From
Jacques Gagniard,
Colonel commanding
the 5th Hussars Regiment in 1986,
FNCV President in 2003
To
Armand Louis de Gontaut-Biron
Duke of Lauzun, Colonel and
Owner of the 5th Hussars,
In the year of our Lord 1780
My dear Armand Louis,
May I perturb your quietude in Valhalla, where you have been spending your days peacefully for over two centuries now, to brief you on how France and America are faring, two countries which are so dear to us and for which you like I made enormous sacrifices.
As concerns France, you should know that we are still essentially what we used to be during those turbulent days of the end of the eighteenth century when we came in to provide crucial support to Insurgents, enabling them to gain freedom from the “Anglos”.
In 1793, we cut the throat of Louis XVI, this good king whose only fault was that he was too preoccupied with fixing things than sorting out royal issues. He did not notice the clouds that were accumulating over his crown and this made him to lose everything. What did you expect of this man who was meant to be a locksmith and not a king? The French could not forgive him for this crime of “lese people”, all the more so as his wife, Marie-Antoinette, who was unable to distinguish bread from bun, was making no effort to help the situation...
In a bid to demonstrate our evenhandedness, we also publicly liquidated some three thousand “former aristocrats”, whose only fault was that their names were too long, just like yours, my dear Louis-Armand. You will call that pure injustice and even cruelty, but an egalitarian revolution is bound to respect its underlying logic and, of course, you will admit that it was necessary to have the machine invented by the brave Doctor Guillotin serve its purpose.
In January 1795, some squadrons of our brave hussars made headline news when on horseback they launched a crazy attack against ships that were trapped by ice in the Helder port and captured the entire Batavian fleet. We got entangled in real military imbroglios.
We replaced Louis with a revolution committee, which also disappeared through the heavy blade of the cleaver. A general then came up, who becoming an emperor immediately realized he was obliged to wage war against all of Europe. Moreover, he was the intrepid type that required no extra effort to push into war...You would have been proud of our 5th Hussars which, at Austerlitz, launched ten consecutive charges, and realized many other feats of arms that made the emperor to say: "if the hussars with swords drawn start capturing fortified places, I just have to dissolve the Engineers corps and have the cannons of the artillery melted!
We crowned new kings, another emperor, perhaps not as big as the first, but who at least had the honor of modernizing Paris with the assistance of Baron Haussmann. Being a very handsome man, Napoleon III had the pleasure and the advantage of having as a mistress Miss Howard, an awfully wealthy widow of a British officer, from whom he borrowed five million gold-francs without ever paying back. This was not good; we must admit it and ask for pardon. But, humph! What a strapping man!
Today, and for over a century now, we are supposed to be under republican regimes, which are good for nothing and never take any decision. This has made life more difficult than it has been under any other regime, given that the people is now responsible for everything, and notably for the errors of their successive democratically elected leaders, and the latter spare no opportunity to blunder …
We continued for sometime to wage war against the “Anglos” who finally became the best enemies of the world since the Entente Cordiale treaty of 1904. Since then, we have been fighting side by side, from time to time, against the Germans and between us, setting up each other is now done rather discreetly, which is elegant. In this domain, we must acknowledge we have a very reliable partner in the “perfidious Albion”.
In September 1915, during the Great War, our 5th Hussars, with their usual foolhardiness, launched an attack against enemy artillery battery set up at Champagne. This brave charge ended with the crossing of barbed wire fences (perfidious obstacles which did not exist in your days) which had been cut overnight by hussars on foot, right under the nose of the Prussians. Out of the two hussars squadrons involved in the operation from the beginning, barely a handful of men survived up to the end, capturing 600 Teuton soldiers who were petrified seeing such exceptional and rash courage. This incident was recounted to us by an infantry officer, Captain Schilizzi, who was captivated by such an exploit.
Finally, the Germans themselves got fade up with waging war against us. It should be noted that all their battles against us ended up very badly for them thanks to the English, who naturally never let go any opportunity to exhibit their might. We also received crucial support from the Americans; an enormous pay back for the assistance you together with Rochambeau and La Fayette offered them, while their country was still a budding nation, wailing like a teething baby …
You should also know that since the 20th century, the hussars no longer go on horseback; they are now enveloped in crawling sputtering metal boxes, which pass out smoke with a rather disgusting smell compared to the sweet perfume that emanated from the dung of our ancient steeds.
But somehow or other, thanks to our volunteers, and to the sacrifice of many of us, France has been able to maintain her image of a great nation and commands some respect in the world today.
We have carried out much construction work, for example in Paris, there is an arc of triumph to the glory of French armies and a giant metal tower five times the height of Notre-Dame called the Eiffel Tower; in Egypt, there is an immense channel linking the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea; in Central America, there is a similar one between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans; who knows what else, the Georges Pompidou Museum and the very large library (Très Grande Bibliothèque). But these last two structures, honestly, do not give one any reason to beat one’s chest and I don’t know why I even mentioned them to you; forget I did….
