a future memoir that never was written. He revealed a perspective more practical than romantic, which was not entirely ordinary for the time. “From the popular and absolute point of view, perhaps I should have sounded the general call, gathered the National Guard, and sent them to support the snipers,” he wrote. “But in practical terms it would have been insane. The men didn’t have any discipline, they lacked formation, and most of them were ignorant about the handling of guns. It would have been a great tumult; the National Guard would have been massacred and the city burned by the enemy. When the only person you risk exposing [to danger] is yourself, you are entitled to play the hero, but when we are talking about an entire population who depend on your conduct, you cannot act the same. From the national point of view, perhaps it could be very beautiful and useful for a few men to sacrifice themselves to inspire an uprising and set an example, but Alsace was too abandoned to create the unanimous feeling necessary to support the uprising.”

Bartholdi’s levelheadedness did not make the Badois occupation any more palatable. When the enemy marched out on a mission, the town would erupt in mourning for the fallen Colmar citizens. When the Badois returned, the town returned to silence.

On September 29, at the train station, Colmar citizens heard the announcement that Strasbourg, forty-three miles away, had surrendered. Its cathedral stood roofless, bricks and rubble littering the space enclosed by what had once been grand walls of statuary. Its museum and library had been destroyed. Now the Prussian army was leaving the timber-littered streets to head to Belfort, the city southwest of Colmar.

Belfort was building fortifications to try to hold off the Prussians, and volunteers streamed there to help with the impending siege. “One would like to be useful,” Bartholdi wrote in his notes.

On September 30 he interrupted his journal. “Leave for Belfort.”