Napoleon III at the Battle of Solferino (during the Franco-Austrian War, also known as the Second Italian War of Independence), by Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, oil on canvas, 1863
Translated from the French of the article in ‘Le Libertaire: Journal du Mouvement Social’, May 12, 1859, New York City. A different English translation was previously done by Shawn P. Wilbur
The ultimatum of the bombshells and the voice of the colonels prevails.
War is declared!…
The eagle of legend has risen from among the taxidermy animals, has resumed its flight and is splitting the sky with strikes of lightning:
War is declared!…
Fear of the Revolution causes the sovereign Masters of peoples and men, all those who hold the scepter or the rod of social misery, to shake on their thrones, to throw away, in the middle of peace, their last means of rescue, their bronze of mercy:
War is declared!…
Rome and the Ultramontanes, Catholicism and the Jesuits push their eldest, legitimate son, Austria, against their bastard, youngest son, France; they want to put an end to the usurpation:
War is declared!…
The coalition and the invasion of the Holy Alliance soar on their vampire wings over the Tuileries, preparing to feed on a new Waterloo:
War is declared!…
The Czar of the Don allies himself offensively and defensively with the Czar of the Seine. The Emperor of the East and the Emperor of the West threaten revolutionary Europe with a two-headed despotism:
War is declared!…
In the face of current events, will the Social Revolution remain mute and immobile in the depths of its subterranean lairs, or will it emerge from beneath the horses’ feet and the cannons’ wheels, at the height of the battle, in the midst of the bloody melee, sweeping with its lava flow the field of carnage and oppression? Will it take advantage of the rivalries of sacred and crowned exploiters to topple barriers and borders everywhere, and fertilize the soil of anarchic unity?
Will Europe always be enslaved, or will it finally be free?
Are we dogs or wolves?
Will our children be men or subjects?
Proletariat! It is up to you to respond; it is up to you to make the fates speak and act.
As you think and act, so shall it be done.
Whoever wants much can do much.
Do you want social conquest, or don’t you?
“All means are good to arrive at the goal: the end justifies the means.”
To our posts, then! The undisciplined and the undisciplinable, the volunteers, men or groups of An-archy: to arms! And war to the bourgeois, war to the priests, war to the warriors!
To arms! To arms! — War is declared!…
Also
Political and Social Revolution in Paris 1848, by Ernest Cœurderoy (1854)
A Page in the History of Civilization, by F. Girard (1860)
War and the State, by Mikhail Bakunin and James Guillaume (1870)
The Conscripts Strike, by Louise Michel (1881)
Our Colonizations, from Le Révolté (1884)
To the Conscripts, from l’anarchie (1906)
Long Live Free Algeria!, by the Federation Communiste Libertaire (1954)
Kanak Society, by Jimmy Ounei (1982)
The Struggle for Kanaky, by Susanna Ounei-Small (1995)
Decolonising Feminism, by Susanna Ounei-Small (1995)
The Strange Stranger, by Mohamed Saïl, edited Francis Dupuis-Déri (2020)
Joseph Déjacque texts at the Anarchist Library
Joseph Déjacque texts at Libcom
Joseph Déjacque texts at Libertarian Labyrinth
If We Must Fight, Let’s Fight for the Most Glorious Nation, Insubordination
“The police, like the army, are abolished. […] All the people armed, no army outside the people […] The army, as an organized force in support of Authority and the war against Freedom, from the interior to the exterior, must disappear.”
Joseph Déjacque, La Législation directe et universelle (1859)