The card reads Joseph Bara 1779 - 1793 & Agricol Viala 1780 - 1793 surrounded by hobby horses and toy snare drums. Wikipedia 2011: Joseph Bara, also written Barra (30 July 1779, Palaiseau "“ 7 December 1793 Jallais) a young French republican soldier at the time of the Revolution. He was in fact too young to join the army but attached himself to a unit fighting counter revolutionaries in Vendée. After his death General J.-B. Desmarres gave this account, by letter, to the Convention. "Yesterday this courageous youth, surrounded by brigands, chose to perish rather than give them the two horses he was leading." The boy's death was seized on as a propaganda opportunity by Robespierre, who praised him at the Convention's tribune saying that "only the French have thirteen-year-old heroes". But rather than simply being killed by Breton royalists who solely wanted to steal horses, Bara was transformed into a figure who denied the Ancien Régime at the cost of death. His story became that having been trapped by the enemy and being ordered to cry "Vive le Roi" ("Long live the King") to save his own life, he preferred instead to die crying "Vive la République" ("Long live the Republic"). His remains were transferred to the Panthéon during a revolutionary festival in his honor. Wikipedia 2011: Joseph Agricol Viala (22 September 1780, Avignon "“ 6 July 1793, Caumont-sur-Durance) was a child hero in the French Revolutionary Army. Viala was living in Avignon when, in 1793, a federalist revolt broke out in the Midi after the fall of the Girondins in Paris. Supported by the British, the French Royalists allied themselves with the Federalists and took control of Toulon and Marseille. Faced with this uprising, the Revolutionary soldiers were forced to abandon Nîmes, Aix and Arles to the insurgents and fall back on Avignon. The inhabitants of Lambesc and Tarascon joined up with the rebels from Marseilles and together they headed for the Durance in order to march on Lyon, which had also revolted against the central government in Paris. The rebels hoped to destroy the Convention and put an end to the French Revolution. Joseph Agricol Viala was a nephew of Agricol Moureau, a Jacobin from Avignon, editor of the Courrier d'Avignon and administrator of the département of Vaucluse. Joseph Agricol thus became commander of the "Espérance de la Patrie", a National Guard formed wholly of young men from Avignon. On hearing news of the approach of the rebels from Marseille, at the start of July 1793, the Republican forces (mainly those from Avignon) gathered to stop the rebels crossing the Durance. Viala attached himself to the national guards from Avignon. Numerically inferior, their only solution was to cut the ropes of the bac de Bonpas under enemy fire. To do so, they had to cross a road completely exposed to rebel fire and behind which the Revolutionary forces had dug in. Despite its necessity, the Revolutionary forces were reluctant to undertake such a hazardous mission. According to accounts of the event, the 13-year-old Viala grabbed a hatchet, launched himself at the cable and started to cut it. He was the subject of several musket vollies and he was mortally wounded by a musket ball from one of them. One account stated: " In vain they tried to hold him back ; he braved the danger and no one could stop him from carrying out his audacious plan. He seized a sapper's hatchet, he shot at the enemy several times with his musket, then, despite the musket balls whistling around him he reached the river bank and, seizing his hatchet, struck the rope with vigour. Luck seemed to be with him at first, he nearly completed his perilous task without being hit, when at that moment a musket ball pierced his breast. He still managed to get up ; but he fell again with great force, crying out [in Provencal dialect] "M'an pas manqua ! Aquo es egaou ; more per la libertat." ("They haven't missed me! All is equal - I die for liberty."). Then he expired after the sublime farewell, without a complaint or regret." Viala's attempt was unable to stop the rebels crossing the Durance, however. Nevertheless, it allowed the Revolutionary forces to carry out an ordered retreat without being able to pick up Viala's body. According to tradition, the Revolutionary soldier who heard Viala's last words tried to pick up the body but had to retreat before he could do so. This left the body to be insulted and mutilated by the advancing Royalists before they crossed the river. Learning of her son's death, Viala's mother said "Yes [...] he died for the fatherland!" In 1822, the sculptor Antoine Allier created a life-size bronze monument to Viala, showing him nude and from behind, with his right hand placed on a hatchet and his left arm gripping a pole with a ring and a length of rope. After being given by the Louvre to the town museum, it was set up on place Gustave-Charpentier, in the suburb of Boulogne-sur-Mer, in June 1993. Under the French Third Republic, historgraphy and scholarly literature contributed to renewed interest in the figures of Viala and Bara. Viala is also one of the 660 figures whose names are engraved on the Arc de triomphe (he appears on the 18th column as VIALA) and the rue Viala, in the 15e arrondissement of Paris, bears his name. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.