Fortuné du Boisgobey: One couldn’t dream that behind a peaceful scene men were slaughtering each other

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

French writers on war and peace

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Fortuné du Boisgobey
Le Tambour de Montmirail

At present the escort was riding over a small plain where the artillery wheels had deeply rutted the soil. This was the only trace of the passage of the vanguard, and this field, surrounded by hoary oaks, wore the most peaceful aspect. One could never dream that on the other side of those ancient trees, seemingly planted as the entrance leading up to some feudal castle, men were engaged in slaughter.

The fields were utterly deserted, and vast clouds of black smoke were whirling above the apparently abandoned dwellings. A dozen of them were blazing at the same time, and at whiles down would fall a wall, or a roof would sink in with a horrifying crash. Cut partly away by bullets, the wooden steeple of the village church hung over like a tree all but felled. At the farther end of the plain and on the opposite hillside, such carts and cattle were hurrying off as could be saved by the unfortunate farmers. It was a picture of foreign invasion in its reddest and blackest colors.

…there was a chorus of imprecations against the enemy for having ravaged the country before they could despoil the peasants.

“I thought myself fairly well known the world of fashion, too, and among the wealthy, also, for my father, who made a mint of money in – in the colonial trade (he came near saying, the slave trade) is rather rich; he twice bought substitutes to serve for me in the army.”