ANTIQUITY: FROM GILGAMESH TO HOMER
One of mankind's oldest literary works, "The Epic of Gilgamesh", was written in the 18th century at the latest.e century BC, laid the foundations of the war story. And one of its original titles, "He who saw everything", already seems to hint at the role of the writer in times of conflict. Gilgamesh, the (legendary) king of Uruk in Mesopotamia (now Iraq), is so tyrannical with his people that the gods send him a rival, Enkidu. After confronting each other, the two developed a mutual respect and became friends, and Gilgamesh stopped abusing his power. They then confront various adversaries in an epic designed to remind us of the limits of the human condition and the inevitability of death.
Attested since a text of the XXVIe Gilgamesh may have really existed, around 2700-2600 BC. His epic undoubtedly influenced a famous author whose existence is not certain either: the Greek Homer, who is thought to have lived in the 8th century BC.e and VIIe centuries BC. Considered to be the first works of Western literature, his Iliad and Odyssey are, like Gilgamesh's, epics.
Centred on the siege of Troy and the wrath of Achilles, the Iliad highlights combat and individual heroism, with epic battle scenes in which the heroes illustrate their exploits. Achilles, but also Diomedes, Ajax and Hector, are exceptional warriors who show courage, virtue and honour, and are in search of glory. Leaders like Agamemnon, Odysseus and Hector make important tactical and strategic decisions about troop movements, truces and attacks. Homer also describes the warriors' weaponry in detail.
In the Odyssey, which recounts the exploits of Odysseus on his return from the Trojan War, the military aspects are always present, particularly through the main character, the archetypal cunning hero - the memory of the Trojan Horse is present. In short, while the Iliad highlights the aspects of open warfare, epic battles and the heroism of strength, the Odyssey emphasises the importance of cunning, strategic intelligence and the ability to adapt in order to survive and achieve one's goals. Both works help to forge the image of the ideal warrior in ancient Greek culture, combining bravery and brute strength with ingenuity and wisdom.
SHAKESPEARE'S "HENRY V": THE BATTLE OF AZINCOURT IN THE THEATRE
After Homer, the epic genre continued to infuse Western literature: Virgil's "Aeneid" among the Romans, followed by Arthurian literature and the Scandinavian sagas of the Middle Ages are the most famous examples. At the end of the XVIe In the 19th century, the English playwright William Shakespeare produced a major work of war literature: his play "Henry V" is a rich and complex exploration of military aspects, from command to strategy, including the psychology of soldiers and the harsh moral and physical realities of conflict.
The play depicts an English campaign in France culminating in the famous Battle of Azincourt, the decisive English victory and humiliating French defeat of the Hundred Years' War in 1415. Right from the opening, the play deals with the justification of war and its legitimacy: two bishops encourage Henry to claim the throne of France, arguing that he is entitled to it by blood; then Henry justifies the war to his people, notably in his famous night scene in which he disguises himself to speak to his soldiers.
Strategy and tactics are then brought to the fore: first, in the siege of Harfleur, where the king urges his troops to unfailing courage, Shakespeare shows the nature of sieges, the brutality of assaults, and the importance of inspiring leadership. Then the battle itself is the climax of the play.
The author first dramatises the English numerical inferiority, the better to underline the victorious feat that was to follow. He then shows the decisive importance of the English archers and their ability to fire a deluge of arrows at the heavily armed French troops mired in the muddy terrain.
The play portrays Henry V as an exemplary military leader: courageous, strategic, inspiring, but also aware of his men's doubts and fears, and of the need for discipline (when he has a marauder, Bardolphe, executed). His ability to mingle with his soldiers the night before battle to understand their morale and concerns is a key illustration of his leadership.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, INSPIRATION FOR MASTERPIECES
Since his death in 1821, Emperor Napoleon 1er inspires strategistsbut also writers from all over the world. His century also saw the emergence of a form of descriptive realism in literature (both general and war literature) that has remained unchanged ever since.
Stendhal's first masterpiece, "The Charterhouse of Parma", was published in 1839 and brought immediate fame to its author. Its most famous aspect is the description of the Battle of Waterloo (1815). Fabrice del Dongo, a young idealist with a passion for Napoleon and military glory, runs away from home to join the Emperor. Once on the battlefield, however, he understands absolutely nothing of what is going on.
For him, the battle was just a tangle of noise, smoke and disorderly movements. He is content to follow groups of soldiers without grasping their strategic or tactical significance. Stendhal thus deconstructs the romantic idea of war: Fabrice does not take part in any heroic deeds, does not understand orders, does not fire a single significant shot. His experience is one of a series of chance encounters with soldiers, carters and market women. He is more concerned with being hungry or thirsty than with victory or defeat. In this novel, the military aspects are not those of generals or strategies, but those of the sensory and emotional micro-experience of an individual lost in the mass.
