The siege, for now intermittent but insistent, is increasingly noticeable in the large cities and centers of power… the Capitol in Washington, Paris, Barcelona or Madrid… And there are no longer protective walls or moats as in the old days. Any well-organized minority or group, let alone with crowd funding and a little help from unspeakable foreign friends, can not only stand up to the democratic system, but also collapse an entire city for as long as they consider enough to get their way.
The peasants – now called farmers – in half of Europe are up in arms. Many work at a loss, and this is just the beginning. They are drowned by paperwork that is increasingly absurd, more extensive, more convoluted, more endless and ultimately useless, since the promised manna never reaches them. Their children flee, but only to enter gigantic cities in which they barely find a way to survive, if not survive, no matter how much academic training, desire or talent they have.
But this group, once so numerous and important, but which now only represents a scant 2% of the European active population, continues to feed so many mouths against all odds, although it is better not to wonder how. If nothing and no one remedies it, they will soon hang the sign ‘Closed due to death’, unless enough immigrants come willing to occupy their abandoned farms and farms.
We live in the best of times, yes, at least in some things, but now it is increasingly clear that everything is taken with pins and needles. One small slip, and it was over. Someday, as they are learning in Ukraine or Gaza, everything will be paralyzed, the countryside abandoned, the dispensation empty.
Returning to Paris in 1870 after 19 years in exile, mainly on the British Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, where he wrote Les Misérables, chatted with spirits, mocked the English and fornicated without restraint, Victor Hugo, now an adult, found upon his arrival at the Gare du Nord in Paris, where as soon as he stepped onto the platform he exclaimed: “Citizens… I am here”, a city besieged by the Prussians. He was welcomed by his countrymen as a hero. But the siege did not seem to have an end.
During his exile, ancient Paris, that of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, had been transformed by the immense urban planning works of Baron Haussmann. Where before there was a labyrinth of narrow streets, there were now wide stately boulevards designed to, above all, facilitate the movement of the army to quell the frequent revolts mounted by the unruly Parisians. A horror. But worst of all was that the Prussians left the population without supplies for 132 long days.
On October 22, Victor Hugo noted in the diary he kept throughout the siege, that he ate horse meat in all its forms and, a month later, that people ate rat pate and said it was very delicious. On December 3: ‘Yesterday we ate venison; the day before yesterday, bear; and the two days before, antelope. Gifts from the Jardin des Plantes. On December 30: ‘Now we no longer eat horses. It could be a dog or maybe a rat. We are eating the Unknown…’. On January 2: ‘The elephant of the Jardin des Plantes has been sacrificed… we are going to eat it.’ And on January 10, shortly before the signing of the armistice: ‘Our stomachs are Noah’s ark.’
If the siege persists, perhaps we will soon find out what rat pâté tastes like, which will surely have an expiration date on the packaging, as the peasants know, sorry, farmers.
