Battle of Alma

We are standing on the Pont de l’Alma, a bridge that not only connects the banks of the Seine but also commemorates a battle fought far from here. The bridge was built in 1856 under Napoleon III and named after the Battle of Alma, the first major victory of the Franco-British-Ottoman coalition over Russia during the Crimean War in 1854. The Battle of Alma took place on 20 September 1854, along the Alma River in Crimea.

French and British troops had landed on the peninsula days earlier and advanced toward Sevastopol. The Russians held strong defensive positions on the hills by the river, but the French managed to flank them via steep cliffs. The British then attacked another sector, forcing the Russians to retreat. It was a costly victory—thousands of soldiers fell—but it opened the road to Sevastopol.

The original bridge had four large statues, each depicting a type of soldier from that war: a grenadier, a light infantryman, an artilleryman, and the famous Zouave, recognizable by his baggy trousers and fez. Over time, Parisians gave the Zouave a unique civic role.

As the Seine rose, they used the statue to gauge flood levels: water at his feet meant minor flooding, at his waist it was serious, and during the catastrophic flood of 1910, it reached his shoulders. The current bridge was rebuilt in 1974 in a modern design, but the Zouave statue was preserved and reinstalled here, remaining a silent witness to both military memory and the moods of the river.