Servitude et grandeur militaires
Encyclopedia
Servitude et grandeur militaires is a book in three parts by Alfred de Vigny
, published in 1835. Difficult to categorize, it is not a novel but a succession of short stories sometimes loosely based on episodes within Vigny’s own experience. It is also a threefold meditation on the nature of military life: with diminishing enthusiasm Vigny had been an Army officer from 1814 to 1827.
The title of Servitude et grandeur militaires is difficult, if not impossible, to translate. One reasonable, but still inadequate, attempt at a translation would be “Glory and Submission: Aspects of Military Life”.
The work records some of Vigny’s personal memories. More importantly, it is a record of his philosophy of military life and of life generally. It contains autobiographical elements, perhaps the most memorable of these being his account of the withdrawal of Louis XVIII of France
to Ghent
in March 1815, when, as a very young second lieutenant in the Household Cavalry
(Garde Royale), he rode with the retreating royal party as far as Béthune
.
The even more memorable scene of Napoleon I
’s encounter with Pope Pius VII
at Fontainebleau
was not one of Vigny’s personal memories.
“Laurette ou le cachet rouge”
The frame-narrator, writing from the standpoint of 1815, recounts events that occurred in 1797. This story told in the first person has as its frame Louis XVIII of France
’s retreat to Ghent
; it encloses the récit (flashback) of the battalion commander, who in earlier life had been a naval captain. Laurette, a child-bride, accompanies her husband when, in the custody of the naval captain, the young man is sentenced to be deported to French Guiana
by order of the French Directory
. A letter sealed with a large red seal, not to be opened until part way through the voyage, sentences the young man to death. The young man is shot on the cathead of the ship. His widow loses her reason and is cared for by the battalion commander, who resigns from the naval service to become a soldier and who takes her with him on his campaigns in a small cart pulled by a mule. Laurette dies three days after the commander is killed at the Battle of Waterloo
.
“La Veillée de Vincennes”
The frame-narrator, writing from the standpoint of 1819, recounts the Adjutant Mathurin’s story of his youthful (anachronistic) friendship with the future playwright Michel-Jean Sedaine
and of his young future wife Pierrette’s introduction in 1778 to the court of Marie Antoinette
, Queen of France, when Princess Marie Louise of Savoy
, Princesse de Lamballe, paints her portrait. Following this is the frame-narrator’s own story of the explosion, on 17 August 1815, at the powder-magazine at the fort of Vincennes
. The Adjutant’s death in this explosion is related in the frame narrative. The story conveys a charming if rose-tinted impression of French eighteenth-century court life.
“La Canne de jonc”
The frame-narrator, writing from the standpoint of 1832, describes how in July 1830 he had met up again with a brother officer, Captain Renaud. In defence of the government of Charles X of France
the captain is preparing, somewhat reluctantly, to take up arms for the last time. Reminiscing with the frame-narrator, he recalls “three defining moments” in his life. The first is Napoleon I
’s encounter with Pope Pius VII
in 1804, which he happened to overhear as the Emperor’s page. The second comes when he is taken prisoner in 1809 by Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, 1st Baron Collingwood
. The third defining moment comes five years later, in the attack on a Russian guardhouse, when he kills a fourteen-year-old Russian soldier. By way of epilogue a subordinate frame-narrator takes over, describing how, during the three “glorious days” of the July Revolution
of 1830, and sixteen years after the killing of the boy soldier, Renaud is shot by a boy who bears an uncanny resemblance to the young Russian. The principal frame-narrator finally takes up the story again, visiting Renaud on his deathbed and finding the street urchin grieving beside him.
“La Canne de jonc” is a complex interweaving of authorial commentary, frame narratives and récits. Narratively speaking, it is the most ambitious of the three stories. Its triadic structure mirrors that of Servitude et grandeur militaires as a whole.
in La Rabouilleuse
, is aware that the concept of honour is vanishing from the modern world, as too is the supremacy of religion
. Like Balzac again, he cannot help but contrast the austere Napoleonic code of values with the more self-serving attitudes of the Bourbon Restoration
.
