Grasse in the Great War

The outbreak of war in 1914 was greeted with enthusiasm in France, just as it was in Britain. The populations of both countries were sure that the war would be short and successful. That might seem absurd in retrospect, but the last major war between France and Germany in 1870 had lasted only 44 days so the expectations of the people were not quite as stupid as they look now!

Address from the president at the outbreak of war, 4th August 1914

The situation in France was quite different from that in the UK. Here, ‘mobilisation’ meant the assembly of an army of 3.8 million men, the majority trained through national service over the previous twenty years. They amounted to nearly 10% of the entire population and nearly 80% of males aged between 20 and 40.

As a local example, the confectioner-turned-perfumier, Emile Litsghy, whose activities I posted about here, had three sons. Joseph, born in 1879, was a member of the military class of 1901 (when he reached 21) and had spent three years in the army. He regarded himself as fortunate – he drew a low number in the conscription ballot and was assigned to the artillery. Had he drawn a high number, he would have been in the infantry or, worse, the navy! He was followed by Jean-Jacques (1905) and Léopold (1906). All three went straight off to war in 1914.

By contrast, ‘mobilisation’ in Britain really meant just sending the Grand Fleet to Scapa Flow in the Orkneys to dominate the North Sea. Her trained army amounted to only 700,000 men, which was less than 2% of the population, and the regular soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force sent to France numbered only 90,000 in August 1914.

Mobilisation in Grasse

Posters appeared in Grasse’s streets on 2nd August. On the following day, military trains started to depart from the PLM station (today’s Gare de Grasse). They first carried the professional soldiers of the 23rd Chasseurs Alpins from the town barracks to the Alsace front. They had been in Grasse to defend the Italian border, but Italy had announced its neutrality.

This army postcard was sent in 1915. According to the writer, it shows the 23rd Chasseurs Alpins

The mobilized reservists followed. Factories and agriculture abruptly lost much of their labour force and schools their teachers. Even the maire, Jean Ossola, went off to war. We don’t know how many exactly left, but if Grasse was typical of the national population, less than a quarter of all the younger adults remained in the local workforce.

German citizens of Grasse were interned and deprived of their property. They included Frederick Rost, the proprietor of the Grand Hotel, and the owners of the Bernard Escoffier perfumery.

Reality dawns

Reality came quickly and the early optimism disappeared. From mid-September, refugees from the occupied parts of northern France began to arrive in Grasse, closely followed by many wounded soldiers. Grasse’s hospital, then at Petit-Paris, was quickly overwhelmed and orders were issued to convert hotels, including the Grand, the Victoria and the Beau-Soleil, the Collège des Garcons (today’s Amiral de Grasse Lycée), and even the casino into military hospitals.

A convalescent centre in Grasse. I can find no record of where establishment 37 was (it was not a hotel or the College des Garçons, which had other references); it looks more like a townhouse (hôtel particulier).

More than 100 Grassois were among the dead of 1914 and more than 900 wounded arrived between September 1914 and mid-2015. The town was shocked into realisation of the seriousness of the war.

Food

Although food supplies became restricted in the UK and France, the reasons were quite different. France was a far more agricultural society, with over 40% of the population living directly from the land, compared to just 10% in the UK. Much of the reduction in food supplies resulted from the loss of some of the richest land to the German occupiers, because in the rest of France, the female inhabitants in the countryside regarded it as natural for them to do the work of departed men. There was a famous appeal by the head of government, René Viviani, for them to do so, but it seemingly wasn’t really needed.

Appeal to the women of France, 6th August 1914. Part of the text reads 'I ask you to maintain the activity of the countryside, to finish the harvest of this year, to prepare that of the next: you cannot render a greater service to the Fatherland....the men...of France....must find the land ready for new sowing, for new harvests.'

Such an appeal to a dominantly urban populace in the UK would have been met with incomprehension!

For the UK, it was the loss of shipping to German attacks in the Atlantic Ocean which created the shortages by choking the imports of grain (from north America) and meat (from Argentina), upon which the British depended. In 1917 the Government did try to increase food production at home by creating a ‘Women’s Land Army’ (the ‘Land Girls’). With only around 100,000 women enrolled, it was not a great success.

