Ceremonies of November 11th
for the remembrance of the war 14-18

Approximately 10 million deaths and 20 million wounded persons, such was the assessment of the World War I, the armistice of which France celebrates on every November 11th since 1918.

The war 14-18 seen by France was French-German. To consult the newspapers of period, we realize that it was at first European, including Germany, England, Austria, Belgium, France, Italy but also troops resulting from very numerous countries :
Soldiers of America first of all, but also Portuguese, from Polish, ..., and all those coming from French colonies of period :
Vietnam, Senegal, Algeria, Tahiti, New Caledonia...

The fights took place inside and around Europe, but with repercussions all over the world, in China, in Mongolia, in Palestine, in Syria...
while Russia was in full revolution.
But it was doubtless France, Belgium and Germany that paid most heavy tolls in people and in destructions.

We know that the Great War was only the continuation of that of the 1870.
We can quote this comment of an illustration of the Miroir of November 24th, 1818:
" Marshal Foch bringing to the interallied conference the convention of armistice:
The immanent justice announced by Gambetta after our setbacks of 1870 got up... "
The treaty ending the war of 1870 had in germ the Great War, as well as that of Versailles of 1918 opened the possibility of the war of 1940, every treaty settling only in a incomplete way the frictions between the peoples.
Frictions and economic problems that boutes-fire irresponsible or possessed by a killing frenzy transform then into news war.

See at the end of page about twenty reproductions of photos on the World War I of 14-18 and that de1870.
And also on other one of my sites, in French,
the Miroir of August 16th, 1914 with the first photos of the war, in England, in Belgium and in France.

Ruins of Hall to the cloth merchants to Ypres, in Belgium - Photo Maurice Tesson
(See also pages - in French - dedicated to the war memorial of Ypres on other one of my sites)

All the documents of 14-18 below are extracted from the publication Le Miroir, no illustration of which is signed, this weekly announcing in front page that it :
" Pay any price the photographic documents relative to the war presenting a particular interest ".
Thus these photographic documents belong probably not to the public domain, but to determine it is almost impossible for the greater part.

The reproductions illustrating the war of 1870 result from the Henri Martin's Histoire de France populaire, published in 1885

War 14-18, World War I

Soldiers, here German, under clouds of poison gas ( sarin gas)

A "reconquered" trench, corpses in the mud

Algerian soldiers in the front

The battle of Verdun

The American troops marching past in New York before their departure for Europe

Australian soldiers on road towards their trench

Portuguese troops arriving as additional help

Polish troops, attending the mass, before leaving to the fight

Inside of a subterranean trench (left bank of the Meuse) said ' Kronprinz-Tunnel ' after its conquest,
filled with 400 corpses and 50 wounded persons

Russian troops welcomed by French

English soldiers on the heights of Damascus, in Syria

The Chinese troops repossessing the German enclave of Tianjin (Tianjin)

Hindu troops equipped with gas masks, on the French front

Vietnamese troops in their barracks in France

Fiji soldiers preparing to leave the Franco-German front

English troops and tanks in Gaza

Canadian soldiers washing himself in one shell-holes

On the Austrian front

" The Departure of the soldiers " of Albert Herter, picture which was hung on in the Hall of the East station of Paris

In the pages of the Miroir of August 16th, 1914 you will find numerous illustrations concerning England in the war.

War of 1870

Battle of cavalry of Rezonville, on August 16th, 1870 in surrounding of Metz

Fire and massacre of Bazeilles in the Ardennes

Battle of foot soldiers to Champigny

Paris on fire in May, 1871, due to the uprising of the Commune, further to the defeat