Highlanders. They fought like lions, but that didn't save them. Almost eight hundred of the best soldiers of Europe died a heroic death, but they did not break the oath of allegiance. The French lily, which they selflessly tried to cover with themselves, withered. And the sentimental, in the words of Mark Twain, betrayal, is inscribed in the most shameful page in the biography of King Louis XVI.
The small city of Lucerne in Switzerland is not much different from its counterparts - the small old cities of Europe, but there is one monument in it, thanks to which the city became famous throughout the world. "The Dying Lion" is a monument to the fallen Swiss guards, devoid of unnecessary pathos and politicization, such features characteristic of monuments of this subject.
“The saddest and most touching stone statue in the world,” Mark Twain said about one of the oldest stone sculptures in Switzerland, “The Dying Lion”. A monument that managed to move even such a famous cynic as the author of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer".
The history of the monument refers us to the events of the Great French Revolution.
1792, the French Revolution is in its third year, but the royal throne still holds. On August 10, the people besieged the Tuileries palace in Paris and the troops went over to the side of the rebels. With King Louis XVI, only the palace guard loyal to him remained - about a thousand Swiss guards, ready to defend the monarch to the last, but Louis, seeing the approaching French, gave the order "not to shoot." By his act, he hoped to show that he did not wish harm to his people, but thereby doomed hundreds of guardsmen to death, bound by an oath of allegiance.
Not shedding a drop of sacred French blood meant, according to the thought of a weak and cowardly king, to prove to his subjects that he was protecting his people and did not wish them harm. And they - the Swiss guards - were left alone with the angry crowd and with their hands tied by order. There were a little more than 1000 of them. There were twenty times more of the revolted Parisians. By midday the Tuileries had been taken. Of the Swiss soldiers loyal to the king, not even half survived. Two hundred more guardsmen were executed in early September.
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It is curious that the as yet unknown artillery officer Napoleon Bonaparte became a witness of these events, watching the siege, he complained about the mediocrity of the defense of the palace and the resistance of the Swiss, in his opinion, it was necessary to shoot into the crowd from cannons. By the way, a few years later, finding himself in the same situation as Louis, Napoleon did just that.
August 10 was a real tragedy - more than 600 Swiss died, another 200 were captured by the rebels and executed in September of the same year. King Louis was sentenced to death, which took place in January 1793.
Karl Pfüffer is incredibly lucky. He was not in Paris that August day - he was enjoying his vacation in his native Lucerne. The news of the death of his fellow soldiers shocked the Swiss officer and he vowed to remember his fighting friends forever. Pfüffer kept his oath. And even more: thanks to the efforts of a member of the Lucerne City Council and the chairman of the local artists' society, the memory of his comrades in arms has been immortalized in stone.
After serving for several more years as a hired officer, Pfuffer returned to his hometown in 1801, where he soon took a high post in the city council and headed the Lucerne Society of Arts. But even after that, the implementation of the idea could not come true - Switzerland was under the rule of France and the creation of a monument to the victims of the French Revolution would not have received Napoleon's approval. But as soon as Switzerland regained its independence and the Bourbon dynasty regained the throne, Karl Pfüffer began to implement his plan.
The money was collected by the whole world, and this is not a figure of speech: even the Russian imperial family was noticed among hundreds of donors. They were looking for a sculptor for a long time - none of the local sculptors satisfied the captious Pfuffer. The renowned of the renowned, "Northern Phidias", the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen was summoned. From under his ingenious hands came The Dying Lion.
Thorvaldsen became interested in the project and, after a few months, provided the first sketches of the monument, however, impressed by the story of the heroic deed of the Swiss guards, he considered it best to portray not a dead, but a dying lion.
According to sketches and a model of a distant celebrity, a deadly wounded beast was carved into the rock by the Swiss sculptor Lucas Ahorn. On the 29th anniversary of the feat, the monument was solemnly opened. The first to stand on the guard of honor was retired corporal David Clark. Tears rolled down the face of the old soldier: he was remembering. How he fought off a cannon that terrible day, how he was wounded and covered by his comrades …
The inscription on the monument:
“The loyalty and courage of the Swiss on August 10, September 2–3, 1792. Here are the names of those who, in order not to break the oath of allegiance, fell with great courage: 26 officers and about 760 soldiers survived the defeat thanks to the care and help of friends: 16 officers and about 350 soldiers. In honor of their feat, the townspeople erected this monument for eternal times.
Karl Pfüffer's project, Bertel Thorvaldsen's work, Lucas Ahorn's work”.
A dying lion lies in a depression in the rock. A fragment of a spear is stuck in the side, the paws are weakly hanging, but from the last remnants of strength they cover the French lilies on the heraldic shield. The monument is full of grandeur and erases a smile from the most joyful face. The eternal mocker Mark Twain also changed his humor: "the saddest and most touching boulder in the world." And the place was approved by the American classic:
This is a cozy, relaxed forest corner, detached from the hustle, bustle and confusion - and all this is as it should be - after all, lions really die in places like this, and not on granite pedestals erected in city parks, behind cast-iron shaped casting gratings.
Thorvaldsen himself saw his creation only twenty years later in 1841 and praised the work of Lucas Ahorn, noting that the monument to the Swiss guards would be known more than others and neither time nor merciless weather could prevent it. He was not mistaken, the Dying Lion became famous all over the world, and copies of it were later installed in Greece and the USA.
Until now, the Dying Lion is the unsurpassed embodiment of sadness and grief, a reminder of the heroic deed of the guards who sacrificed themselves to save the king of a foreign country.
Today, only one "infantry cohort of the Pope's sacred guard" remains from once one of the most reliable and professional mercenary guards, who served faithfully to the royal courts of France, Spain, Italy for six centuries. This is the official name of the military formation serving in the Vatican and known to us today as the "Swiss Guard", consisting of only one hundred and ten people.
