Hear Our Defeats by Laurent Gaudé

Author:Laurent Gaudé
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa Editions
Published: 2018-12-09T16:00:00+00:00

Tonight in his tent he is weeping uncontrollably, mindful only that no one can see him. Not that he’s ashamed, but he knows that tears are a sign of weakness, and he has no right to give his men such a show. A macabre coincidence of warfare has brought them back to the same place: the Wilderness forests. One year ago a battle was fought here, against Lee’s soldiers. At the time, the Confederate soldiers defeated Hooker. The dead bodies are still there. And today the torrential rain has reopened the graves, and the men who were fighting could see they were standing on a field of bones. Those who fell, face to the ground, were conjoined with the remains of their erstwhile comrades, who welcomed them with a skeletal smile. He is weeping, his mind still full of the downpour transforming the ground into a muddy field, and the fires spreading from one spot to the next despite the rain, burning the wounded men alive. The Wilderness has devastated them. But when he wipes his face to hide his tears, when he leaves his tent to be among his men, he thinks about Rome. “Qui vincit non est victor nisi victus fatetur.” He who conquers is not the conqueror unless the conquered admits it. He can tell no one, but as he looks at his men trying to warm themselves around a campfire, hardly speaking, trying to retrieve the sensation of being alive, he understands that defeat is not a question of losses but of movement. You have to keep going. What is at stake is not to win the battle of Wilderness, but to prevent Lee from catching his breath. He is marching on Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. The Southern general wants to slow down, play for time. He is betting on the elections about to be held in Washington. Without a clear victory, Lincoln will not be reelected and, if he is not, the Confederates will have all the latitude they need to negotiate their insurgency. That is what Lee wants. And that is what they must respond to. All through the camp, inside the tents, there are murmurs that the Union army was defeated today. And why are they saying this? Because there are seventeen thousand bodies lying there in the woods, their faces still lit by the dying embers from the fires? As long as History continues to hesitate he will not be conquered, and for the time being, that is what it is doing. It must be forced. That is why he is ordering his men to get to their feet. Tomorrow the army will set off again and continue southward toward the enemy capital. Tomorrow the army will be on the march and as long as it is on the march there will be no defeat.

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