The battle with the cannon

I have been recalling a story by the French nineteenth century author Victor Hugo, 'The battle with the cannon". The story is part of a chapter in the historical novel of the French Revolution, 1793, centered around the counter revolutionary uprising in the Vendee in western France.

The story in this particular chapter hinges around the naval vessel that is carrying the commissioners of the revolutionary government on an important mission. While at sea, the vessel encounters rough weather and one of the deck cannons breaks lose and careens around the deck. Now a naval cannon was a heavy thing of brass and cast iron mounted on a heavy wheeled wooden gun carriage. Roaming all over the pitching deck it causes an immense amount of damage, smashing things, damaging the masts, injuring crew who cannot get out of the way fast enough. Hugo describes the gun like it is a wild beast, raging furiously and creating havoc. At this point the gunner steps forward, armed with a marlin spike and some rope, he leaps onto the cannon and in Hug's description it is like a man wrestling with a wild beast or even a gladiatorial combat. The gunner uses the spike to brake the gun's trajectory and succeeds in lashing it fast. A heroic and brave deed,

At this point the senior commissioner steps forward and immediately praises and decorates the gunner with a medal for bravery. Virtue rewarded.

But here comes the twist, and it is this twist that interests me and causes the few people I have shared the excerpt with to pause - even to find it confronting.

In the next breath the commissioner points out that if the gunner had not been negligent in the first place and properly secured the gun, none of the near disaster would have happened. His negligence has nearly caused the failure of the mission. He immediately sentences the gunner to death commands his execution by firing squad.

People with whom I have shared this story are generally at this point discomforted. They find the commissioner's actions unfair. Reasons advanced include that the heroism and rectification at immense personal risk cancel out the error, that the original error was not intentional and therefore not culpable, that it was an 'accident', that the gunner was clearly a brave man and as such an asset to the revolution and killing him is a waste of talent. Above all, they feel the execution in unjust.

All of these reactions represent I think, the instinctive responses of liberal bourgeois ideology. By contrast, in giving us this story, Hugo has represented in fictional but concrete form the thinking of a revolutionary. The liberal approach emphasises the individual with a obsessive concern for culpability, intent and ameliorating circumstances. The revolutionary on the other hand is focussed on objectivity. What actually happened, what actually did people do, and how did those actions advance or frustrate the progress of the revolution. For the revolutionary, the revolution is a world - historical event, a significant eruption into history of the dialectic of freedom. Individuals in such a process are primarily instantiations of dialectical forces, the means or tools through which the logic of history is operating. In the realm of revolution we are face to face with history rather than with the everyday concerns of human beings. The vagaries of human motivation and the individual balancing of virtues and vices is of far less consequence than the objective impact of their actions on the course of revolution.

So in this context the gunner must be rewarded, he has prevented a potential disaster and thus has contributed materially to the progress of the revolution, to the unfolding of history. Such actions must be encouraged and praised; the course of history and the course of individuals need to unified in action. The gunner must also be punished; by his inaction or inadequate action he has potentially sabotaged the course of history and put much at risk. Such actions cannot be let slide.

Had the story involved two individuals the reader would have fewer qualms. The queasiness of the reader is stimulated by two divergent tendencies, two opposing objectivities, been united in the same individual person. This of course creates the drama necessary to the novel as a work of art, but it is also utterly believable and likely. Novelists can through fictions display a deeper truth than can sometimes be found in the bland record of historical facts.

Hugo's commissioner is able to look beyond the contingent individual to the two trajectories instantiated in the person. He is able to discern the heroism that need reward and the objective act of sabotage that requires retribution and is able to assign the appropriate reward to each. What the commissioner provides the reader is an instruction in thinking like a revolutionary. Now, many people will not like this. Their decision is to decide then which side they are on.

The tragedy for the gunner is that his frail humanity embodies the contradictory objectivities. But the consolation for him also is this: that all people die and while he is to be executed as a saboteur, he is dying as  a hero.