For Vigny and his contemporaries the age of glorious military valour is past. He follows Stendhal
in this respect. It is an aspect of his Romanticism
. In the modern world military service has become a matter of mere routine. It pained Vigny to accompany Louis XVIII of France
on his withdrawal to the United Kingdom of the Netherlands
, rather than have the glory of confronting Napoleon I
’s invading army.
If the “grandeur” of warfare has disappeared, what then of its “servitude” or “submission”? Vigny seeks to reconcile the individual’s autonomy of conscience with the soldier’s submissiveness to military discipline. In “le naufrage universel des croyances”, which he sees as characteristic of the modern era (and especially of the July Monarchy
), he hopes for a religion of honour that will establish the civic virtues of personal responsibility, stoicism
, self-abnegation and unselfish regard for others.
and Pope Pius VII
, Renaud had been profoundly disillusioned by the despotic amoralism privately exhibited by Napoleon in his contemptuous treatment of the Pontiff. Yet Napoleon was a leader whom hundreds of thousands of soldiers followed with blind devotion.
Vigny contrasts the glory days of soldiering – the colourfulness and excitement of the heat of battle – with what he calls “modern soldiering”: this is a less colourful and glorious but a more ethical calling. In 1830, he writes, “l’armée de l’Empire venait expirer dans le sein de l’armée naissante alors, et mûrie aujourd’hui”. However, in proposing his concept of a “religion of honour”, he does not resolve the contradiction between absolute obedience to orders that can result in killing and the autonomous integrity of the categorical imperative
which embodies the demands of conscience.
Vigny himself abandoned “the almost barbaric profession of warfare” before the so-called advent of the new soldiering, or, as he puts it, before he recovered from his “illness known as military enthusiasm”.
The Malacca cane, which provides the title of the third story, symbolizes tranquil bourgeois living, in a world in which the concept of honour is still of paramount importance. Carried by Captain Renaud, it replaces the previous chivalric concept of honour, whose symbol was the sword.
Unable to foresee the wars of Napoleon III and Otto von Bismarck
, nor World War I
and World War II
, Vigny believed that warfare, annihilated by philosophy, commerce, and the marvels of modern technology, would gradually cease to be an instrument of political behaviour.
Servitude et grandeur militaires is an unusual, if not unique, book. In its endeavour to set forth a modern, sober ideal of the soldier of conscience it is far removed from the gung-ho attitude of most books on warfare and military life.
Written with immense narrative subtlety and not a little contrivance, it has been insufficiently studied.
Alfred de Vigny
Alfred Victor de Vigny was a French poet, playwright, and novelist.-Life:Alfred de Vigny was born in Loches into an aristocratic family...
, published in 1835. Difficult to categorize, it is not a novel but a succession of short stories sometimes loosely based on episodes within Vigny’s own experience. It is also a threefold meditation on the nature of military life: with diminishing enthusiasm Vigny had been an Army officer from 1814 to 1827.
The title of Servitude et grandeur militaires is difficult, if not impossible, to translate. One reasonable, but still inadequate, attempt at a translation would be “Glory and Submission: Aspects of Military Life”.
The work records some of Vigny’s personal memories. More importantly, it is a record of his philosophy of military life and of life generally. It contains autobiographical elements, perhaps the most memorable of these being his account of the withdrawal of Louis XVIII of France
Louis XVIII of France
Louis XVIII , known as "the Unavoidable", was King of France and of Navarre from 1814 to 1824, omitting the Hundred Days in 1815...
to Ghent
Ghent
Ghent is a city and a municipality located in the Flemish region of Belgium. It is the capital and biggest city of the East Flanders province. The city started as a settlement at the confluence of the Rivers Scheldt and Lys and in the Middle Ages became one of the largest and richest cities of...
in March 1815, when, as a very young second lieutenant in the Household Cavalry
Household Cavalry
The term Household Cavalry is used across the Commonwealth to describe the cavalry of the Household Divisions, a country’s most elite or historically senior military groupings or those military groupings that provide functions associated directly with the Head of state.Canada's Governor General's...
