Hougoumont

After the engagement, they were in haste to bury the dead bodies. Death has a fashion of harassing victory, and she causes the pest to follow glory. The typhus is a concomitant of triumph. This well was deep, and it was turned into a sepulchre. Three hundred dead bodies were cast into it. With too much haste perhaps. Were they all dead? Legend says they were not. It seems that on the night succeeding the interment, feeble voices were heard calling from the well. 

— Victor Hugo, published 1862

Les Misérables is an epic. It is a love story amidst political revolution. It is beautiful. How can I say this great book or that great book is the best one I've ever read? No, that's silly. But dare I say, It's the best book I've ever read.

At the time, only Napoleon was more famous than Victor Hugo. When Hugo died, millions — millions! — assembled in the streets for his funeral. Much of his writing resonates because it is so vastly human.

The Napoleonic War is a piercing aside in the otherwise love story. War has never been pretty...or nice. The brutality rendered by Hugo is a wake-up call for how good we have it in our air-conditioning and indoor running water. Today, we live better than all the kings who have lived before.

The Hougoumont well was a scene that changed me.

OK, I know we have it good here in the 21st Century. Well, many of us do. And it is not lost on me that for every person alive today there are 15 ghosts who lived extraordinarily different lives.

The Hougoumont well was a place to park the dead during that war, according to Hugo. Depending on the English translation, the phrasing might be different. Were they all dead? Legend says they were not. The version I read was translated as,

Were they all dead? Who knows?

We are all solipsistic. We are all self-important. We have worth. We have plans. Our lives have value. From remembering to get the oil changed to having babies. So, to be shoved down a well as a matter of battlefield housekeeping, alive or dead, is such a rape of humanity.

Sure, we all are moved from time to time by this story or that historical anecdote. Yes, we have feelings. We care about murder, abuse, cruelty, human trafficking, famine, and the acts of nature which kill and maim and make orphans. But we simply cannot fathom war. War is bigger than us. No one knows that better than those who have been there.

But now I wonder about the lives of those 15 ghosts who follow me around. They had feelings, too. They cared. They loved.

It's easy to read about terrible things. But when does sympathy become empathy? I submit that it happens when someone's shoved down a well along with other important lives that have been judged to be unimportant.