Anatole France: Historians hadn’t told him war wore so ugly an aspect

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

Nobel prize in literature recipients on peace and war

French writers on war and peace

Anatole France: Selections on war

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Anatole France
The Latin Genius
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
Translated by Wilfrid S. Jackson

The Chevalier was attached to the Staff, with a hundred louis in pay and a gratuity of six hundred
francs. He was twenty-three; he joined the campaign in high hopes, reported himself at
Düsseldorf, where the Comte de Saint-Germain was gathering an army, and, ordered on reconnaissance, saw fields laid waste and villages given to the flames. Livy, and his tutors, had not led him to imagine that war had so ugly an aspect. He was rolled over in a cavalry charge, in the course of a victory, and things looked worse still when the Chevalier du Muy, who had replaced the Comte de Saint-Germain, brought but defeat and disorder into the camp. Saint-Pierre, thrown with the rest of the army into La Dymel, saved himself by swimming, under musket-fire. The stream and the rocks were thick with bodies clad in the blue and white uniforms. The young officer failed to please his chiefs, who rebuked him for disobedience. He was relieved of his duty, and sent back to France.