Le Rappel Pour la Serbie par Victor Hugo 1876

"Pour la Serbie" (For Serbia) is the title of a speech written by

Victor Hugo Victor-Marie Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romantic writer and politician. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote in a variety of genres and forms. He is considered to be one of the great ...

, on 29 August 1876, castigating massacres perpetrated by the Turks in Serbia. It was first published as an open letter in the French newspaper Le Rappel, later included in the last volume of

Actes et Paroles Actes et Paroles (words and deeds) is a collection of Victor Hugo's political utterances from 1841 to 1876. It contains his speeches, largely unchanged, and a record of his political career. History This collection of texts was published after th ...

, Hugo's collected political writings, entitled .

Content

During 1876, the Ottoman harsh suppression of the uprisings of Balkan Christians, specifically, the atrocities in Bulgaria, had been witnessed by Western observers and fully reported in the European press with gruesome details. The Turks had very few regular troops and therefore used irregular

Bashi-bazouk A bashi-bazouk ( ota, باشی بوزوق , , , roughly "leaderless" or "disorderly") was an irregular soldier of the Ottoman army, raised in times of war. The army chiefly recruited Albanians and Circassians as bashi-bazouks, but recruits ...

s who used methods of the utmost violence. When the full extent of the massacres became known, a very strong public reaction against the Ottoman Empire occurred. In this text, Hugo delivers a plea protesting against the impassivity of European governments, in particular in the face of the massacre committed by the Turks in

Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe, Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Bas ...

. Hugo's eloquent appeal is calling European governments to take action, and people to raise their voices in universal indignation. This speech is considered as one of the founding acts of the European idea.

References

External links

* For the speech in full, see
Pour la Serbie (in French) Za Srbiju (in Serbian)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pour la Serbie Works by Victor Hugo 1876 speeches 1876 in politics August 1876 events Serbian–Turkish Wars (1876–1878) 1876 in the Ottoman Empire

Content

See also

References

Further reading

External links