Spit and Polish in Paris and London
Yesterday was the 120th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale, signed between Britain and France on 8 April 1904. The agreement buried the longstanding proverbial hatchet between the two colonial empires, which at the time included most of Africa and wide swaths of Asia. It also set the stage for the end of “The Great Game” between Britannia and the Tsars, which would solidify in the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, which almost made the looming Great War and the 1920s split between Japan and the West inevitable.
To celebrate 12 decades of Fraternité d’armes, Engagement, et Fierté (notwithstanding such unfriendly fire “bumps” as Mers-el-Kébir and Operations Exporter, Stream Line Jane, and Ironclad), there was an unprecedented dual changing of the guard in the old cities.
In London, 32 picked members of 1er Regiment de le Garde Republicaine of the Gendarmerie Nationale were marched to Buckingham Palace by the Band of the Grenadier Guards where they met F Company Scots Guards, the King’s Guard. They then exchanged salutes, with each unit’s commander shaking hands, and stood for inspection by dignitaries from both countries.
Members of the Garde Républicaine, part of the Gendarmerie Nationale, march out of the Buckingham Palace centre gate on completion of the Entente Cordiale changing of the guard. MOD Photos
The French contingent then marched off the forecourt, returning to Wellington Barracks with the Band, leaving the Scots Guards to continue their duties as The King’s Guard.
The Gendarmes had arrived last week and spent a few days drilling under the watchful eye of WO1 Verne Stokes, Garrison Sergeant Major, to ensure they had the pacing correct.
Meanwhile, in Paris, 16 soldiers from Number 7 Company, Coldstream Guards, took part in a similar ceremony with Garde Républicaine, outside the Élysée Palace, the official residence of the French President while the French army choir then sang God Save the King, and La Marseillaise.
It was the first ever instance of soldiers of a foreign state guarding the Élysée Palace (it was unoccupied from 1940-46), and simultaneously the first time a non-British Commonwealth force stood guard at Buckingham.