From the local elections of March 1989 to those of June 1995, mayors of small rural communes of the Lot département were more and more numerous to lay a wreath at the foot of the war memorial after they had been elected. Beyond the evolution of a political ritual (the laying of a wreath comes in addition to, and sometimes in place of the planting of an electoral maypole) it is the shift in the meaning of this action that is analyzed here. It was introduced by newcomers in the borough councils who were in search of an appropriate legitimacy to their status after their election as mayor. Far from rejecting the symbolic aspects of these republican institutions, they have found in it an institutional landmark that reinforces their authority.