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Origin and history

The monument to the dead of Sombacour, made in the early twentieth century, is part of a series of regional monuments depicting a hairy in ruins, crowned by a figure between angel and Victory. A cross, a symbol of the "superior hopes" according to the local press, was added, reflecting the Catholic anchor of this land of Upper Doubs. Its location in front of the town hall-school, "where the soldiers of tomorrow will come out", is interpreted as a lesson of duty and sacrifice, or as a watchman facing the Col des Roches, entrance of the village.

The monument completes a neo-Gothic cross road built between 1872 and 1895 on the nearby mountain, where 13 oratories lead to a calvary dominated by a Virgin. Commanded in 1921 to honour the 28 deaths of the Great War, he was carved by Jules Guillin, a memorial specialist in the Doubs, for 20,000 francs. The approaches and a porch were built in 1923 by architect Parrod de Pontarlier. Guillin, trained in the Fine Arts of Besançon and in Rome, deploys a recurring model: a hairy ready to leap, mixing national martyrdom and religious symbolic.

This monument, written entirely since December 2022, illustrates the mentality of Haut-Doubs, where the memory of the dead soldiers is rooted in a tradition of Marian devotion and monumental calvaries. The local press, like Le Pontissalien or Le Courrier de la Montagne, emphasises its dual role: teaching (face to school) and memorial (to the Col des Roches, strategic place). His style, halfway between secular allegory and Christian iconography, makes it a unique testimony of the tensions between patriotism and faith in the inter-war period.

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