But the outcome was similar – in both countries, basics such as bread, sugar and meat were of poor quality, rationed and subject to price control. There was a black market, and fraud, for example with wine and milk being adulterated, became rife.

Notice of price control on meat issued by the stand-in maire of Grasse, October 1914

Local industry

Grasse and the region suffered because the coal mines of the north were either occupied or closed, which restricted the factories and severely reduced the availability of coal-gas from Grasse’s plant near the station. Tax receipts dropped substantially at a time when the town’s costs to accommodate the refugees and look after the families of soldiers soared.

The winter-residents (‘hivernants’) of course did not arrive, but the other engine of the town’s prosperity, the perfume factories, did continue to work. Even if they could not obtain all the raw materials which they needed, some continued to supply their export markets and others, Chiris and Lautier included, pivoted to making explosives and chemicals for poison gas.

Later years

Some activities resumed as early as 1916. The casino, cinema and theatre, closed in 1914, re-opened after French (relative) success at Verdun, and prostitution apparently thrived in some of the bars of the lower town. That was despite rules restricting the opening of bars to soldiers, which perhaps echo the licencing laws passed in the UK at the same time. Unlike in Britain, such laws did not survive the war!

Labour became better organised. In 1917 the departemental prefect offered ‘many hundreds’ of workmen from French Indo-China, and in 1918, the army sent Serbian refugees for the harvest. Even some hotels (the Beausoleil and the Victoria) reopened for business in the winter of 1917-18.

Armistice

The armistice of November 1918, as across all of Europe, was greeted with joy in Grasse. There were numerous concerts, masses and processions to celebrate the end.

In terms of the dead, Grasse suffered less than other parts of France. The toll recorded on the war memorial at Petit-Puy was very roughly 1.5% of the pre-war population, which compares with around 3% across all of France. Grasse was also fortunate that the wave of so-called Spanish influenza (actually, it originated in the USA) which swept across Europe in 1918-19 killed relatively fewer people than in the country at large.

Nevertheless, Grasse’s estimated population in 1921 dropped to around 19,000 and took until 1930 to surpass its pre-war level.

Léopold Litsghy, probably about 1917. The days of 1914, when soldiers went to war wearing bright blue and red uniforms, had long gone.

Joy for the Litsghy family

Emile was lucky, because all his sons survived. Joseph, perhaps because he was older, did not go to the front, but the other two were wounded, Jean being re-assigned as a cook in 1917 in the temporary hospital at the Gallia in Cannes. Léopold was wounded twice and, poor man, not finally de-mobilised until March 1919. That he then became a hotelier, running the Victoria in Grasse, is a great tribute to his fortitude.

Commemorations

When one reads the names on Grasse’s war memorial, in front of the cathedral, the same thought occurs as with hundreds of similar memorials around France: apart from the sheer numbers, the recurrence of the same local surnames. Notably, they include Cresp and Hugues (no less than eight times each), Raybaud (four times) and Gastaud, Perdigon, Roystan and Latty (all three times).

Grasse's main war memorial, shown in 1929 shortly after its completion, with (inset) how it looks today. The yellow building to the right is the Fanton d'Andon hôtel particulier and the small tower of St Thomas chapel appears on the left of the image, just as now.

The other striking point in Grasse is the number of names of Italian origin. The influx of economic migrants from Piedmont and Liguria in the previous thirty years shows in the surnames. Five Italian-sounding names appear twice: Dutto, Prato, Leotardi, Sartori and Bosio, and there are many others. Even right at the start of the war, the maire had thanked the Italian residents of Grasse for their support.

Grasse has two stadia outside the town, those of Jean Girard and Louis Perdigon. Both are named after heroes of 1914-18.

Amongst other sources for this post, notably the archives of Grasse, I have used a book by Emile Litsghy (the son of Léopold), 'On lui disant Maubert-la-pièce', TAC Motifs, 1999, and a booklet published by the town in 2014, 'Grasse se mobilise 1914/1918'.