【圆明园被掠 - 雨果的大义凛然的信】

本文摘自《文史参考》2010年10月上 翻译：程代熙

1861年，法国文豪维克多·雨果在给他的朋友、参加过第二次鸦片战争英法联军的巴雷特大尉的一封信中，严厉地健责了英法联军在圆明园犯下的罪行，表达了这位文坛巨匠令人尊敬的正义感和坦荡襟怀。

致巴雷特大尉

1861年11月25日

您很想知道我对军事远征中国一事的看法。既然您认为这次远征是一桩豪迈而又体面的事情，那就只好劳驾您对我的看法赋予一定的意义。在您看来，维多利亚女皇和拿破仑皇帝的联合舰队所进行的这次远征真是无上的荣耀，而且还是法兰西和英吉利共同分享的一次荣光，因此您很想知道，我对英法的这次胜利是否有充分的认识。

既然您想听听我的意见，那我就来谈谈我的看法。

在地球上的一个角落里，有一个神奇的世界，这个世界就叫做夏宫。奠定艺术的基础的是这样两种因素，即产生出欧洲艺术的理性与产生出东方艺术的想象。在以想象为主的艺术里，夏宫就相当于以理性为主的艺术中的帕特农神殿。凡是人民--几乎是神奇的人民的想象所能创造出来的一切，都在夏宫身上得到体现。帕特农神殿是世上极为罕有的、独一无二的创造物，然而夏宫却是根据想象拓制出来的一个硕大的模型，而且也只有根据想象才能拓制出这样的模型。您只管去想象那是一座令人神往的，如同月宫的城堡一样的建筑。夏宫就是这样的一座建筑。您尽可以用云石、玉石、青铜和陶瓷来创造您的想象；您尽可以用云松来作它的建筑材料；您尽可以在想象中拿最最珍贵的宝物，用华丽无比的名绸来装饰它；您可以借想象把它化为一座宫殿，一间闺房，一个城堡；您尽管去想象那里住的全是神仙，遍地都是宝；您尽管去想象这座建筑全是用油漆漆过的，上了珐琅的，镀金的，而且还是精雕镂刻出来的；您尽可以在想象中指令那些具有跟诗人一般想象能力的建筑师，把《一干零一夜》中的一千零一个梦表现出来；您也尽可以去想象四周全是花园，到处都有喷水的水池，天鹅，朱镂和孔雀。总之一句话-您尽可以凭人类所具有的无限丰富和无可比拟的想象力，把它想象为是一座庙堂，一座宫殿--这样，这个神奇的世界就会展现在您的眼前了。为了创造它，需要整整两代人成年累月地进行劳动。这座庞大得跟一座城池一样的建筑物，是经过好几个世纪才建筑起来的。这是为什么人建筑的呢？是为世界的各族人民。因为创造这一切的时代是人民的时代。艺术家、诗人、哲学家，个个都知道这座夏宫；伏尔泰就提到过它。人们常常这样说：希腊有帕特农神殿，埃及有金字塔，罗马有大剧场，巴黎有圣母院，东方有夏宫。没有亲眼看见过它的人，那就尽管在想象中去想象它好了。这是一个令人叹为观止的，无与伦比的艺术杰作。这里对它的描绘还是站在离它很远很远的地方，而且又是在一片神秘色彩的苍茫暮色中作出来的，它就宛如是在欧洲文明的地平线上影影绰绰地呈现出来的亚洲文明的一个剪影。

这个神奇的世界现在已经不见了。

有一天，两个强盗闯入了夏宫，一个动手抢劫，一个把它付诸一炬。原来胜利就是进行一场掠夺。胜利者盗窃了夏宫的全部财富，然后彼此分赃。这一切所作所为，均出自额尔金之名。这不禁使人油然想起帕特农神殿的事。他们把对待帕特农神殿的手法搬来对待夏宫，但是这一次做得更是干脆，更是彻底，一扫而光，不留一物。即使把我国所有教堂的全部宝物加在一起，也不能同这个规模宏大而又富丽堂皇的东方博物馆媲美。收藏在这个东方博物馆里的不仅有杰出的艺术品，而且还保存有琳琅满目的金银制品。这真是一桩了不起的汗马功劳和一笔十分得意的外快！有一个胜利者把一个个的口袋都塞得满满的，至于那另外的一个，也如法炮制，装满了好几口箱子。之后，他们才双双手拉着手荣归欧洲。这就是这两个强盗的一段经历。