(Garde Royale), he rode with the retreating royal party as far as Béthune
Béthune
Béthune is a city in northern France, sub-prefecture of the Pas-de-Calais department.-Geography:Béthune is located in the former province of Artois. It is situated South-East of Calais, West of Lille, and North of Paris.-Landmarks:...
.
The even more memorable scene of Napoleon I
Napoleon I
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
’s encounter with Pope Pius VII
Pope Pius VII
Pope Pius VII , born Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti, was a monk, theologian and bishop, who reigned as Pope from 14 March 1800 to 20 August 1823.-Early life:...
at Fontainebleau
Fontainebleau
Fontainebleau is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located south-southeast of the centre of Paris. Fontainebleau is a sub-prefecture of the Seine-et-Marne department, and it is the seat of the arrondissement of Fontainebleau...
was not one of Vigny’s personal memories.
Component stories
The three parts of Servitude et grandeur militaires are the stories “Laurette ou le cachet rouge” (“Laurette, or the Red Seal”), “La Veillée de Vincennes” (“Late-Night Conversation at Vincennes”) and “La Canne de jonc” (“The Malacca Cane”). These are accompanied by essays “On the General Characteristics of Armies”, “On Responsibility” and on other related subjects.“Laurette ou le cachet rouge”
The frame-narrator, writing from the standpoint of 1815, recounts events that occurred in 1797. This story told in the first person has as its frame Louis XVIII of France
Louis XVIII of France
Louis XVIII , known as "the Unavoidable", was King of France and of Navarre from 1814 to 1824, omitting the Hundred Days in 1815...
’s retreat to Ghent
Ghent
Ghent is a city and a municipality located in the Flemish region of Belgium. It is the capital and biggest city of the East Flanders province. The city started as a settlement at the confluence of the Rivers Scheldt and Lys and in the Middle Ages became one of the largest and richest cities of...
; it encloses the récit (flashback) of the battalion commander, who in earlier life had been a naval captain. Laurette, a child-bride, accompanies her husband when, in the custody of the naval captain, the young man is sentenced to be deported to French Guiana
French Guiana
French Guiana is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department located on the northern Atlantic coast of South America. It has borders with two nations, Brazil to the east and south, and Suriname to the west...
by order of the French Directory
French Directory
The Directory was a body of five Directors that held executive power in France following the Convention and preceding the Consulate...
. A letter sealed with a large red seal, not to be opened until part way through the voyage, sentences the young man to death. The young man is shot on the cathead of the ship. His widow loses her reason and is cared for by the battalion commander, who resigns from the naval service to become a soldier and who takes her with him on his campaigns in a small cart pulled by a mule. Laurette dies three days after the commander is killed at the Battle of Waterloo
Battle of Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands...
.
“La Veillée de Vincennes”
The frame-narrator, writing from the standpoint of 1819, recounts the Adjutant Mathurin’s story of his youthful (anachronistic) friendship with the future playwright Michel-Jean Sedaine
Michel-Jean Sedaine
Michel-Jean Sedaine was a French dramatist, was born in Paris.- Biography :His father, who was an architect, died when Sedaine was quite young, leaving no fortune, and the boy began life as a mason's labourer...
and of his young future wife Pierrette’s introduction in 1778 to the court of Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette ; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was an Archduchess of Austria and the Queen of France and of Navarre. She was the fifteenth and penultimate child of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I....
, Queen of France, when Princess Marie Louise of Savoy
Princess Marie Louise of Savoy
Maria Luisa of Savoy was a member of the House of Savoy. She was married at the age of 16 to Louis Alexandre de Bourbon, Prince de Lamballe, the heir to the greatest fortune in France. After her marriage, which lasted a year, she went to court and became the confidante of Queen Marie Antoinette...
