The Day They Surrendered Paris

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted from Victor Hugo, l’Annee Terrible, “January 1871”

Thus the greatest nations topple and fall!
Your work was used, O people, for this abortion.
What? Was it for this we stood watch all night
till dawn broke on the high bastions?
Was this why we were brave, haughty, invincible,
no more than a target for Prussia’s arrow?
Is it for this our heroes bled, and our martyrs died?
For this we fought more than the defenders of Tyre,
of Sagunto, Byzantium and Corinth?
Is this why we suffered the five-month embrace
of those furtive, black Teutons, having in their eyes
the sinister stupor of the wolf-infested woods?

Is it for this we struggled, and excavated mines,
made broken bridges whole, braved plague and famine,
made ditches and planted stakes, built forts anew?
Did France not see how we filled with the sheaf of the dead
this tomb, this Paris, this dark barn of battles?
Why, day after day did we live under machine-gun fire?

Deep skies! after so many trials, after so many efforts
to take hold of great Paris, where we were bloody, crushed,
and yet content with the august hope, panting
with the immense expectation
that if we were going to be conquered,
we would rush headlong towards the cannons of brass,
gnaw our own walls to get at them
     like the horse its brake.

When increase of pain only made us more virtuous,
when little children, bombarded in the streets,
laughingly picked up spent shells and bullets,
when not one has weakened among the citizens,
when we were there, three hundred thousand strong,
and ready to issue forth — despite all this
a war-council of august men has surrendered this city!

O people, from all your devotion and fury and pride,
and from your courage, too, they made
submission and cowardice. Yet glory will come,
and history will pass with a cold frisson
at what was done on this shameful day.

Paris, 27 January 1871.