empire
or
the monarchy
or
the government
. From coast to coast men will answer the bugle’s call, trembling with anticipation. Whether we knew it or not, the seeds were sown twenty years ago; and if ever the time should come, war will break out over our land like an overflowing harvest.
I say it again: three times in my life I have heard the eerie sound of War beating its wings over France. It begins with a distant rustling; you think gales are on the way. The sound gets louder. There’s a crash, and every heart beats faster; people turn giddy with enthusiasm as the country feels the need to conquer and kill. Then, when the men are gone and the noise has died down, an anxious silence takes over. Everyone listens out for the first cry from the army: will it be a cry of victory, or a cry of defeat? It’s a terrible time. There are contradictory reports. You seize upon the tiniest scraps, analysing every word, until the hour of truth. And what an hour that is – sweet joy, or bitter despair!
1
At the time of the Crimean War, I was fourteen. I was still a boarder at school in Aix, shut away with two or three hun dred other kids in an old Benedictine convent. The long corridors and vast halls retained something of its former gloominess. Its two courtyards were more cheerful, under the glorious southern skies that stretched out vast and blue. I did suffer there, but I remember that school fondly.
At fourteen, I wasn’t exactly a child. But looking back today I see how ignorant we were. World news didn’t reach that forgotten corner. The sad old town was a dead capital, slumbering in barren countryside, and the school, close to the fortifications, slept even more deeply. In all the time that I was cloistered there, I don’t recall ever hearing anything about one single political scandal. Only the Crimean War had any impact – and it was probably several weeks before we heard about that.
I smile, thinking back to what war meant to us provincial schoolboys. It was all very vague at first. The fighting was happening in a land so distant, so strange, and so savage, that we imagined the scene to be like something from the Arabian Nights, come to life. We couldn’t have told you where exactly it was taking place, and I don’t think that any of us thought for a minute to look into the atlases we each had at our fingertips. Our teachers, it must be said, kept us in total ignorance of the modern world. They read the papers, they knew what was going on; but they never spoke to us about it, and if we had asked, they would have sent us packing, back to our essays and exercises. We knew nothing for certain, except that France was fighting in the Orient; why, we didn’t know.
But some things we did know. We repeated the old jokes about the Cossacks; we knew the names of two or three Russian generals, and we imagined these generals to have heads pretty much like monsters, gobbling up small children. We never once thought France could lose; to us that seemed perverse. Then there were gaps. As the campaign dragged on, we forgot that there was a war on, for months at a time, until the day that some snippet of news brought us back, breathless with excitement. I can’t tell you if we knew about the battles as they took place, or if we experienced the thrill of capturing Sebastopol. 2 It was all a muddle. To us, the reality was Virgil and Homer – more worrying to us than any modern-day quarrel among nations.
I do remember the game that was all the rage for a while in the playground. We split up into two groups, and marked two lines in the dust. Then we fought. It was a simpler version of prisoner’s base; you had to drag the other lot over behind your line. One group were the Russians; the other, the French. The Russians were meant to lose, but sometimes that didn’thappen; there was an awful, furious racket. At the end of the week, the head had to ban this charming pastime: two pupils had been brought into the infirmary with
or
the monarchy
or
the government
. From coast to coast men will answer the bugle’s call, trembling with anticipation. Whether we knew it or not, the seeds were sown twenty years ago; and if ever the time should come, war will break out over our land like an overflowing harvest.
I say it again: three times in my life I have heard the eerie sound of War beating its wings over France. It begins with a distant rustling; you think gales are on the way. The sound gets louder. There’s a crash, and every heart beats faster; people turn giddy with enthusiasm as the country feels the need to conquer and kill. Then, when the men are gone and the noise has died down, an anxious silence takes over. Everyone listens out for the first cry from the army: will it be a cry of victory, or a cry of defeat? It’s a terrible time. There are contradictory reports. You seize upon the tiniest scraps, analysing every word, until the hour of truth. And what an hour that is – sweet joy, or bitter despair!
1
At the time of the Crimean War, I was fourteen. I was still a boarder at school in Aix, shut away with two or three hun dred other kids in an old Benedictine convent. The long corridors and vast halls retained something of its former gloominess. Its two courtyards were more cheerful, under the glorious southern skies that stretched out vast and blue. I did suffer there, but I remember that school fondly.
At fourteen, I wasn’t exactly a child. But looking back today I see how ignorant we were. World news didn’t reach that forgotten corner. The sad old town was a dead capital, slumbering in barren countryside, and the school, close to the fortifications, slept even more deeply. In all the time that I was cloistered there, I don’t recall ever hearing anything about one single political scandal. Only the Crimean War had any impact – and it was probably several weeks before we heard about that.
I smile, thinking back to what war meant to us provincial schoolboys. It was all very vague at first. The fighting was happening in a land so distant, so strange, and so savage, that we imagined the scene to be like something from the Arabian Nights, come to life. We couldn’t have told you where exactly it was taking place, and I don’t think that any of us thought for a minute to look into the atlases we each had at our fingertips. Our teachers, it must be said, kept us in total ignorance of the modern world. They read the papers, they knew what was going on; but they never spoke to us about it, and if we had asked, they would have sent us packing, back to our essays and exercises. We knew nothing for certain, except that France was fighting in the Orient; why, we didn’t know.
But some things we did know. We repeated the old jokes about the Cossacks; we knew the names of two or three Russian generals, and we imagined these generals to have heads pretty much like monsters, gobbling up small children. We never once thought France could lose; to us that seemed perverse. Then there were gaps. As the campaign dragged on, we forgot that there was a war on, for months at a time, until the day that some snippet of news brought us back, breathless with excitement. I can’t tell you if we knew about the battles as they took place, or if we experienced the thrill of capturing Sebastopol. 2 It was all a muddle. To us, the reality was Virgil and Homer – more worrying to us than any modern-day quarrel among nations.
I do remember the game that was all the rage for a while in the playground. We split up into two groups, and marked two lines in the dust. Then we fought. It was a simpler version of prisoner’s base; you had to drag the other lot over behind your line. One group were the Russians; the other, the French. The Russians were meant to lose, but sometimes that didn’thappen; there was an awful, furious racket. At the end of the week, the head had to ban this charming pastime: two pupils had been brought into the infirmary with
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