The "noise of war" comes to our Normandy countryside, part one...

| Friday, January 22, 2021

Dear Friend,

 
       J'entreprends de conter l'année épouvantable,
       Et voilà que j'hésite, accoudé sur ma table… 
       France ! ô deuil ! voir un astre aux cieux diminuer ! 
        … 
        N'importe. Poursuivons. L'histoire en a besoin. 
        Ce siècle est à la barre et je suis son témoin.
 
So begins Victor Hugo’s epic poem cycle, L’Année Terrible. The poet tells of the fall of France in September 1870, the declaration of a glorious new Republic, the desperation and violence of the Paris Commune, and the final grim capitulation to the Prussians in May 1871.
 
        “I undertake to tell of the dreadful year
         And lo, I hesitate, elbows on the table…
         France! Bereaved, a star that falters in the heavens!
         …
        No matter. Let’s continue. History must know this story.
        The century is on trial and I am its witness.”
 
Victor Hugo had come back from exile to lend moral support to the new French Revolution of 1870. France’s resounding defeat by the Prussians at the battle of Sedan led to a coup d’état and the declaration of a new Republic. This, thought Hugo, would be the fulfillment of the first failed French Revolution. At last, the apotheosis of brotherly love, égalité, liberté would be achieved. Yet once again, upheaval and high ideals descended into suspicion and bloodshed. The increasingly violent experiment ended in the “Semaine sanglante,” when the army entered Paris and ruthlessly laid low the revolutionnaires. And France surrendered to Prussia.
 
Hugo had been born with the new century, in 1802. Post-revolutionary France was then basking in the full flush of Napoleonic glory, as the General and his armies pushed the boundaries of France across the Rhine and over the Alps. That very year, Napoleon was declared Emperor. In short order, the words fraternité and égalité fell from France's motto; the Empire’s motto was "liberté et ordre publique," with the emphasis on public order. Over the course of Hugo’s lifetime, there were at least six different regimes, oscillating from parliamentary monarchy to dictatorship. French political and cultural discourse was a battleground between liberal ideals of personal and intellectual freedom and authoritarianism. But in 1870, it looked as though a balance was finally being struck. Universal male suffrage had resoundingly endorsed Napoleon’s nephew as Emperor. Napoleon III, who had been an Italian revolutionary in his romantic youth, was sympathetic to the ideals dear to républicains. And France had regained its prosperity and habitual standing on the world stage.
 
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 was declared “le coeur léger,” with “a light heart.” What could go wrong? 
 
Everything, as Hugo despairingly testifies in L’Année Terrible.

A meditative Victor Hugo in exile on the Island of Guernsey.

But while Hugo recounts France’s humiliation on a grand scale, lamenting man’s capacity for greatness and failure, another witness, in simpler prose, tells the story of how the War of 1870 played out in a pocket of our province of Normandy…in the countryside around the Chateau de Courtomer, in small towns nearby, and most of all, in the capital of our département, the city of Alençon.

Twenty-five years after war’s end, in 1896, Henri Beaudouin, secretary of the local historical society, took up his pen to recall those stirring and alarming days. It was the winter of 1870. The Prussians, having captured the Emperor and his army, besieged Paris. The last remnants of the French army, bolstered by raw conscripts, marched up from the South through Normandy to relieve the city. For, as Hugo said, “Sauver Paris, c’est plus que sauver la France, c’est sauver le monde.” The Prussians, of course, did not share this Franco-centric vision of the world. On the program instead was putting France in its place, while Prussia enlarged its territories to include the German states that had been part of Napoleon’s Empire.

Prussian forces advanced relentlessly through the Normandy countryside. The bataille d’Alençon would be the war’s last stand as the French army attempted to win back Paris...

Like Hugo’s grand poem, Henri Beaudouin’s account is more than a recital of events. He turns to Saint Augustine, who had this to say to fellow Romans after the first barbarian invasion of Rome:

"Perdidistis utilitatem calamitatis et miserrimi facti estis, et pessimi permansistis." from The City of God, part 1

“You missed the lesson of this calamity, having lost your moral compass, and you are still very wicked!”

Saint Augustine was pessimistic about human nature. Henri Beaudouin has a sunnier outlook. “Hasn’t this tribulation been useful, and our regeneration, though it cost us dearly, is on the path to completion?” he asks.

