IN THEIR LONG years of preparation for another war with Germany, the French had focused on a single strategic objective: deflecting a ground attack from the German border by constructing the Maginot Line, a series of massive concrete fortifications, tunnels and other defenses along the French-German border from which the enemy had surged in World War I. The line was not extended northwest along the French-Belgian border, however, since Belgium was neutral, friendly territory and because France’s military strategists believed the dense Ardennes forests and mountains along the border between the two countries—and the Meuse River just beyond—formed a natural barrier to an effective attack.

In May 1940, the massive investment in the Maginot Line quickly became worthless as the Germans simply swung north of it into Belgium, then pushed unexpectedly through the dense forests and rough terrain of the Ardennes forest into France. The French then destroyed the bridges across the nearby Meuse River in the belief that the river’s deep valleys and steep banks would halt the Germans. They were mistaken there as well. In mid-May, in the midst of heavy combat around the town of Sedan, the Germans successfully crossed the river in rubber boats, erected pontoon bridges and began to roll endless numbers of Panzer tanks across the river. It was the beginning of the end for the defense of France. The battle in and around Sedan was particularly ironic since it was the same location where Napoleon III had been captured in 1870 in the battle that had essentially decided the war in favor of Prussia.

During the night of May 14–15, the battle of the Meuse was lost and a breach fifty miles wide opened in the French line; the road to Paris was unprotected. The next day, the military governor of Paris called Prime Minister Paul Reynaud to say that he could not guarantee the security of the French government after May 16 at midnight and suggested that the government evacuate, with the exception of ministers responsible for national defense. On May 16, political leaders decided against an immediate evacuation, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the quai d’Orsay frantically began hurling archives out the windows into a giant bonfire in the courtyard. The column of smoke was visible from the nearby Louvre.

 

The French museum administration was closely monitoring developments. Nobody knew how fierce a battle for Paris might be, how far it would extend, and what risks an air war might entail for the Loire châteaux, only minutes from Paris by air. They also could not predict what damage the Germans might inflict through either intentional attack or collateral damage when they reached the Loire itself. It was evident the treasures of the Louvre in the storage depots were at serious, imminent risk and that they had to be moved yet again—and fast.

In some ways, the new evacuation plan that was quickly developed was similar to that of the previous summer. Items would leave based on the same priority lists, their sorting facilitated by the colored markings already attached to each crate. For security, the vehicles would again travel in convoys, each with multiple escort vehicles. And, like the previous summer, once a convoy emptied its contents at a new depot, the empty trucks would return to load the next run.

But there were also crucial differences from the previous evacuation. The last plan had been honed over almost a decade; there had been plenty of time to evaluate potential depots, select which artworks would go where, pack them all carefully and at least try to arrange enough staff, supplies, vehicles and fuel. However, this new plan had to be created and executed within just days, given the unexpected breach of the French border and the speed with which the Germans were driving towards Paris. Moreover, during the first evacuation, the roads had been relatively calm. This time they were clogged with millions of refugees in flight from Belgium and northern France.

The hard reality for the Louvre administration was that there was simply not enough manpower or transport available to move the many thousands of items in the Loire storage depots and some items were considered too fragile or cumbersome to move again under current road conditions. They had to make tough and fast choices as to what was most important of what had already been determined to be the most precious. It was decided that the Louvre items at Louvigny, Aillières, Chèreperrine and La Pelice and as many as possible of those at Courtalain would be moved to the isolated Loc-Dieu Abbey in France’s southwest, eighty miles northeast of Toulouse.

However, the very large paintings still on their frames could not be moved across the long and partially mountainous route to Loc-Dieu. Road conditions were deteriorating by the hour, the same utility wire issue that had plagued the trips to the Loire was problematic, and the scenery trailers that had been used before were designed only for traveling short distances around Paris, not for traversing the steep hills of southwest France. The museum administration decided that, under the circumstances, these large paintings would be centralized at the château de Sourches, deep in the countryside 125 miles southwest of Paris, not far from Le Mans. Four notable exceptions, however, would be brought south to Loc-Dieu in spite of their size: Wedding Feast at Cana, David’s Coronation of Napoleon, plus Gros’s Napoleon Visiting the Plague Stricken at Jaffa and his Battle of Eylau. Museum officials felt that these works, either taken by Napoleon (Cana) or depicting Napoleon’s battles, might be of particular interest to the Germans.

Delicate pastels and drawings would stay at Chambord; Venus de Milo and the other large ancient sculptures would remain at Valençay. The antiquities at Cheverny would remain in place and the most precious Egyptian antiquities would be moved from Courtalain to the château of Saint-Blancard in the deep southwest, fifty miles west of Toulouse.

