As I stepped foot into the Musée de l’armée, I expected a bit of a snoozefest. I’m not the biggest fan of military history at least as it relates to weaponry and battle tactics. I love talking about the consequences of war and the daily lives of people under war, certainly. To dig deep into the culture and economy of a society during war can reveal key insights into what went wrong and what we can do differently moving forward. When it comes to which artillery was used or who shot who with what rifle, I guess I find it hard to care if I’m being honest.
So taking this mindset, the Battle of Waterloo portion of Les Miserables did not initially capture my attention. There I was, in Los Angeles, over a hundred-and-fifty years out from the events of the book, secretly wondering why I should care. My bedroom was comfier than any Waterloo, and naturally, I would only get a few shreds of what Victor Hugo was trying to tell me.
In this dark moment, https://bookpackers.com (trademarked) whispered in my ear. “You think you don’t care about Part 2, Book 1 of Les Miserables?”
“No, not really.”
Bookpackers hissed. “Dear child, you know nothing of this world.”
This is a true story. In all seriousness, my naivete was in for a rude awakening, and this particular portion of the book ended up being one of the most transformative examples of bookpacking. By visiting the Musée de l’armée, I not only gained a newfound appreciation for Victor Hugo’s description of the Battle of Waterloo, but I understood his purpose and his rhetoric on a deeper level.
For example, the most immediate portion of this section that initially went over my head was Hugo’s description of how the battle progressed. In “Hougomont,” Hugo writes that “the English barricaded themselves here,” being the courtyard. “The French got in but could not hold their position,” Hugo declares.
While I admired Hugo’s analysis of the battlefield, I didn’t grasp his description on several levels. First of all, what did the French actually look like in this courtyard, and who were the real people involved? This is where the museum served especially helpful. On the simplest level, the museum gave me a way to picture the French army through their uniforms.
A detail like this might seem simple, but to me, this is exactly what Bookpacking (don’t forget the trademark) is about. By walking through the museum and seeing the sheer detail on this uniforms, from the perfectly aligned buttons to the weight of the fabric, I was able to recontextualize the French war effort. As I went back to the Waterloo section and reexamined the parts that confused me, I could suddenly picture what the battle might have looked like and how the French, no matter how regal in their attire, failed in holding “their position” in the courtyard against the English.
This renewed reading continued with Victor Hugo’s discussion of French honor. Once again, this was a topic that, although I could appreciate its importance, was not something I could really parse through. In two simple sentences, Hugo summarizes the results of the battle: “The end of a dictatorship. A whole European system collapsed.” For a reader like me, this is something taken at face value, assumed to be true by virtue of Hugo’s authority. But when I saw firsthand how these soldiers really fought and the legacy they were defending, I got a sense of the actual gravity of this moment, and how heavy of a decline it was for an army that presented itself in such a dignified way.
The uniforms I observed were not just useful for me to visualize the battle and the soldiers who fought it, but it helped me grasp the downfall of the French. Here stood these incredibly decorated, fear-inducing uniforms. These outfits exuded military excellence with a distinct stylishness. Yet, such arrogance could only go so far, and these uniforms that seemed so imposing became needlessly opulent upon a reread of the Waterloo chapter.
To me, this is what Bookpacking—trademarked, by the way—is about. It’s about uncovering literary beauty that is not immediately comprehensible to an American reader in 2023. To experience a plot at such an intimate level is something I’m sure I won’t take for granted as this class wraps up.
