Monument to the Marchand Expedition, Bronze and stone monument in Bois de Vincennes, France

The Monument to the Marchand Expedition is a stone wall about 10 metres long on Avenue Daumesnil, at the edge of the Bois de Vincennes. One face carries a high relief of six French soldiers and six Senegalese tirailleurs moving left to right, with a map of the expedition's stages behind them. A bronze medallion on the right lists the members, and the stone below records Marchand's campaigns.

The Congo-Nile mission left Loango in June 1896 and reached Fachoda on 10 July 1898; ordered to evacuate, Marchand's force withdrew through Djibouti in May 1899. The monument was erected in 1934, the year of Marchand's death, facing the former Musée des Colonies on ground used by the 1931 colonial exhibition. A colonial monument that stood there was moved to the esplanade of the Château de Vincennes to make room. The side of the wall bears the names of sculptor Léon Georges Baudry and architect Roger-Henri Expert with the date 1939, though work, interrupted by the Second World War, was only completed in 1949.

The bronze shield on the right side of the wall names Marchand and the fourteen other French officers, but the 152 Senegalese tirailleurs appear only as a number, without names. Since the 1970s the monument has been the target of occasional anti-colonial actions; Françoise Vergès calls it a "monument to a war criminal" and argues for its removal from public space.

The monument sits along Avenue Daumesnil at the edge of Bois de Vincennes and is reachable by several public transportation lines. Visit during daylight hours to see the sculptural details clearly on the stone wall.

The relief shows the expedition's route from west to east: Loango, Brazzaville, Bangui, Bangassou, Tambura, Bahr el-Ghazal and Fachoda, reached on 10 July 1898. Djibouti, the retreat zone after the May 1899 evacuation, appears at the far right. One French soldier is carved as a medical officer treating a rifleman's wounded leg.