To All the Princes, November 1870

 

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted/translated from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, "November 1870, III"

Teutonic kings, what poor facsimiles you are
    of the fathers before you.
They rushed out of their great lairs,
sword in hand, striving to earn for themselves
the valor of single arms, not of a mass of fighters.

You wage war differently.
Soundlessly you slip into the shadows,
     with mere chance as an accomplice,
entering another nation slowly,
a bit like a thief, almost like a banished lover,
with lowered voice, the sneak-thief’s bowing gait,
     your lamp upon your footsteps only,
just so you make himself invisible
     deep in the forest with wolf and bear.
Then suddenly, shouting Vivat! Hurrah! Haro!
a million swords slide out from their sheaths
as you rush, and strike, and thrust, and cut
upon your neighbor, who, in this battle,
has Nothing for an army and Zero as a general.

Your ancestors, upon whom Luther used
     Ein feste Burg as cradle song
would never have agreed to conquer this way,
because the conquering thirst was less strong in them
than warrior modesty, and all had in their hearts
the desire to be great, more than the lust
     to be victorious.

You, princes, you sow, from Sedan to Versailles,
in your dark paths through the bushes,
all kinds of shady and unusual exploits
that would have brought shame in the time of the knights
who knew the fierce magnanimity of the sword.

Kings, your war is not worthy of an epic
when perpetrated by spies and traitors,
and Victory puts on a cockade for theft,
     a plume for fraud!

William is emperor, Bismarck his parade-leader;
Charlemagne to his right seats the con-man Robert-Macaire[1];
We deliver the France of Austerlitz
to the likes of mercenary Mamelukes,[2]
or Pandour guards,[3] or Ivan the Terrible’s Strélitzes,
to any passing men with lances
or roughneck soldiers.
They make it their emolument, their booty and their prey.
Where once a great army was,
     there is just an enormous robber-band.

Drunk, they go to the dark abyss that awaits them.
So the bear, in the water on the floating icebergd
does not feel the ice floe melt and collapse beneath him.
So be it, princes. Wallow on conquered France,
hold Alsace at bay, and bleed Lorraine.
From Metz that was sold to you,
     from quivering Strasbourg
whose tragic halo you will not extinguish,
you will have what one receives
     from a raped woman,
shamed nakedness, a bed of crime,
     and hatred forever.
The bodies you possess
     shall be soiled, cold,
          and sinister forever after,
when they are taken by force in vile embraces.
That’s what you get from virgins and cities.

Harvest the living like a field of ripe wheat,
surround Paris, throw flames at this great wall,
kill at Châteaudun,[4] kill at Gravelotte.[5]
O kings, despair the sobbing mother,
scream from your shadows the frightening cry:
     Exterminate! Exterminate!
Unfurl your unruly flags,
     and roll through the mud your cannons;
There is something missing in your triumphant noise.
The portal of sunbeams in the heavens remains closed,
And on the mourning earth
     the laurels droop and have no scent,
their inner sap poisoned with all this flow of blood.

Up there in the distance,
     The Muses of History
          assemble the names of the great,
     the haughty group of lasting renown.
They are faceless, immobile, indignant.
Wings closed, they turn their backs,
silent, refusing to acknowledge your triumph.
We poets distinguish, at the bottom of this black firmament,
the mournful lowering of their dark trumpets,
as they shake their heads, and turn, and depart.
To think that not one glorious name
     comes out of this rubble!
O glory, what does anyone call a hero, now?
No! not from these haughty, bloody, subtle foot-stompers,
No! not from these invaders that so much rage animates
that not one of them rises from “anonymous.”
And this hideous affront weighs down on us,
to be so great, and by so little, conquered!

November 1870

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[1] Robert-Macaire. A stock character in drama, a cheat and con artist.

[2] Mamluk. Enslaved mercenaries of the Ottoman Empire.

[3] Pandours. Security guards in the Balkans.

[4] Châteaudun. Site of a French defeat on 18 October 1870. The battle included hand-to-hand and house-to-house fighting. The Germans massacred noncombatants, including women.

[5] Gravelotte, in Lorraine, site of the largest battle in the Franco-Prussian War, in which 42,000 soldiers died.