 

On Wednesday May 29, Jaujard met with Germain Bazin, assistant curator of the Louvre’s Department of Paintings (René Huyghe, the chief curator, was away on military duty), and Albert Henraux, president of the art acquisition organization, Société des Amis du Louvre, and an escort of multiple convoys during the 1939 evacuation. They crafted a painfully tight timetable and gave the order to the Loire depot heads: Start packing the most important masterpieces immediately so that they would be on the road by Sunday or Monday at the latest. Preparation began within hours.

There was a serious shortage of personnel to properly wrap, pack, check and load it all in such a short period of time, particularly with so many men having been called off to war. Many Louvre guards who had returned to Paris during the drôle de guerre returned once again to the Loire and soldiers were begged and borrowed from nearby barracks.

There was also a severe shortage of fuel and trucks due to military requisitions. To help compensate for the shortage, some museum staff drove their personal vehicles, including Jacqueline Bouchot-Saupique, École du Louvre professor and Jaujard’s acting assistant. She shuttled between Paris and Chambord so many times to evacuate additional items that her car tires became thin as paper, causing the Chambord staff to watch in anguish each time she left for yet another return trip.

Drivers were also hard to come by, partly due to the number of men who had been mobilized and partly because, in an era when many people got around by bicycle or motorbike, not a single guard knew how to drive a car. On June 1, Louvre Egyptologist Christine Desroches Noblecourt headed a two-truck convoy from the Loire to Saint-Blancard with a first load of the most precious Egyptian antiquities that had been stored at Courtalain, including the Seated Scribe, the Stele of the Serpent King and the frieze Goddess Hathor Welcomes King Sethos I. Jaujard had told her: “I’m giving you two partially tarp-covered trucks and two drivers. Make do with that; it’s all I can do.” But two trucks were not nearly enough and they were both too small; Desroches Noblecourt had to shuttle between the Loire and Saint-Blancard three times, each one-way trip covering over 400 miles and crossing almost half the country. As the trucks returned from the second drop off, they were almost hit by a bomb attack along the way. By the third trip, the convoy was moving between enemy lines. In the end, many of the antiquities would have to stay at Courtalain.

Germain Bazin, who was on military leave recuperating from knee surgery, cancelled his treatments so he could travel to the Loire to help out. He ended up driving, ignoring his still-unhealed injury. Lucie Mazauric bravely drove an escort vehicle in the difficult road conditions, having just passed her driving exam days before.

There were rare instances of less courageous Louvre staff. At one point, Jaujard asked a curator to retrieve some artworks from a museum not far from a combat area. When the curator refused to go, Jaujard replied, “Since the noise from the cannons frightens you so much, I’ll go myself.” Jean Cassou offered to go instead in order to allow Jaujard to continue supervising the evacuation. Elsewhere, the head of the La Pelice depot fled with his family, leaving behind some of the Louvre’s masterpieces in the sole care of a young Louvre staff member. But when trucks arrived to take some items to Louvigny in preparation for the move south, even she had left, leaving nobody at all to protect the paintings.

 

In the early afternoon of Monday, June 3, 1940, German bombs fell on the outer arrondissements of Paris, killing 254 people, injuring 652 and terrifying the remaining Parisians who watched several hundred enemy warplanes roar across the city’s skies. As the bombs fell, an armed convoy carrying the Mona Lisa and other highest-priority artwork was already heading south, having left Louvigny at 7 o’clock that morning.

The first scheduled stop for the convoy was at La Ferté Bernard, only twenty-seven miles from Louvigny. But between a truck breakdown and the crowds on the road, the trip took almost four hours, a worrisome delay for an invaluable cargo on roads that might be bombed at any moment. The convoy finally reached its next scheduled stop, at Chambord, later in the day.

The convoy left Chambord at 6 p.m., heading to its next stop via a shortcut known to one of the convoy’s escorts. But two-thirds of the way along, the head driver became confused and they went the wrong way. When they realized the error, the entire convoy had to turn around, truck by truck, adding another half-hour delay. The head of the convoy, holding his temper, took over the lead and they set off once more.

The trucks arrived at Châteauroux, still 200 miles north of Loc-Dieu, at 10:30 p.m., having taken 4½ hours to cover the sixty miles from Chambord. The delay had not just been due to the traffic and the missed turn; the convoy had also needed to stop periodically to check the ropes and strapping holding the crates in place, since the convoy had been less than meticulously loaded in the urgency to get it on the road. In Châteauroux, the trucks were parked on the grounds of a château and a convoy member camouflaged them and assigned sentinels. The crew headed off in search of food, only to find that every café and restaurant was closed for the night. They finally found a military canteen that gave them some canned food, and the crew managed to eat, after a fashion, shortly after midnight.

