Prowess of the Prussians

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted and translated from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible. "December 1870"

V

PROWESS OF THE PRUSSIANS

When conquest admits that fraud is its sister,
this is progress. In vain conscience cries,
what began as an exploit is now exploitation,
a poor neighbor claiming the right
     to the rich neighbor’s gold.
On the back of winged Victory
     they have placed a bag for loot.

While waiting to swallow Lorraine and Alsace,
one snatches a watch from a watchmaker’s nail;
if one wants to immerse himself in immense glory,
breaking a window is a stupid thing.
Just walk in the door and take what you want.
Despite being brought up as honorable men,
the soldiers need tobacco — damn it all! —
so they steal it. Through Reichshoffen[1] and Forbach,[2]
through this war where we had scant hope
of a dwarf Napoleon delivering great France,
in battles where generals failed to appear
(imagine if Marceau,[3] or Hoche,[4] or Condé[5] went missing!);
through Metz betrayed for bribes
     and Strasbourg smoldering beneath the bombs;
among the cries, when grapeshot felled the living,
one showing to the morning light his brains,
     and other his cascading entrails,

Through all of this, the flags one moment advancing
     the next drooped down in flight, the waves
of galloping squadrons like a roiling sea;
in the middle of this vast and sinister spiral,
an avaricious conqueror (with his stingy household)
half Shylock and half Galgacus,[6]
reduced to offering a side-street’s stolen clock
from some looted shop of the vanquished,
as a love-offering to some blond-haired nymph
at the foot of Mt. Adule.[7] Bellone herself,
war’s goddess, descends disheveled and fierce
from the lightning-flashing cloud, from which
blood falls instead of the nurturing rain.

She takes up a hammer to nail packing crates,
and helps out with the loot-inventory.

A country is being ransomed village by village.
The terrible victors turn out to be rascals,
wolves, tigers, and bears in clownish guise.
They overthrew an empire to cut a purse.

Caesar, upright in his war chariot, says:[8]
     I came, I saw, now pay me my fare.

One massacres a country, the blood is still fresh;
then one decides to charge for it —
     Can one really invoice murder?
     How does one render a bill for famine?
— Pay up now, it’s almost six months
     since I exterminated you. —
How much? That much? That’s far too much! —
We couldn’t be brought to slit your throat for less. —
even if we upset, in the depths of heaven, those proud witnesses,
our ancestors, the heroes, pale in the clouds,
by shows of war, to which admission fees are attached,
we don’t worry much about these ghosts.

Five billion in gold will give the Prussians
     a place of their own in Valhalla.
They boarded a bank as pirates.
They copied in plunder, in fraud, in brigandage,
the shifty-eyed Bedouins and the cowardly Baskirs;
and Schinderhannes[9] puts on the false nose of the god Mars.

For our part, we have as leaders
     kings born in a ditch, and their princes
have ministers the way a thief has pincers.
At bay beneath their feet we trample scruples;
in short, they lie in wait along a woodland path
     intent to rob us blind.
They rob — we strip, we grieve — they round up, they pillage.
Perhaps, in the honorable days of old
     it was more beautiful to have taken the Bastille.[10]

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[1] Reichshoffen. A Prussian victory over the French at the village of Wörth in Alsace, on 6 August 1870, with 5884 men killed and wounded and more than 9,000 captured.

[2] Forbach. The Battle of Forbach, also called the Battle of Spicherin, also on 6 August 1870, was a French defeat characterized by inept leadership.

[3] Marceau. François Séverin Marceau (1769-1796), general, hero of the French Revolution.

[4] Hoche. Louis Lazar Hoche (1768-1797), a quick-thinking general, hero of the Revolution.

[5] Condé. Louis II de Bourbon, Prince of Condé (1621-1686), favorite general of Louis XIV, a hero of the Thirty Years’ War.

[6] Galcacus. Caledonian chieftain who spoke out against Rome’s exploitation of Britain, and organized the Britons against Rome.

[7] Mount Adule. Mt. Adula or Rheinwaldhorn in the Swiss Alps. It was the first Swiss peak to be the object of mountain-climbing, and is the watershed from which both the Rhine and Po Rivers originate. Hugo’s allusion can be read as both about the strange passion for conquering empty mountain peaks, and for a summit from which one might overlook two empires.

[8] The lines from here to the end of the poem were likely added after February 1871, when Bismarck demanded a five-billion-franc war indemnity from France.

[9] Schinderhannes. Johannes Bückler (c. 1778-1803), an outlaw and one-man crime wave in Germany.

[10] Bastille. An allusion back to Marceau, whose Revolutionary career commenced with the storming of the Bastille.