But to return to Monsieur Beaudouin’s memoir…

The Prussian Army Occupies Alençon in 1871, as told by Henri Beaudoin

“Train de plaisir pour Berlin, payé par le père Guillaume» -- pleasure train for Berlin, paid for by Father William -- said the banners. Berlin was the capital of Prussia, and Father William, its king. The banners fluttered above wagons filled with soldiers, rolling down the main street of Alençon while the crowd cheered. The wagons were heading for the Rhine…because France had declared war on Prussia.

Hélas, si peu prophétique, so very unprophetic were those banners!

In July of 1870, if anyone had said the Prussians had three times more soldiers than we did, that ours were inexperienced, we wouldn’t have deigned to respond!

How we loved to see our local “mobile” – as the militias were called -- on the old Place d’Armes doing their training exercises! How we chuckled at their awkwardness, at their inept officers! How we cheered their progress!

On Sunday, August 14, the news trickled in that the Prussians had crossed the frontiers of France. Quoi ! We were in the midst of electing the Conseil municipal. We shrugged it off. In September came the disaster of Sedan. Hot on its heels, came the declaration of the Republic. We didn’t care about the Emperor – but comment ca? How could we have a change of government when the enemy was at the gates of Strasbourg, Metz, and the Eastern provinces! Soon enough, the Prussians were at the gates of Paris.

The Emperor Napoleon III, captured as he fought alongside his army at the battle of Sedan, sits beside the upright figure of the Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck of Prussia.

Ah! Pauvre France, son sol foulé par l’étranger! Poor France…her soil trampled by strangers! And worse, to be at the mercy of an inexperienced lawyer dressed up as a dictator! For Gambetta, the revolutionist and republican, had left Paris in a hot-air balloon and set up a new government in Tours. He had dissolved the legislative assemblies elected by universal suffrage, fired the government officials, and taken over the military.

Well, we all accepted the Second Republic as a necessary evil. But the heads of the new government cared more about founding a new Republic than saving France. Gambetta was a man to whom all sense of responsibility was as light as the hot air of the balloon that brought him to power. He distrusted all laws and any advice – and that’s the resumé of this fatal époque!

But to leave opinion aside and get on with my story…

To our relief, at Alençon we were assigned a reasonable fellow as prefect. He allowed our elected officials to remain; the administration went on mostly as before. General Faidherbe had been recalled from the colony of Senegal, and was in charge of the Army of the North. Meanwhile, our voluntary mobiles struggled along, under officers who were either socially well-connected or worn-out common soldiers who vaguely remembered how to march in rhythm. The art of war or of commanding men was unknown to either. There were 400 pistols for 1500 men.

The whole countryside was transformed into a vast workshop. We made tents, jackets, trousers, shoes, képis, rucksacks. The ladies knitted gilets de laine et cache-nez -- woolen undershirts and balaclavas. They made bandages. They stood at train stations handing up food, tobacco, and refreshments to soldiers passing through in railway cars.

Meanwhile, war has many victims. There was an epidemic of smallpox; the sick were everywhere. The hospitals turned away all but those à la dernière extrémité – at death’s door -- and soldiers.

All the while, the “noise of war” approached. And what did Gambetta do? Why, he decreed the “levée en masse.” The universal call to arms! But then, he un-decreed it. There weren’t enough weapons, bullets, or cannons.

Gambetta proclaims the new Republic, whilst still in Paris, to the assembled throng. He later escaped the siege in a hot-air balloon and directed the war from his seat of government in the Loire Valley. Engraving by Howard Pyle.

So instead, he decreed that we destroy our grain, even for planting, in case the enemy found it. The woods must be cut down. Dirt must be heaped up on the railroad tracks. Barricades erected in the streets of Alençon. That was all through the autumn. Meanwhile, they kept feeding us propaganda about our victories. But it didn’t take much to read between the lines: We won the skirmishes, the Prussians won the battles.

And then, the situation became truly alarming…


To be continued next week...To fight for Alençon...or not to fight?

A très bientôt, au Chateau

P.S. We are happily taking reservations for this season and for 2022 and 2023. Please don't hesitate to call or write, as Heather and Béatrice are happy to answer your questions about rentals of the Chateau, the Farmhouse and the Orangerie. We hope to have our romantic "petite maison du haras" ready for your enjoyment as well!