Column of the Goddess
Encyclopedia
The Column of the Goddess is the popular name given by the citizens of Lille
Lille
Lille is a city in northern France . It is the principal city of the Lille Métropole, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country behind those of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Lille is situated on the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium...

 (France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

) to the Memorial of the siege of 1792. The memorial is still in the center of the Grand' Place (central place) of Lille
Lille
Lille is a city in northern France . It is the principal city of the Lille Métropole, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country behind those of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Lille is situated on the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium...

, and has been surrounded by a fountain since around 1990.

The Siege

The siege of September 1792 was one of the many battles fought during the French Revolutionary Wars
French Revolutionary Wars: Campaigns of 1792
The French Revolutionary Wars began in 1792.-Preparations:France declared war on Austria on 20 April 1792. But Prussia and other powers had allied themselves with Austria in the expectation of conflict, and thus France faced a coalition and not a single power at the moment when the "emigration",...

 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
Théobald Dillon
Théobald Dillon was count of Dillon and an Irish-born general in the French army. He was the grandson of Arthur Dillon, the nephew of the bishop Arthur Richard Dillon and the cousin of general Arthur Dillon .On 29 April 1792, following the loss of a skirmish with Austrian forces, Dillon was...

. This might have made the Austrians expect an easy victory, which as it turned out was not the case.

An Austrian army besieged the city of Lille
Lille
Lille is a city in northern France . It is the principal city of the Lille Métropole, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country behind those of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Lille is situated on the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium...

. 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. They Austrians did destroy 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 Monument

The church was never to be re-built and the Grand' Place of Lille is still one of the few local central places without either a church or a belfry (unlike similar cities such as Bruges
Bruges
Bruges is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located in the northwest of the country....

 and Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

).

Hyacinthe Jadin
Hyacinthe Jadin
Hyacinthe Jadin was a French composer who came from a distinguished musical family. His uncle Georges Jadin was a composer in Versailles and Paris, along with his father Jean Jadin, who had also played bassoon for the French Royal Orchestra...

 composed his Marche du siège de Lille in 1792, in the direct aftermath of the siege. For many years there was, however, no physiacal monument in the city itself. Some fifty years later, the local authorities became aware that nothing had been made to commemorate the 50th birthday of this event. They decided on the building of a memorial, just in time to lay the first stone in September 1842, but it was not before 1845 that the memorial was finished.

The memorial consists of a column topped by a statue. The column was designed by the architect Charles Benvignat
Charles Benvignat
Charles Benvignat was a French architect, especially active in Lille, then undergoing major urban expansion.-Life:...

, while the statue was sculpted by Théophile Bra
Théophile Bra
Théophile François Marcel Bra was a French Romantic sculptor and exact contemporary of Eugène Delacroix. He was deeply involved in the Romantic era through his uncompromising personality and complex spirituality...

 as an allegory of the besieged city wearing a mural crown
Mural crown
-Usage in ancient times:In Hellenistic culture, a mural crown identified the goddess Tyche, the embodiment of the fortune of a city, familiar to Romans as Fortuna...

. It was nicknamed the Goddess by the inhabitants of Lille soon after the erection of the memorial, as some local poems suggest.
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