We always hatch ideas worthy of genius in every domain but fall short of the capacity to exploit them ourselves. One might ask why it is always almost Americans who market them and tap profit from them, with the perfect open spirit which characterizes, as you know, this fundamentally good-natured people.
We have kept on making babies – today we are more than sixty million – with much care and taking all our time, after all, that is the one thing we never get tired doing, even when age is weighing on us. Moreover, it must be admitted, French ladies, thank God, are still so beautiful and are exhibiting their beauty more than ever before, although things, unfortunately, are changing within a context of increasing fundamentalism…
But if you had to step foot in Boston, New York or Philadelphia, I bet you, you would not recognize the America you knew: Indians are almost completely absent, the cities have grown so big – you certainly won’t believe me – that New York alone, at the mouth of the Hudson River, has almost as many inhabitants as there were in all of the 18th century America.
People live in tall buildings, even taller than our Paris metal tower which, at least has no other use than offering Paris a beautiful panorama with a very attractive view especially at night when its brilliant lights illuminate the skies of the capital city.
The United States of America has grown. They took advantage of the financial needs of our emperor Napoleon to buy Louisiana over from us. Bâton Rouge and New Orleans now belong to America, although the French language is still being cultivated there with a delicious Cajun accent that arouses our emotions.
They have conquered Texas, California, New Mexico and even Alaska.
They have over 250 million inhabitants and have become the first world power, both in the economic and military domains.
We, the French, after rejoicing over the success of the American dream, we who held this country over the font for baptism, are now somewhat worried for they don’t look like they want to stop there and their eagles have their eyes staring somewhere else…
Whenever it came to defending their territory and the rights of the oppressed, American armies always carried high their flag, brandishing its bright stars and earned respect of the world.
But when they were asked to occupy countries like Vietnam on a permanent basis, it turned out to be an utter fiasco as is always the case in a democracy when the public no longer understands certain issues and gets fade up with them, obliging the army to abandon blood-bought positions. Some of us understand this better, with our former colonies …
One might take us for guys who abscond with the cash, but in the course of our long history, we have come to learn that the unbridled race for power attracts misfortune.
The quest for efficiency and the thirst for domination must be moderated by the quest for happiness and harmony, not only for ourselves, but also with those around us, avoiding to impose our own principles on others. Business is not all there is in life; life is also about living, so take time to live.
Of what good is it to be modern and powerful if that makes us to live in huge hutches, depend on machines and oil to produce polluting energy with a disgusting smell, be sedentary, try but never succeeding to compensate our physical inactivity in weights rooms, gulp down canned food, which makes us obese and renders our tissues flabby, and end up losing all what used to give taste and flavor to life in the 18th century, even though life wasn’t all roses then!
Regarding our feelings towards our America, we had such a beautiful image of her that made us proud as she symbolized the liberty that illuminated the world.
Since we refused to join her coalition in a war against the small neo-Babylonian tribes living along the shores of the Persian Gulf because we didn’t and still don’t understand the rationale behind such a war, given that the reason put forward was not convincing enough, it seems some sort of ice block has resolutely slipped in between us.
They called us ingrates and accused us of being pusillanimous individuals who have forgotten all what America has done for us and God alone knows the many other things they have said which I wouldn’t want to repeat.
In my capacity as an old soldier, and on the behalf of the French National Federation of Volunteer Servicemen (FNCV), I would like to tell those who question our courage and doubt the sincerity of our friendship with America that they are making a big mistake. We have unrivaled experience in conflicts like the one American troops are currently involved in Iraq and would have readily participated in it, as we did in the previous conflict, if the conditions which we considered necessary had been met.
Our appreciation of the situation was different. In fact, we didn’t see the direct threat that was being posed to America’s security by this people whose forces, following what we knew, had been considerably weakened. On the contrary, we saw this battle as a trap with oil whiffs in which when one is caught, there seemed to be no possibility of getting out unhurt without operating under the banner of the United Nations.
Perhaps our judgement is wrong, and we hope that the withdrawal started could continue and end well for both Americans and the Iraqis...
My dear Armand-Louis, I know you have some powerful connections up there in heaven, and that Ike, with whom you always play poker, kept some contacts at the White House. Now that Barrack has taken over from George W., you will surely know better and inform us.
That replies should be send to me by e-mail. And as it is the case now:
- Click here.
Yours sincerely. Jacques
~ Avertissement
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Editor’s note : This text, an absolutely fictitious and surrealist write-up , is the fruit of the imagination of the Website animation team . It is evident that the president of the FNCV has nothing to do with its writing and we hope that he will pardon us for having pushed a biro between his fingers, but we couldn’t hush up the pleasure of calling upon his services, without his knowledge...
