G — Guerre
Original French
La famine, la peste & la guerre sont les trois ingrédients les plus fameux de ce bas monde. On peut ranger dans la classe de la famine toutes les mauvaises nourritures où la disette nous force d’avoir recours pour abréger notre vie dans l’espérance de la soutenir.
On comprend dans la peste, toutes les maladies contagieuses, qui sont au nombre de deux ou trois mille. Ces deux présents nous viennent de la providence; Mais la guerre qui réünit tous ces dons, nous vient de l’imagination de trois ou quatre cent personnes, répandues sur la surface de ce globe, sous le nom de princes ou de ministres; & c’est peut-être pour cette raison que dans plusieurs dédicaces on les appelle les images vivantes de la divinité.
Le plus déterminé des flateurs conviendra sans peine, que la guerre traine toûjours à sa suite la peste & la famine, pour peu qu’il ait vû les hopitaux des armées d’Allemagne, & qu’il ait passé dans quelques villages où il se sera fait quelque grand exploit de guerre.
C’est sans doute un très bel art que celui qui désole les campagnes, détruit les habitations, & fait périr année commune quarante mille hommes sur cent mille. Cette invention fut d’abord cultivée par des nations assemblées pour leur bien commun; par exemple, la diète des Grecs déclara à la diète de la Phrigie & des peuples voisins, qu’elle allait partir sur un millier de barques de pêcheurs, pour aller les exterminer si elle pouvait.
Le peuple Romain assemblé jugeait qu’il était de son intérêt d’aller se battre avant moisson, contre le peuple de Veïes, ou contre les Volsques: Et quelques années après, tous les Romains étant en colère contre tous les Cartaginois, se battirent longtems sur mer & sur terre. Il n’en est pas de même aujourd’hui.
Un généalogiste prouve à un prince qu’il descend en droite ligne d’un comte, dont les parents avaient fait un pacte de famille il y a trois ou quatre cent ans avec une maison dont la mémoire même ne subsiste plus. Cette maison avait des prétentions éloignées sur une province dont le dernier possesseur est mort d’apopléxie. Le prince & son conseil concluent sans difficulté que cette province lui appartient de droit divin. Cette province qui est à quelques centaines de lieües de lui, a beau protester qu’elle ne le connait pas, qu’elle n’a nulle envie d’être gouvernée par lui; que pour donner des loix aux gens, il faut au moins avoir leur consentement: ces discours ne parviennent pas seulement aux oreilles du prince, dont le droit est incontestable. Il trouve incontinent un grand nombre d'hommes qui n’ont rien à faire ni rien à perdre; il les habille d’un gros drap bleu à cent dix sous l’aune, borde leurs chapeaux avec du gros fil blanc, les fait tourner à droite & à gauche; & marche à la gloire.
Les autres princes qui entendent parler de cette équipée, y prennent part chacun selon son pouvoir, & couvrent une petite étenduë de païs de plus de meurtriers mercenaires, que Gengis-Kan, Tamerlan, Bajazet n’en trainèrent à leur suite.
Des peuples assez éloignés entendent dire qu’on va se battre, & qu’il y a cinq ou six sous par jour à gagner pour eux, s’ils veulent être de la partie; ils se divisent aussi-tôt en deux bandes comme des moissonneurs, & vont vendre leurs services à quiconque veut les employer.
Ces multitudes s’acharnent les unes contre les autres, non seulement sans avoir aucun intérêt au procès, mais sans savoir même de quoi il s’agit.
Il se trouve à la fois cinq ou six puissances belligérantes, tantôt trois contre trois, tantôt deux contre quatre, tantôt une contre cinq, se détestant toutes également les unes les autres, s’unissant & s’attaquant tour à tour; toutes d’accord en un seul point, celui de faire tout le mal possible.
Le merveilleux de cette entreprise infernale, c’est que chaque chef des meurtriers fait bénir ses drapeaux & invoque Dieu solemnellement, avant d’aller exterminer son prochain. Si un chef n’a eu que le bonheur de faire égorger deux ou trois mille hommes, il n’en remercie point Dieu; mais lorsqu’il y en a eu environ dix mille d’exterminés par le feu & par le fer, & que pour comble de grace quelque ville a été détruite de fond en comble, alors on chante à quatre parties une chanson assez longue, composée dans une langue inconnue à tous ceux qui ont combattu, & de plus toute farcie de barbarismes. La même chanson sert pour les mariages & pour les naissances, ainsi que pour les meurtres; ce qui n’est pas pardonnable, surtout dans la nation la plus renommée pour les chansons nouvelles.
