The French enter Strasbourg

On 22 November 1918 General Henri Gouraud at the head of the French Fourth Army made a ceremonial entry into Strasbourg, the capital of Alsace. The city had capitulated to the Prussians after a siege in September 1870, and from 1871 it had been the capital of the German Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine. For almost half a century the recovery of the two provinces had been the chief aim of French patriotism, and in January 1918 President Wilson had also endorsed it in the eighth of his Fourteen Points. A British chronology of the war records the French occupation of Strasbourg under 25 November. On that day the commander-in-chief of the French Army, Philippe Pétain, just appointed a marshal, made his ceremonial entry into the city. The first French units, however, had arrived as early as 21 November, and the ceremonial entry of the troops took place a day later.

Revolution on the Rhine

The last weeks of German Strasbourg were turbulent. On 9 November mutinous sailors from the Baltic arrived, stirred by the Kiel mutiny, and during the night a soldiers’ council was formed at the railway station. On 10 November the council announced in the Place Kléber that the old order had fallen. The socialist Jacques Peirotes, soon to be mayor of the city, then proclaimed a republic without saying clearly what kind. The Alsatian regional parliament declared itself the National Council of Alsace and Lorraine, and for several days a red flag flew from the tower of the cathedral. The armistice of 11 November, however, required the Germans to leave Alsace and Lorraine within 15 days. As the army withdrew, the councils lost their importance and dissolved themselves. The red flag was taken down from the cathedral on 20 November, and on 21 November the inhabitants pulled down the monument to Emperor Wilhelm I in the Kaiserplatz.

French troops had been marching through Alsace since 17 November, when they entered Mulhouse. Their pace was set by the armistice. The German and French staffs agreed that the local police and citizens’ guards would take over the keeping of order in each town at least two hours before the arrival of the French advance guards, and in Strasbourg as much as four. The people of Strasbourg grew impatient. On 19 November the local reception committee even sent a delegate to Gouraud’s headquarters at Obernai to hasten the entry.

Gouraud’s entry

On 22 November Gouraud drove from Obernai by car. At ten in the morning, at the Schirmeck Gate, he mounted a horse and placed himself at the head of an escort of spahis. The gate was chosen deliberately. General Uhrich’s garrison had left the city after the capitulation of 1870 by another gate, the Cronenbourg Gate, and the victors did not want to enter that way. Gouraud was known throughout France. He had lost his right arm in the Gallipoli campaign, and in July 1918 his army had stopped the last great German offensive in Champagne. The columns marched to the city’s main square, until then the Kaiserplatz, which was at once renamed Place de la République. According to witnesses the parade turned into a great ovation. The city was awash with flags, the crowd sang the “Marseillaise”, and girls in Alsatian costume showered the soldiers with flowers.

Not the whole city celebrated in the same way, however. A French officer, Raymond Stern, noticed that in the Neustadt, the district built by the Germans after 1871, there were very few flags. Many German officials lived there with their families. A large proportion of them were expelled across the Rhine in the following months. On the same day General Auguste Hirschauer, who five days earlier had led the troops into Mulhouse, became military governor of Strasbourg.

What came next

Further commanders followed Gouraud. Pétain arrived on 25 November, and on 27 November Marshal Ferdinand Foch, who saluted with the sabre of General Jean-Baptiste Kléber the monument to this Strasbourg-born hero of the French Revolution. On 9 December the city welcomed President Raymond Poincaré and Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. Gouraud had little time to enjoy his triumph, because his mother died immediately afterwards. According to his biographers, on 23 November in Paris he laid on her deathbed a bouquet tied with a tricolour ribbon which he had received from the women of Strasbourg the day before.