, Princesse de Lamballe, paints her portrait. Following this is the frame-narrator’s own story of the explosion, on 17 August 1815, at the powder-magazine at the fort of Vincennes
Vincennes
Vincennes is a commune in the Val-de-Marne department in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. It is one of the most densely populated municipalities in Europe.-History:...
. The Adjutant’s death in this explosion is related in the frame narrative. The story conveys a charming if rose-tinted impression of French eighteenth-century court life.
“La Canne de jonc”
The frame-narrator, writing from the standpoint of 1832, describes how in July 1830 he had met up again with a brother officer, Captain Renaud. In defence of the government of Charles X of France
Charles X of France
Charles X was known for most of his life as the Comte d'Artois before he reigned as King of France and of Navarre from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. A younger brother to Kings Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, he supported the latter in exile and eventually succeeded him...
the captain is preparing, somewhat reluctantly, to take up arms for the last time. Reminiscing with the frame-narrator, he recalls “three defining moments” in his life. The first is Napoleon I
Napoleon I
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
’s encounter with Pope Pius VII
Pope Pius VII
Pope Pius VII , born Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti, was a monk, theologian and bishop, who reigned as Pope from 14 March 1800 to 20 August 1823.-Early life:...
in 1804, which he happened to overhear as the Emperor’s page. The second comes when he is taken prisoner in 1809 by Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, 1st Baron Collingwood
Cuthbert Collingwood, 1st Baron Collingwood
Vice Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, 1st Baron Collingwood was an admiral of the Royal Navy, notable as a partner with Lord Nelson in several of the British victories of the Napoleonic Wars, and frequently as Nelson's successor in commands.-Early years:Collingwood was born in Newcastle upon Tyne...
. The third defining moment comes five years later, in the attack on a Russian guardhouse, when he kills a fourteen-year-old Russian soldier. By way of epilogue a subordinate frame-narrator takes over, describing how, during the three “glorious days” of the July Revolution
July Revolution
The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution or in French, saw the overthrow of King Charles X of France, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, who himself, after 18 precarious years on the throne, would in turn be overthrown...
of 1830, and sixteen years after the killing of the boy soldier, Renaud is shot by a boy who bears an uncanny resemblance to the young Russian. The principal frame-narrator finally takes up the story again, visiting Renaud on his deathbed and finding the street urchin grieving beside him.
“La Canne de jonc” is a complex interweaving of authorial commentary, frame narratives and récits. Narratively speaking, it is the most ambitious of the three stories. Its triadic structure mirrors that of Servitude et grandeur militaires as a whole.
Vigny’s philosophical outlook
Vigny, like Honoré de BalzacHonoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....
in La Rabouilleuse
La Rabouilleuse
La Rabouilleuse , is a 1842 novel by Honoré de Balzac as part of his series La Comédie humaine. The Black Sheep is the title of the English translation by Donald Adamson published by Penguin Classics...
, is aware that the concept of honour is vanishing from the modern world, as too is the supremacy of religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
. Like Balzac again, he cannot help but contrast the austere Napoleonic code of values with the more self-serving attitudes of the Bourbon Restoration
Bourbon Restoration
The Bourbon Restoration is the name given to the period following the successive events of the French Revolution , the end of the First Republic , and then the forcible end of the First French Empire under Napoleon – when a coalition of European powers restored by arms the monarchy to the...
.
For Vigny and his contemporaries the age of glorious military valour is past. He follows Stendhal
Stendhal
Marie-Henri Beyle , better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme...
in this respect. It is an aspect of his Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
. In the modern world military service has become a matter of mere routine. It pained Vigny to accompany Louis XVIII of France
Louis XVIII of France
Louis XVIII , known as "the Unavoidable", was King of France and of Navarre from 1814 to 1824, omitting the Hundred Days in 1815...
on his withdrawal to the United Kingdom of the Netherlands
United Kingdom of the Netherlands
United Kingdom of the Netherlands is the unofficial name used to refer to Kingdom of the Netherlands during the period after it was first created from part of the First French Empire and before the new kingdom of Belgium split out in 1830...
, rather than have the glory of confronting Napoleon I
Napoleon I
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
’s invading army.
