Two Portrait’s From de Vigny

Extract

Amidst the welter of memoirs of the Napoleonic era De Vigny’s Servitude et Grandeur Militaires always seems to me to hold a peculiar charm and attraction. The very opening sentence of the book strikes that keynote of gentle melancholy and disillusion which is so characteristic of the high-souled Captain Renaud with his famous Canne de Jonc. ‘ If it is true, according to the Catholic poet, that there is nothing so painful as remembering happy days in the midst of misery, it is also true that the heart finds a certain happiness in recalling times of hardship and slavery, in a period of freedom and calm.’ This same air of philosophic detachment and experienced judgment pervades all the author’s reflections on the rottenness of the military system of the age and the hollowness of military glory. Incidentally the book contains also in the story of Laurette ou le Cachet Rouge, one of the tenderest and most poignant love-stories ever written.

In the course of the Captain’s memoirs there stand out in clear detachment the portraits of two of the leading protagonists in the great struggle for supremacy, one of the Emperor himself, the other of the most chivalrous and high-souled of all England’s naval commanders, the illustrious Admiral Collingwood.