The image of Marianne – France’s paramount symbol of liberty and reason – with her right eye gouged out was perhaps the most disturbing to emerge from the protest of the Gilets-Jaunes, or Yellow Vests, in Paris last weekend.
The face of the Goddess adorns public buildings throughout the nation, but is nowhere more revered than in the sacred space of the Arc de Triomphe. It was there, guarding the approach to the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, that she was attacked on Saturday by a group of hammer-wielding anarchists bent, if not on a repeat of the Revolution, at least on a replay of theévenements of 1968.
