Frédéric Soulié: The pedestal of conquerors rests on an army of lifeless bodies

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

French writers on war and peace

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Frédéric Soulié
La Comtesse de Monrion
Translated by John Taylor Sinnett and Kate Hibburd

…she told him that he was one of those men to whom the whole world should do homage, and his genius had a right to dispense with the base bonds of morality. She so eloquently depicted the pedestal of glory on which she wished him to believe he stood, resting as it were on the broken hearts or ruined reputations, or sundered friendships, as the pedestal of conquerors rests on an army of lifeless bodies….

“It was impossible that the Van Markens, whatever they might be, could steal by hundreds of thousands of francs, and by millions, without having accomplices among the generals of the armies, whose substance they pillaged on so large a scale. Napoleon knew this; but like the tutor of Louis XIV, who pitilessly flogged a poor unfortunate child for the faults of his royal pupil, the emperor severely punished the civilian pillagers for the extortions committed by the military thieves. In the same manner as it appeared to the worshippers of monarchy improper to submit the royal child to the punishment of the cane, so did Napoleon think it unsuitable to dishonor the glittering planets which he had drawn into the solar system of which he was the center.”