In his monumental work War and Peace (1865-1869), the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy in turn offers a realistic and epic exploration of the military aspects of the Napoleonic Wars. He depicts war as an immense and unpredictable chaos. The grand strategies and plans of the generals were often doomed to failure in the face of the reality on the ground, uncertainty and "friction" (Clausewitz's concept).
Tolstoy frequently adopts the point of view of the ordinary soldier or officer, describing the dust, noise, fear, smell of blood and death in no uncertain terms. In fact, he suggests that the morale of the troops and their "spirit" (what he calls the "spirit of the army") are far more important than strategic plans or the number of soldiers. At the opposite end of the command scale, the Russian novelist rejects the idea that great leaders (like Napoleon) can control the course of war. For him, the "great man" is a slave to history.
War and Peace depicts several major battles in detail, including Austerlitz (1805) and Borodino (1812). At the end of the XXe It was the description of the battle of Essling (1809) that earned its author, Patrick Rambaud, the rare double of the Prix Goncourt and the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française. A masterful historical reconstruction, "La Bataille" (1997) excels in depicting the military aspects with meticulous precision and brutal realism, often the opposite of glorification: Napoleon is not omnipotent and infallible, but fallible, hesitant and faced with difficult decisions. His strategy was put to the test by a determined enemy and poor logistics. His vulnerability and anger shine through.
Like Tolstoy, Rambaud describes war as immense chaos. The reader is immersed in the dust, the deafening noise of the cannons, the cries of men and horses, the smoke that obscures the view. The battle is a succession of events that are unpredictable and often incomprehensible to those who experience it. The author does a good job of depicting infantry formations (squares to resist the cavalry, attack columns), cavalry charges, the role of the artillery and its deployment. The reader understands the generals' intentions, troop movements and the opposing responses.
Command is also an important aspect of "La Bataille": Rambaud portrays many senior officers, each with their own skills, weaknesses and rivalries. Marshals Lannes, Masséna and Bessières are central figures, showing the different facets of command in the field. The death of Lannes, a terrible blow for Napoleon, is a highlight of the novel.
IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, EVERY WAR HAS ITS LITERARY MONUMENTS
From the First World War onwards, there were countless masterpieces of war literature: books written by authors who were contemporaries of the conflict, such as "Le Feu" by Henri Barbusse (1916), "Les Croix de bois" by Roland Dorgelès (1919), "Clérambault" by Romain Rolland (1920), or "Le Grand troupeau" by Jean Giono (1931), on the French side. In the United States, the war inspired John Dos Passos ("Three Soldiers", 1921) and Ernest Hemingway ("A Farewell to Arms", 1929). A century later, Germany's Erich Maria Remarque (1929) wrote "Nothing New in the West".
Writers born much later also produced masterpieces about the First World War: Marc Dugain's "La Chambre des officiers" (1998), Philippe Claudel's "Les Âmes grises" (2003) and Pierre Lemaître's "Au revoir là-haut" (2014), about the difficult post-war reconstruction of two Poilus.
Among the many novels inspired by the Second World War, several deal with particular aspects, often experienced by their authors. Irène Némirovsky's Suite française, written just after the 1940 debacle, deals with the exodus that followed the "phoney war"; unfinished (the writer was killed in Auschwitz in 1942), it was not published until 2004. With "L'Armée des ombres" (1943), Joseph Kessel wrote one of the most powerful accounts of the Resistance, along with "Le Silence de la mer", a short story by Vercors published clandestinely in 1942.
Less explored in literature than European theatre, Asian theatre inspired Pierre Boulle to write "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1952) about the difficult living conditions of prisoners of war, a novel that gave rise to a famous film.
Two writers have taken an original interest in the psyche and personal construction of Nazi warlords. Three years after his Goncourt Prize-winning account of the 1940 Battle of Dunkirk ("Week-end à Zuydcoote", 1949), Robert Merle published the pseudo-memoirs of an SS officer who became commandant of the Auschwitz camp, a chilling account entitled "Death is my profession".
In 2006, Jonathan Littell used the same process with Les Bienveillantes, which follows another fictional SS officer on the Eastern Front, from the atrocious "Shoah by bullets" to the terrible battle of Stalingrad. A publishing success, this novel, like Rambaud's "La Bataille", won both the Prix Goncourt and the Grand Prix du roman of the Académie française.
