Les champs de bataille by Dan Franck

Abstract

Franck, Dan. Les champs de bataille. Paris: Grasset, 2012. ISBN 978-2-246-79018-1. Pp. 280. 18 a. Much history and mythology have been developed about the Resistance leader Jean Moulin. This novel sets the reader up as a judge of a fictional third trial of René Hardy, who is accused of revealing to Klaus Barbie the whereabouts of Moulin in Lyon in 1943.A former member of the Free French, Hardy has already been acquitted twice for this same charge. The reader follows le Juge in this historical novel through an eight-part deposition by Hardy and the Judge’s reliving of Moulin’s final days in Barbie’s prison with its infamous recourse to torture. In between the parts of Hardy’s deposition, the Judge offers his reflections on who Moulin was and what his legacy is and could have been. The interplay of Left and Right within the Resistance network is the recurring battlefield, among others, for the Judge’s decision. Hardy was an acknowledged Right-wing advocate in the early 1940s, while Moulin was clearly aligned with the Left when he became a lieutenant of de Gaulle’s Free French in London and then parachuted into France to become the coordinator of the Resistance. The Judge is intent upon getting a conviction, to such an extent that his own liberal opinions are driving him to find a scapegoat for Moulin’s death in the character of René Hardy. Much of the novel entails “what if” conjectures by the Judge about how the French political landscape would have been different if Moulin had survived to play a role in de Gaulle’s government. The supposed unity between Right and Left in the Resistance enables the Judge to solve the treachery within Moulin’s partisan circle. Moulin’s betrayal signals a rift within the apparent unity. Barbie’s trial in 1984 is one of the key new pieces of information that enables the Judge to seek another deposition from Hardy. The accused maintains that he is a hero of the Resistance as the Judge presses on with his claim that there is “une propreté sale” (245) about the mythology of the heroic Resistance. Barbie had arrested Hardy in early 1943, and Hardy was suspiciously a friend of a notorious Right-wing exponent known as Barrès. The Judge attended Barbie’s trial and obtained access to Barbie’s deposition about Hardy and also to Hardy’s reply. These documents help the Judge drive a wedge between the Right and the Left in their supposed unity within the Free French. The subversive nature of Resistance activities disguised lies and mauvaise foi among colleagues and friends united to defeat a common foe. Overall, however, the tone of this narrative is too dogmatic, as political diatribes purportedly attributed to the Judge advocate liberal causes incarnated by the Moulin he imagines. The heavy-handed ideological sermons slant a story that could have been told more effectively without political interpretations enhancing mythology. Moulin has considerable history already associated with his character so he deserves to be remembered for who he was rather than what France would have been like if he had not been betrayed. Trinity University (TX) Roland A. Champagne 272 FRENCH REVIEW 87.1 ...