The following morning, the men were still quite tired and unhappy from the previous evening. It did not improve matters when their departure was delayed for an hour due to a bomb alert. Then, as they finally began to assemble the convoy, a truck became hooked onto the gate of the property, delaying their departure yet again.

The Mona Lisa and the rest of the convoy spent all that day and the next lumbering southward. The gentle hills of the Loire were behind them and more difficult terrain lay ahead. The steep slopes of high plateaux and tight curves of mountainous roads taxed the heavily loaded vehicles and required numerous stops to allow the overheated vehicles to cool down and to check the strapping that was holding the priceless loads in place. At one point, they noticed that the crates atop one truck were almost toppling at every bend in the road and that some of the hastily fastened strapping had become almost completely frayed due to friction from all the bouncing around—a particular worry since this was the truck containing the Mona Lisa. There was no extra material with which to resecure the load; all the convoy leader could do was to have the drivers slow down and down-gear more on each descent. When they reached that night’s stop he managed to arrange extra strapping for the next morning.

In total, the trip took three long, exhausting days. The convoy with Mona Lisa finally arrived at Loc-Dieu at 5 p.m. on June 6. The following day, the staff unloaded the nine trucks, and on June 8 at 4 a.m., the empty vehicles headed back to the Loire for the next round of artworks.

The carefully orchestrated timetable had begun to fall apart from its inception. The first convoy had almost missed its critical departure date after a worker was seriously injured loading a forklift onto a truck to bring it to another depot, resulting in a dozen men being diverted from other tasks to load trucks manually. Once the convoy got underway, it had been plagued by road conditions, mechanical problems and the consequences of the hasty packing. The delays were particularly worrisome since pressure to complete the evacuations became more urgent by the day as the Germans came ever closer. On June 5, the evacuation of La Pelice was accelerated after it was concluded that its location was particularly at risk, a decision justified soon afterwards when bombs landed on the château’s grounds. On June 8 came news that the Germans had crossed the Seine, further accelerating the operation’s urgency. The situation became even more complicated on June 10, when Italy declared war on France. For security reasons, several Italian truck drivers had to be replaced in spite of the dire shortage of drivers, and increased fears were raised for the safety of paintings of Italian origin and the works depicting Napoleon.

The pace of the evacuation was also hindered by the ragtag array of old trucks, half of which were gas-powered, the other half slow, diesel-fueled ones. The disparity made it impossible to keep a convoy moving at a constant speed, which caused large gaps between vehicles, allowing other fleeing vehicles to slip into the middle of a convoy. Putting the slower diesel vehicles in front only served to overheat the gas-powered vehicles bringing up the rear, causing their brakes to slip and necessitating frequent stops for repairs.

 

On June 11, a strange, thick cloud of black soot hung low over the city of Paris, cloaking a brilliant blue sky. Some thought it was an enemy tactic to mask their entrance into the city; others thought city authorities had set off a smoke screen to assist residents in fleeing unseen. Still others thought the French government had arranged it so that they could flee unseen themselves. In fact, it was smoke from fires French authorities had ignited the previous day to eliminate suburban petroleum depots so they would not fall into enemy hands. Agnès Humbert, an art historian at the Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires, made her way through the soot that day to the Louvre, where Jaujard had convened staff from the Paris-area museums under his command to accompany a last convoy heading to the Loire with additional books from museum libraries, archival material and other items, plus the personal effects of the staff. In spite of the soot, Humbert said, Paris had never looked more beautiful. She wrote of the morning in her journal:

The vehicles headed off towards the Loire as the soot was carried away by a strong wind, leaving a brilliantly sunny day behind. The same day, the second convoy of artworks left the Loire for Loc-Dieu with five trucks jammed with art, plus two escort vehicles and a truck with extra gas.

In the early morning of June 14, a third convoy left the Loire. The museum administration thought it would likely be the last one they could get out, since they had just received word that the Loire bridges would soon be blown in order to slow down the Germans. The convoy included five trucks, one with extra fuel and the others loaded with artwork, including a scenery trailer carrying the Wedding Feast at Cana and the three large rolled paintings depicting Napoleon. Cana had been quickly and clumsily rolled and, in the desperate rush to get the convoy on the road with the enemy only thirty miles away, some of the artworks had been loaded with no wrapping at all. Also among the treasures aboard was da Vinci’s fragile chalk-on-paper sketch of Isabella d’Este, which like the Mona Lisa traveled in its own private case. Custody of the work was assigned to the best driver of the convoy, Madame Eugny, with instructions not to leave Isabella alone day or night.

