The Invalids

Europe's long history of war, from the shifting borders of the continent to Napoleon, the world wars, and the fall of France. History becomes the lens through which to question Europe’s recurring faith in military power.

According to the press, French industrialists and military leaders are seeking ever more money to ‘adapt’ the French army to ‘high-intensity warfare’. What does ‘high intensity’ mean? Two or three kilotons in my garden? Britain is already supplying Ukraine with shells fitted with depleted-uranium warheads. NATO used them in Serbia and Iraq, and now there are thousands of cancer patients thanks to these ‘democratic’ munitions. Yet no one thinks of stopping these lunatics...

At Neandro Schilling High School in San Fernando, I had two History teachers: Don Heriberto Soto, an elderly man of acknowledged erudition, and ‘Choro’ Silva, who lived up to his nickname. They were magnificent teachers, and yet I never managed to understand Europe’s ever-changing maps, with countries that grew or shrank, changed their names and borders, and contained hundreds of assorted nations and communities speaking tangled languages, none of which ever felt at ease with either the prince of the day or its neighbours. Hence wars. Massacres for millennia.

If you head south from Paris, the route of National Road 7 was laid out by Julius Caesar’s troops during the conquest of Gaul. Later came the Hundred Years’ War, which, from 1337 to 1453, pitted the Plantagenet, Capetian and Valois dynasties against one another and, through them, the Kingdom of England against the Kingdom of France.

Wars and More Wars

Even Joe Biden has probably heard of Napoleon, though I am not saying he knows what it is all about. The Corsican climbed to the top of France and Europe thanks to his artillery, which he handled with skill and prodigality. With it, he massacred the royalists who opposed what remained of the French Revolution. That, and a monumental pair of balls, brought him to power: those were different times; to reach the seat of government, you had to have two.

His boundless ambition led him to invade Russia in 1812, and he reached Moscow. But the Russians, led by Kutuzov, counterattacked. The plains of Belarus get rather chilly in winter, and Napoleon’s troops froze. By the time he reached the Berezina River... Napoleon had even forgotten how to walk. Ever since, when a French person wants to say that something has turned into an almighty disaster, they simply say: ‘It was a Berezina.’ Tolstoy wrote his gigantic work War and Peace, Tchaikovsky composed his 1812 Overture, cannon fire included, and Tsar Nicholas I arrived in Paris with his troops, where he lived comfortably in Talleyrand’s palace until the champagne ran out.

In the 1860s, Napoleon III - Napoleon I’s nephew - was bored, had lost his bets, or was envious of Jena; who knows? The fact is that he decided to invade Mexico and install an emperor there to his liking: Maximilian. The Mexicans, quick off the mark, stopped the music and came up with an entertaining idea: they shot the emperor.

Napoleon III, somewhat annoyed and looking for revenge, declared war on Prussia in 1870 - and we know how that went. The Prussians took him prisoner at Sedan and reached Paris, using the momentum to proclaim the German Empire at Versailles. Napoleon III was sent packing to England, and the French Third Republic was born. The very same republic that, in that year, massacred tens of thousands of working men and women in the sadly celebrated Paris Commune.

On 28 June 1914, a young Serbian nationalist from Bosnia named Gavrilo Princip assassinated the heirs to the Austro-Hungarian throne: Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg. What? Exactly that.

From then on, they declared war on one another with such enthusiasm that the First World War broke out. On one side stood the Triple Alliance of Britain, France and Russia - yes, you read that correctly - and on the other the Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary, joined by the Ottoman Empire and whoever else came along.

After a couple of beers, three glasses of sake and a bourbon - nothing to do with the Franco-Spanish dynasty - the Yankees, the Japanese and every Tom, Dick and Harry joined in. It was quite a spectacle: some did the fighting, while others financed it and supplied the gunpowder.

The worst battles were fought on French soil, and Verdun still bleeds in our hearts. More than 200,000 French soldiers died in the Battle of the Chemin des Dames thanks to the genius of their generals, who came up with the idea of shooting their own troops to instil patriotism and courage in the recruits. France, the land of Enlightenment.

From then on, the French high command understood that a soldier’s ribcage does not stop .50-calibre machine-gun bullets.

So they had a brilliant idea, comparable only to the ruse of the Trojan Horse or the devious arts of Mata Hari: to build a wall that would stop the Germans at the border. And so they spent a vast sum constructing the Maginot Line.

When the Second World War began, the Germans invaded Belgium first and reached France by the direct road from Brussels to Paris: they did not even pay a toll. Nothing more was heard of the Maginot Line; apparently it is now a museum.

Paris fell once again; half of France was occupied, and so was the other half. The dark night of the Nazi Occupation left indelible wounds. In those dark hours, France saw three small lights that brought hope: the Resistance of the French people, Mon Général Charles de Gaulle, and the Soviet victory at Stalingrad.