If the “grandeur” of warfare has disappeared, what then of its “servitude” or “submission”? Vigny seeks to reconcile the individual’s autonomy of conscience with the soldier’s submissiveness to military discipline. In “le naufrage universel des croyances”, which he sees as characteristic of the modern era (and especially of the July Monarchy
July Monarchy
The July Monarchy , officially the Kingdom of France , was a period of liberal constitutional monarchy in France under King Louis-Philippe starting with the July Revolution of 1830 and ending with the Revolution of 1848...
), he hopes for a religion of honour that will establish the civic virtues of personal responsibility, stoicism
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...
, self-abnegation and unselfish regard for others.
Conclusion
On killing the boy soldier in the attack on the Russian guardhouse, Renaud asks himself: “What difference is there between myself and an assassin?” Overhearing the acrimonious conversation between Napoleon INapoleon I
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
and Pope Pius VII
Pope Pius VII
Pope Pius VII , born Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti, was a monk, theologian and bishop, who reigned as Pope from 14 March 1800 to 20 August 1823.-Early life:...
, Renaud had been profoundly disillusioned by the despotic amoralism privately exhibited by Napoleon in his contemptuous treatment of the Pontiff. Yet Napoleon was a leader whom hundreds of thousands of soldiers followed with blind devotion.
Vigny contrasts the glory days of soldiering – the colourfulness and excitement of the heat of battle – with what he calls “modern soldiering”: this is a less colourful and glorious but a more ethical calling. In 1830, he writes, “l’armée de l’Empire venait expirer dans le sein de l’armée naissante alors, et mûrie aujourd’hui”. However, in proposing his concept of a “religion of honour”, he does not resolve the contradiction between absolute obedience to orders that can result in killing and the autonomous integrity of the categorical imperative
Categorical imperative
The Categorical Imperative is the central philosophical concept in the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant, as well as modern deontological ethics...
which embodies the demands of conscience.
Vigny himself abandoned “the almost barbaric profession of warfare” before the so-called advent of the new soldiering, or, as he puts it, before he recovered from his “illness known as military enthusiasm”.
The Malacca cane, which provides the title of the third story, symbolizes tranquil bourgeois living, in a world in which the concept of honour is still of paramount importance. Carried by Captain Renaud, it replaces the previous chivalric concept of honour, whose symbol was the sword.
Unable to foresee the wars of Napoleon III and Otto von Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck
Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg , simply known as Otto von Bismarck, was a Prussian-German statesman whose actions unified Germany, made it a major player in world affairs, and created a balance of power that kept Europe at peace after 1871.As Minister President of...
, nor World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Vigny believed that warfare, annihilated by philosophy, commerce, and the marvels of modern technology, would gradually cease to be an instrument of political behaviour.
Servitude et grandeur militaires is an unusual, if not unique, book. In its endeavour to set forth a modern, sober ideal of the soldier of conscience it is far removed from the gung-ho attitude of most books on warfare and military life.
Written with immense narrative subtlety and not a little contrivance, it has been insufficiently studied.
Translations
- Lights and Shades of Military Life, translated by Frederic ShoberlFrederic ShoberlFrederic Shoberl , also known as Frederick Schoberl, was an English journalist, editor, translator and writer. Schoberl edited Forget Me Not, the first literary annual, issued at Christmas "for 1823" and translated The Hunchback of Notre Dame.-Biography:Shoberl was born in London in 1775, and...
, edited by Major-General Sir Charles James NapierCharles James NapierGeneral Sir Charles James Napier, GCB , was a general of the British Empire and the British Army's Commander-in-Chief in India, notable for conquering the Sindh Province in what is now Pakistan.- His genealogy :...
, London: 1840. - The Military Necessity, translated by Humphrey Hare, London, Cresset Press: 1953.
- The Military Condition, translated by Marguerite Barnett, O.U.P.: 1964.
- The Servitude and Grandeur of Arms, translated by Roger Gard, London, Penguin Classics: 1996.