On paye partout un certain nombre de harangueurs pour célébrer ces journées meurtriéres; Les uns sont vêtus d’un long just’aucorps noir, chargé d’un manteau écourté; Les autres ont une chemise par dessus une robe; quelques-uns portent deux pendants d’étoffe bigarrée, par dessus leur chemise. Tous parlent longtems; ils citent ce qui s’est fait jadis en Palestine, à propos d’un combat en Vétéravie.
Le reste de l’année ces gens là déclament contre les vices. Ils prouvent en trois points & par antithèses que les dames qui étendent légérement un peu de carmin sur leurs jouës fraîches, seront l’objet éternel des vengeances éternelles de l’Eternel; Que Polieucte & Athalie sont les ouvrages du Démon; Qu’un homme qui fait servir sur sa table pour deux cent écus de marée un jour de carême, fait immanquablement son salut; & qu’un pauvre homme qui mange pour deux sous & demi de mouton va pour jamais à tous les Diables.
De cinq ou six mille déclamations de cette espèce, il y en a trois ou quatre tout au plus composées par un Gaulois nommé Massillon, qu’un honnête homme peut lire sans dégout; mais dans tous ces discours, il n’y en a pas un seul où l’orateur ose s’élever contre ce fléau & ce crime de la guerre, qui contient tous les fléaux & tous les crimes. Les malheureux harangueurs parlent sans cesse contre l’amour qui est la seule consolation du genre humain, & la seule manière de le réparer; ils ne disent rien des efforts abominables que nous faisons pour le détruire.
Vous avez fait un bien mauvais sermon sur l’impureté, ô Bourdalouë! mais aucun sur ces meurtres variés en tant de façons, sur ces rapines, sur ces brigandages, sur cette rage universelle qui désole le monde. Tous les vices réünis de tous les âges & de tous les lieux n’égaleront jamais les maux que produit une seule campagne.
Misérables médecins des ames, vous criez pendant cinq quarts d’heure sur quelques piquures d’épingles, & vous ne dites rien sur la maladie qui nous déchire en mille morceaux! Philosophes moralistes, brulez tous vos livres. Tant que le caprice de quelques hommes fera loyalement égorger des milliers de nos frères, la partie du genre humain consacrée à l’héroïsme sera ce qu’il y a de plus affreux dans la nature entiére. Que deviennent & que m’importent l’humanité, la bienfaisance, la modestie, la tempérance, la douceur, la sagesse, la piété, tandis qu’une demi-livre de plomb tirée de six cent pas me fracasse le corps, & que je meurs à vingt ans dans des tourments inexprimables, au milieu de cinq ou six mille mourans, tandis que mes yeux qui s'ouvrent pour la dernière fois voyent la ville où je suis né détruite par le fer & par la flamme, & que les derniers sons qu’entendent mes oreilles sont les cris des femmes & des enfants expirants sous des ruines, le tout pour des prétendus intérêts d’un homme que nous ne connaissons pas?
Ce qu’il y a de pis, c’est que la guerre est un fléau inévitable. Si l’on y prend garde, tous les hommes ont adoré le Dieu Mars. Sabaoth chez les Juifs signifie le Dieu des armes: mais Minerve chez Homère appelle Mars un Dieu furieux, insensé, infernal.
Musean translation
Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Musean translation of the 73 articles in the 1764 first edition, made directly from the French and reviewed against the scan-collated French text. The author’s notes, quotations and verse are retained. Historical ethnic labels, including offensive terms, are retained from the 1764 text.
Famine, plague, and war are the three most celebrated ingredients of this world below. Under famine we may classify all the bad food to which scarcity forces us to resort, shortening our lives in the hope of sustaining them.
Plague includes all contagious diseases, of which there are two or three thousand. These two gifts come to us from providence; but war, which combines all these blessings, comes from the imagination of three or four hundred people scattered over the surface of this globe under the name of princes or ministers. Perhaps that is why so many dedications call them the living images of the divinity.
The most determined flatterer will readily agree that war always drags plague and famine in its train, if he has so much as seen the army hospitals in Germany and passed through a few villages where some great feat of arms has been performed.
It is doubtless a very fine art that lays waste the countryside, destroys homes, and kills, in an average year, forty thousand men out of a hundred thousand. This invention was first cultivated by nations assembled for their common good. For example, the assembly of the Greeks declared to the assembly of Phrygia and the neighboring peoples that it was about to set out in a thousand fishing boats to exterminate them if it could.
The assembled Roman people judged it in their interest to go out before harvest and fight the people of Veii or the Volscians. And a few years later, all the Romans being angry with all the Carthaginians, they fought for a long time by sea and land. Things are different today.
