PÉGUY, CHARLES (1873–1914)

Charles Péguy was born on 7 January 1873 in Orléans, and was killed in action on the Marne on 5 September 1914. A poet and journalist, his political views evolved from socialism to nationalism and Catholicism. He came to symbolize the patriotism of his generation.

Having lost his father at an early age, Péguy was raised in a peasant environment, in a country dominated by memories of its defeat and humiliation in the Franco-Prussian War. Educated at the Lycée d’Orléans and the Ecole Normale Supérieure, his later student life was spent campaigning for socialism and analysing the life of Joan of Arc.

Péguy articulated his anti-militarist and internationalist political views in a series of articles for the Revue blanche in 1899. The following year, however, he was moved to establish his own journal in order to escape socialist party control over its press. He acted as reporter and editor of the Cahiers des Quinzaine from 1900 until his death in 1914.

In the early 1900s, Péguy shared many of the views of the Dreyfusard political left, namely virulent opposition to the Catholic Church, nationalism and revanche. Yet he also developed an independent socialist analysis, strongly opposed to the Marxism of the socialist leader JULES GUESDE.

The Moroccan crisis of 1905 was a turning point in Péguy’s political thinking. Having rejected the chauvinistic patriotism of the right and espoused the principle of internationalism, he suddenly awakened to the threat of imminent German attack. While the rest of France underwent a patriotic national revival, Péguy turned his attention to likening the present danger to the ancient menace of barbarian invasion in Notre patrie (Our Fatherland), published in 1905. While he continued to associate himself with the socialist left, Péguy reversed his earlier position to argue that France’s failure to launch a war of revenge had compromised its destiny to lead the world towards liberty. His new political views were now more aligned with the nationalist position, and he reaffirmed his commitment to revanche in À nos amis, à nos abonnés (To our Friends, to our Subscribers) (1909) and Notre jeunesse (Our Youth) (1910). Yet unlike the nationalists,

he also condemned German anti-socialism for betokening opposition to all things French: the revolution, the Catholic Church and the nation’s civilizing mission. It was only on the eve of the First World War that Péguy finally renounced his socialist ideals and acknowledged the legitimacy of war.

With his Catholic faith restored by 1910, Péguy revived his old interest in Joan of Arc. In Le mystère de la charité de Jeanne d’Arc (The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc) (1897), he had described Joan as the inspiration for resolving the troubles of France. Just as she had repelled the English from French soil in the fifteenth century, so the people of

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France, following her inspiration, could expel the German occupiers in the late nineteenth century. In 1912, he published sonnets which were later collected under the title La Tapisserie de sainte Geniève et de Jeanne d’Arc (The Tapestry of Saint Geniève and Joan of Arc).

Péguy’s life was cut tragically short in the early days of the First World War. In the 1930s and 1940s, however, he came to be revered at once as a patriot, revolutionary and conservative.

PÉGUY, CHARLES (1873–1914)