The Wave of the Future

For more than three centuries, the people of Tignes let the rest of the world alone, and expected to be left alone. In their tiny (pop. 600) village and valley, nestled among the towering peaks of the French Alps, they raised their crops, milked their cows, patched their limestone houses and married their neighbors. Then came the French government, with the U.S. Marshall Plan dollars and an itch to spread electricity and progress. The government decided to raise a dam on the Isere River just above Tignes--a dam that would flood out the village.

The Tignards watched the bulldozers roll into their valley, heard the dynamite blasts, and declared a day of mourning. Some of them tried to drive the invaders out by wrecking their machines and burning their toolsheds. Others met the future more practically; they clamored for more compensation money than the thousand million francs the company offered them. For five years temporary injunctions came and went like winter snows. All the while the concrete wall at the valley's end rose higher and higher.

The River Moves. Last week engineers began closing the escape valves in the great dam. Slowly, inch by inch, the Isere began, backing up. The stubborn peasants of Tignes thought they had one last chance: at a local election last week they voted a solid resistance ticket. All night the town made merry while the new councilors planned a last ditch stand against the company. They would die or drown before they would move from their beloved town, they said. From all over France came reporters and photographers to record Tignes's heroic defiance.

Alas, at 5:30 next morning, Monsieur Jean-Pierre Abeille, prefect of Savoie, descended on the village with 350 armed Republican Security Guards. Before anyone could sound a tocsin on the church bells, M. Abeille had seized the municipal records, thus putting the village officially out of existence. Warned M. Abeille: unless the villagers moved out forthwith, they would get no compensation money at all.

The Bells Toll. Father Louis Pellicier said his last Mass in the old grey church. Reverently he removed the tabernacle. Workers dismantled the altar, took down statues and loaded them in trucks. Plaintively clanging, the four ancient church bells were lowered on ropes. People crowded to stroke the bells with their hands. Said a sturdy farmer, "They are our souls." A hush fell over the village. Some villagers angrily berated the blue-uniformed guards, but even they knew the game was up. Others began packing their belongings. In a week the dam water would be lapping their doors. In a month it would be 500 feet above the rooftops and Tignes would be no more.

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