A genealogist proves to a prince that he descends in a direct line from a count whose relatives, three or four hundred years ago, made a family compact with a house of which even the memory has vanished. That house had remote claims to a province whose last possessor died of apoplexy. The prince and his council conclude without difficulty that this province belongs to him by divine right. The province, a few hundred leagues away, protests in vain that it does not know him, that it has no desire to be governed by him, that to give people laws one must at least have their consent. These speeches do not even reach the ears of the prince, whose right is incontestable. He promptly finds a great many men with nothing to do and nothing to lose; he dresses them in coarse blue cloth at a hundred and ten sous an ell, trims their hats with coarse white thread, makes them turn right and left, and marches off to glory.
The other princes who hear of this escapade take part, each according to his means, and cover a small stretch of country with more hired murderers than Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, and Bayezid ever dragged behind them.
Peoples at some distance hear that there is going to be fighting and that they can earn five or six sous a day if they care to join in. They immediately divide into two bands, like harvesters, and go off to sell their services to anyone willing to employ them.
These multitudes fall furiously upon one another, not merely without any stake in the dispute, but without even knowing what it is about.
Five or six belligerent powers are involved at once: now three against three, now two against four, now one against five, all hating one another equally, allying with and attacking one another in turn, agreeing on only one point—to do all the harm they can.
The marvelous thing about this infernal enterprise is that each chief of the murderers has his flags blessed and solemnly invokes God before going out to exterminate his neighbor. If a chief has had the good fortune to have only two or three thousand men slaughtered, he does not thank God for it; but when some ten thousand have been exterminated by fire and sword, and, to crown the favor, some town has been destroyed from top to bottom, then a rather long song is sung in four parts, composed in a language unknown to all those who fought, and moreover stuffed with barbarisms. The same song serves for weddings and births as for murders: an unpardonable thing, especially in the nation most renowned for new songs.
Everywhere a certain number of declaimers are paid to celebrate these murderous days. Some wear a long black coat under a shortened cloak; others wear a shirt over a robe; a few wear two hanging strips of motley cloth over their shirt. They all speak at length; they cite what was done long ago in Palestine, apropos of a battle in Wetterau.
For the rest of the year these people declaim against vice. In three points and by antitheses they prove that ladies who lightly spread a little carmine on their fresh cheeks will be the eternal objects of the Eternal’s eternal vengeance; that Polyeucte and Athalie are works of the Devil; that a man who has two hundred écus’ worth of fresh fish served at his table on a day in Lent unfailingly secures his salvation, while a poor man who eats two and a half sous’ worth of mutton goes to all the devils forever.
Out of five or six thousand declamations of this kind, there are at most three or four, composed by a Gaul named Massillon, that an honest man can read without disgust. But among all these discourses there is not one in which the orator dares to rise against the scourge and crime of war, which contains every scourge and every crime. The wretched declaimers speak ceaselessly against love, the human race’s sole consolation and its sole means of renewal; they say nothing of the abominable efforts we make to destroy it.
You delivered a very bad sermon on impurity, Bourdaloue, but none on these murders in so many forms, on this plunder, this brigandage, this universal frenzy that lays the world waste. All the vices of all ages and all places combined will never equal the evils produced by a single campaign.
Miserable physicians of souls, you shout for an hour and a quarter about a few pinpricks and say nothing of the disease that tears us into a thousand pieces! Moral philosophers, burn all your books. As long as the whim of a few men can cause thousands of our brothers to be lawfully slaughtered, the portion of the human race dedicated to heroism will be the most dreadful thing in all nature. What becomes of humanity, beneficence, modesty, temperance, gentleness, wisdom, piety—and what do they matter to me—when half a pound of lead fired from six hundred paces shatters my body, and I die at twenty in unspeakable torment among five or six thousand dying men; when my eyes, opening for the last time, see the town where I was born destroyed by sword and flame, and the last sounds my ears hear are the cries of women and children expiring under the ruins—all for the supposed interests of a man we do not know?
Worst of all, war is an inevitable scourge. If we look closely, all men have worshiped the god Mars. Among the Jews, Sabaoth means the God of armies; but in Homer, Minerva calls Mars a furious, senseless, infernal god.
Plain English translation
Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Plain English translation of the same 73 articles, made directly from the French and reviewed against the scan-collated French text. The author’s notes, quotations and verse are retained. Historical ethnic labels, including offensive terms, are retained from the 1764 text.
Famine, plague, and war are this world’s three most famous ingredients. Famine includes all the bad food that shortages force us to eat. We hope it will keep us alive, but it cuts our lives short.
Plague includes every contagious disease: there are two or three thousand of them. These two gifts come from providence. War combines them all, but it comes from somewhere else. Three or four hundred people scattered around the globe dream it up. They go by the names of princes or ministers. Perhaps that’s why so many dedications call them living images of God.
Even the most determined flatterer will readily admit that war always brings plague and famine. He need only visit the army hospitals in Germany and a few villages. Some great military feat will have taken place in those villages.
