On 14 July , the Vauban monument committee met with Bartholdi in Avallon and immediately adopted the initial project for the memorial designed by the sculptor. Starting on Saturday, the town was full of visitors braving the inclement weather. On Sunday, around noon, a convoy arrived from Auxerre that was big enough to form a crowd all by itself.
It brought public officials, members of Parliament from the Yonne department, mayors, general councillors, and everyone who felt it was their duty to take part in this sort of departmental federation. The inauguration ceremony began with a speech by Mr Raudot, President of the commission for erecting the statue In the name of the people and as a man of the people, he returned to Vauban his purest and highest glory, that of having studied social evils, to have bemoaned them in his own grandeur and to have sought remedies for them.
G, taken from the L'Yonne newspaper dated 28 October Almanach Historique et Statistique de l'Yonne - edition.
The lines of fortification called the Vauban front are used. This should be banished from a monument erected in memory of a man such as Vauban. Strength and simplicity would seem necessary here to characterise the merits and qualities of the personality being presented. Bartholdi gave in to the demands of this representative of the administration and in the end presented a statue full of commendable austerity, which was approved.
It was cast by Barbedienne in and the monument was inaugurated, along with a section of railroad, on 26 October Between the initial project presented in and the official inauguration in , seven years had gone by. Bartholdi nonetheless filled the order for the Burgundy town. He then took up another project, which was to be one of the most personal and most exciting of his life: the Lion of Belfort.
