FETE DES CONSCRITS
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Villefranche is famous for its conscripts' festival, known here as "la vague". It is said that in 1850, two young men from the town came to the conscription draw to serve under the flag in their uniforms and with a gibus girded with a green ribbon. The following year, all the twenty-year-old boys who had to accomplish the same formality arrived so dressed. During the Third Republic, the forty-year-old men joined them in celebrating the anniversary of their own draft, and then the other tens followed, the star class being the twenty-year-olds. After the abolition of conscription in 1905, the custom remained. On the last Sunday of January, Villefranche celebrates its conscripts, the highlight being the famous "wave", so named because the conscripts walk down the famous rue Nat' in a zigzag, holding each other arm in arm, like a wave breaking over the city. The costume is identical for all, black dress and bouquet of conscripts also codified, only the color of the ribbon on the gibus distinguishes the different age groups. If one missed the date of the wave, one can see two monuments that give an idea of what it looks like: the fresco of the conscripts, rue Caroline-Blondeau, and the sculpture of Mick Micheyl, at the traffic circle of the Scotsman, avenue Edouard Herriot.
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