HUGO Victor Besançon, 1802 - Paris, 1885, poète... Lot n° 323

"The Voice of Guernsey". Printed copy dated "Hauteville House, November 1867"; 49.5 x 16 cm, tears and holes in folds. Copy with corrections. On the back is an autograph signed "A Eugène Pelletan Victor Hugo". This poem, anticlerical and opposed to the government of Napoleon III, was composed by Victor Hugo after the battle of Mentana (1867) during which the French and Pontifical troops routed Garibaldi's Red Shirts. It led to the halting of Hernani's performances in Paris: "These young men, these sons of Brutus, Camille, De Thraséas, how many were they? four thousand. How many died? Six hundred. Six hundred! Count it, see. A scattering of battered limbs, broken arms, black and pierced eyes, bellies where the wolves howl out of the dens, Flesh machine-gunned in the middle of the bushes, This is all that remains, after the betrayals, After the trap, after the infamous ambushes, Alas, of these great hearts and these great souls! Look. We reaped them all in one fell swoop. Their crime? they wanted Rome and its triumphal arches; they defended honor and right, these chimeras. Come, acknowledge your children, come, mothers! For whoever breastfeeds him, the man is still the child. Hold; this haggard forehead, that a bullet opens and splits, It is humble blond head where formerly, poor woman, You saw dawn radiate and dawn the soul; These lips, whose foam soiled the lawn, O nurse, after you stammered your song;"...