What a fine art it is! It ruins the countryside and destroys homes. In an average year it kills forty thousand men out of a hundred thousand. Nations first developed this invention when they met for their common good. Take the Greek assembly’s announcement to the assembly of Phrygia and its neighbors. The Greeks were setting out in a thousand or so fishing boats. They would exterminate those peoples if they could.
The Roman people met and decided that fighting would serve their interests. Before harvest, they’d attack the people of Veii or the Volscians. A few years later, all the Romans were angry with all the Carthaginians. They fought for a long time on land and at sea. Things are different today.
A genealogist proves that a prince descends directly from a count. Three or four hundred years ago, that count’s relatives made a family pact. The other family has vanished even from memory. It had a remote claim to a province whose last owner died of a stroke. The prince and his council readily agree: this province is his by divine right. The province lies a few hundred leagues away and protests in vain. It doesn’t know him and doesn’t want him to govern it. Anyone making laws for people must at least have their consent. These arguments never even reach the prince’s ears: his right is beyond dispute. He soon finds plenty of men with nothing to do and nothing to lose. He puts them in coarse blue cloth costing a hundred and ten sous an ell. He trims their hats with thick white thread. He makes them turn right and left, then marches off to glory.
The other princes hear about this adventure and join in as best they can. They pack a small patch of country with hired killers. Even Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, and Bayezid never had so many followers.
People far away hear there’s going to be fighting. They can earn five or six sous a day if they join in. They immediately split into two bands, like harvest workers. Off they go to sell their services to anyone who’ll hire them.
These crowds attack one another furiously. They have no stake in the dispute. They don’t even know what it’s about.
Five or six powers are at war at once. Sometimes it’s three against three, sometimes two against four, sometimes one against five. They all hate one another equally. They take turns joining forces and attacking one another. They agree on just one thing: doing as much harm as possible.
Here’s the wonderful thing about this hellish business. Each leader of the killers gets his flags blessed and solemnly calls on God. Then he goes off to exterminate his neighbors. Suppose he’s only had the good luck to get two or three thousand men slaughtered. He doesn’t thank God for that. But suppose fire and sword have wiped out about ten thousand. Suppose, as a final blessing, a town has been completely destroyed too. Then they sing a fairly long song in four parts. None of the men who fought understands its language. And it’s full of mangled expressions in that language. They use the same song for weddings and births as for murders. That’s unforgivable, especially in the nation most famous for its new songs.
Everywhere, people pay a certain number of speakers to celebrate these murderous days. Some wear a long black coat with a short cloak over it. Others wear a shirt over a gown. A few have two strips of multicolored cloth hanging over their shirts. They all talk for a long time. To discuss a battle in Wetterau, they quote events from long ago in Palestine.
The rest of the year, these people preach against vice. They prove their case in three points, using contrasting phrases. Ladies lightly dab a little rouge on their fresh cheeks. For that, the Eternal One’s eternal vengeance will target them forever. Polyeucte and Athalie are the Devil’s work. A man serves two hundred écus’ worth of seafood on a day in Lent. He’s sure to go to heaven. A poor man eats two and a half sous’ worth of mutton. He goes to all the devils forever.
Take five or six thousand sermons of this kind. A decent man could read three or four at most without disgust. A Gaul named Massillon wrote those few. But not one speaker dares attack war, that disaster and crime. It contains every disaster and every crime. These miserable speakers never stop attacking love. Yet love is humanity’s only comfort, and its only way to replace its losses. They say nothing about the horrible efforts we make to destroy humanity.
Bourdaloue, you gave a very bad sermon on sexual impurity! But you gave none on all these different kinds of murder. None on this plunder, this robbery, this worldwide frenzy that lays everything waste. Add up all the vices of every age and place. They’ll never equal the harm done by a single military campaign.
Miserable doctors of souls! You shout for an hour and a quarter about a few pinpricks. You say nothing about the disease tearing us into a thousand pieces! Moral philosophers, burn all your books. A few men’s whims get thousands of our brothers slaughtered in loyal service. As long as that lasts, nothing in nature is more horrifying than the people devoted to heroism. What becomes of humanity, generosity, modesty, moderation, gentleness, wisdom, and piety? What do I care about them? Half a pound of lead, fired from six hundred paces, smashes my body. I die at twenty in unspeakable agony among five or six thousand dying men. My eyes open for the last time. I see the town where I was born destroyed by fire and sword. The last sounds I hear are women and children crying out. They’re dying beneath the ruins. All this serves the supposed interests of a man we don’t know.
Worst of all, war is an unavoidable disaster. Look closely: all peoples have worshiped the god Mars. Among the Jews, Sabaoth means the god of arms. But in Homer, Minerva calls Mars a furious, insane, hellish god.
About this section
G — Guerre is part of Pocket Philosophical Dictionary by Voltaire. This page sets the French original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is article 45 of 73 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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