“You won’t go any further.” This is what we can read today at the foot of the granite and cast iron building erected in Barcy. This commemorative monument represents the Virgin Mary who, according to legend, stopped the German army in early September 1914 as it seemed to be heading inexorably towards the French capital. The “miracle of the Marne” deserved a statue, which was done in 1924. This weekend, the village of Barcy, which has just under 400 inhabitants, is therefore celebrating the centenary of the inauguration of the monument. On the program in particular: activities, reenactments and a mass which will be given at 10 a.m. by the bishop of the diocese of Meaux, Monseigneur Jean-Yves Nahmias.
It is precisely to one of his predecessors that we owe the creation of this building, both religious and patriotic. Between September 6 and 9, 1914, at the start of the First World War, deadly fighting raged at the gates of Meaux. In the midst of the Battle of the Marne, on September 8, 1914, Mgr Emmanuel Marbeau, Bishop of Meaux, vowed to build a statue to the glory of Notre-Dame if his city was spared. And miraculously, the Germans retreated.
Mystical apparition or collective hallucination?
If no ecclesial investigation was carried out, Mgr Marbeau was convinced of the intervention of Heaven: “The victory of the Marne was a providential work so marvelous that the most blind cannot help but recognize its extraordinary character”, he would have declared. Testimonies were also published in newspapers of the time.
Like that of this German priest taken prisoner, who confided in nuns before dying: “As a soldier, I should remain silent, but as a priest, I must say what I saw. During the battle, we were surprised to be turned back, because we were legion compared to the French and we expected to arrive in Paris. But we saw the Blessed Virgin, dressed all in white with a blue sash, leaning towards Paris. She turned her back on us and, with her right hand, seemed to push us away… I saw this and so did a large number of our people.”
A weekend of activities in the village
The mother of the wife of a former mayor of Barcy also reportedly recounted what she heard at the hospital where she officiated. “ The wounded Germans, by the hundreds, all said the same thing: it’s incomprehensible… It was the Holy Virgin who pushed us back (…) Was it an apparition, a delirium? She pushed us back with her hand and faced with this supernatural force, we fled… We could no longer move forward! »
If you would like to find out more, come to “Barcy at the time of the Great War”, starting this Saturday from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. On the menu, live scenes around the church, an exhibition on ecclesiastics during the Great War in partnership with the diocesan archives, workshops-conferences on the Battle of the Marne, the Battle of l’Ourcq, Monseigneur Marbeau. On Sunday, an open-air mass at 10 a.m. will be followed at 11:30 a.m. by a tribute to Mgr Marbeau and the inauguration of Place Marbeau on the Place de l’Eglise.
Note that throughout the weekend, the Friends of the Great War Museum will offer the tasting and sale of “Pain des Poilus”, the opportunity to taste a slice of History.
Complete program on the website meaux-marne-ourcq.com