The convoy took almost twelve hours just to cover the 125 miles to its overnight stop at Chambord since the roads had become so crammed with refugees that they were practically impassable. Perhaps 6 to 10 million people from Belgium, the Netherlands and northern France had fled their homes, including almost half the population of Paris and its surrounding suburbs. And they were jamming the same routes as the trucks. The worst of the crowds were on the roads leading south from the Loire, jammed with “slow moving cars, vans, lorries and horse-drawn carts piled up with furniture, mattresses, agricultural tools, pets, birdcages …. The roadsides were strewn with the corpses of horses or with cars abandoned for lack of petrol.” The writer and pilot Saint Exupéry wrote that from the air the roads were so thick with the slow-motion crowds they looked like syrup, and that it looked as if a “great boot had smashed into an anthill in the north and the ants were on the move.” At times, low-flying Italian planes and German Stuka dive-bombers emptied machine guns into the fleeing populace.

Progress was further slowed due to chains that police had stretched across certain roads to impede the enemy. The smaller trucks of the convoy could fit below the chains, but not the scenery trailer. Then a tire on the heavily loaded trailer fell into a roadside ditch; it was simply a matter of luck that two powerful trucks soon came along and got the 40-foot-long vehicle and its priceless cargo back on the road.

On Friday June 15, the convoy headed toward Valençay, crawling along the almost impassible roads while German planes flew overhead. At one point, the bumper of Mazauric’s car got caught on another vehicle in the convoy. They might have been crushed in the melee if someone had not come quickly to their rescue. By evening, the convoy was settled at Valençay, whose equestrian center had been transformed into a huge temporary shelter for more than 2,000 refugees on their way south. The château itself was also packed, not only with artworks, but also with depot personnel and refugees. It was a scene of apparent insanity—and a moment of literal insanity—when a refugee group of patients from a nearby asylum arrived with their white-jacketed driver. A Louvre curator expressed concern to the driver about allowing them in the middle of the treasures of the Louvre. “Nothing to fear,” responded the driver, “the dangerous lunatics have already escaped.”

The convoy members improvised sleeping arrangements that night, their fitful slumber interrupted by the loud explosion of a nearby bomb. The following morning, they continued south from Valençay. The roads became steeper but also calmer. Enemy planes became scarce and instead of the terrified mobs further north, they occasionally passed only picnickers along the embankments, enjoying the summer day as if nothing were amiss. They passed the next night on cots in a classroom of an elementary school, with da Vinci’s Isabella d’Este resting between Mazauric and Madame Eugny. In the early evening of June 16, the heaving trucks giving clear signs of fatigue, the convoy safely reached the isolated abbey of Loc-Dieu.

At dusk the previous day, Bazin had left Louvigny with a Louvre staff member and two guards in a race for time to bring one last load of thirty-seven unwrapped paintings and five crates across the Loire before the French destroyed the bridges. The escort driver had refused to go, so Bazin got behind the wheel in spite of his still-unhealed knee. He had assumed the roads would be clear since night was falling, but a column of French tanks blocked the road and the commander barked at him to get out of the way. After looking at Bazin’s papers and listening to his explanation, he told Bazin and the others to squeeze between two tanks and take the first road at the right. But the designated road was a dirt one and they found themselves in the middle of a field in the darkness. They finally made their way back to the road, guided by a fire burning on the horizon.

The group finally got across the river at Saumur at 6 a.m. the following morning, just before traffic was halted to prepare the bridge for explosion. They continued on until shortly before noon, when the clutch on the truck blew, immobilizing the small convoy in place for two full days. Further along, another clutch problem immobilized them again. They arrived at Loc-Dieu at 3 p.m. on Thursday June 20, having required almost five days to cover the three hundred miles from Chambord.

By that point, bombs had fallen in Louvigny and on the grounds of the just-abandoned depot at La Pelice. They had also fallen several hundred meters from the still-operating depot at Courtalain, where German troops were now camped on the grounds. The troops also demanded entry to the château, where they forced open some cases, including one enticingly labeled “various old paintings.” Inside, they found only some porcelain plates.

 

In just over two weeks, under constantly deteriorating conditions, the Louvre staff and French soldiers had accomplished the extraordinary task of wrapping, packing, loading and moving 3,120 of the Louvre’s 3,691 paintings and untold thousands of other items of artwork and antiquities, and had also moved the staff and their belongings plus huge quantities of supplies. They had miraculously escaped theft, road accidents, enemy machine guns and bombs along the way. The treasures were safe from potential Paris or Loire Valley bombing. Now it remained to be seen if they would be safe from the Germans.