我们，欧洲人，总认为自己是文明人；在我们眼里，中国人，是野蛮人。然而，文明却竟是这样对待野蛮的。

在将来交付历史审判的时候，有一个强盗就会被人们叫做法兰西，另一个，叫做英吉利。不过，我要在这里提出这样的抗议，而且我还要感谢您使我有机会提出我的抗议。绝对不能把统治者犯下的罪行跟受他们统治的人们的过错混为一谈。做强盗勾当的总是政府，至于各国的人民，则从来没有做过强盗。

法兰西帝国侵吞了一半宝物，现在，她居然无耻到这样的地步，还以所有者的身份把夏宫的这些美轮美奂的古代文物拿出来公开展览。我相信，总有这样的一天--这一天，解放了的而且把身上的污浊洗刷干净了的法兰西，将会把自己的赃物交还给被劫夺的中国。

我暂且就这样证明：这次抢劫就是这两个掠夺者干的。

阁下，您现在总算知道了，我对这次军事远征中国的事情，是有充分的认识的。（原载1962年3月29日《光明日报》，程代熙译）

---------

 

The sack of the Summer Palace

 

To Captain Butler

Hauteville House, 

25 November, 1861

You ask my opinion, Sir, about the China expedition. You consider this expedition to be honourable and glorious, and you have the kindness to attach some consideration to my feelings; according to you, the China expedition, carried out jointly under the flags of Queen Victoria and the Emperor Napoleon, is a glory to be shared between France and England, and you wish to know how much approval I feel I can give to this English and French victory.

Since you wish to know my opinion, here it is:
There was, in a corner of the world, a wonder of the world; this wonder was called the Summer Palace. Art has two principles, the Idea, which produces European art, and the Chimera, which produces oriental art. The Summer Palace was to chimerical art what the Parthenon is to ideal art. All that can be begotten of the imagination of an almost extra-human people was there. It was not a single, unique work like the Parthenon. It was a kind of enormous model of the chimera, if the chimera can have a model. Imagine some inexpressible construction, something like a lunar building, and you will have the Summer Palace. Build a dream with marble, jade, bronze and porcelain, frame it with cedar wood, cover it with precious stones, drape it with silk, make it here a sanctuary, there a harem, elsewhere a citadel, put gods there, and monsters, varnish it, enamel it, gild it, paint it, have architects who are poets build the thousand and one dreams of the thousand and one nights, add gardens, basins, gushing water and foam, swans, ibis, peacocks, suppose in a word a sort of dazzling cavern of human fantasy with the face of a temple and palace, such was this building. The slow work of generations had been necessary to create it. This edifice, as enormous as a city, had been built by the centuries, for whom? For the peoples. For the work of time belongs to man. Artists, poets and philosophers knew the Summer Palace; Voltaire talks of it. People spoke of the Parthenon in Greece, the pyramids in Egypt, the Coliseum in Rome, Notre-Dame in Paris, the Summer Palace in the Orient. If people did not see it they imagined it. It was a kind of tremendous unknown masterpiece, glimpsed from the distance in a kind of twilight, like a silhouette of the civilization of Asia on the horizon of the civilization of Europe.

This wonder has disappeared.

One day two bandits entered the Summer Palace. One plundered, the other burned. Victory can be a thieving woman, or so it seems. The devastation of the Summer Palace was accomplished by the two victors acting jointly. Mixed up in all this is the name of Elgin, which inevitably calls to mind the Parthenon. What was done to the Parthenon was done to the Summer Palace, more thoroughly and better, so that nothing of it should be left. All the treasures of all our cathedrals put together could not equal this formidable and splendid museum of the Orient. It contained not only masterpieces of art, but masses of jewelry. What a great exploit, what a windfall! One of the two victors filled his pockets; when the other saw this he filled his coffers. And back they came to Europe, arm in arm, laughing away. Such is the story of the two bandits.

We Europeans are the civilized ones, and for us the Chinese are the barbarians. This is what civilization has done to barbarism.

Before history, one of the two bandits will be called France; the other will be called England. But I protest, and I thank you for giving me the opportunity! the crimes of those who lead are not the fault of those who are led; Governments are sometimes bandits, peoples never.

The French empire has pocketed half of this victory, and today with a kind of proprietorial naivety it displays the splendid bric-a-brac of the Summer Palace. I hope that a day will come when France, delivered and cleansed, will return this booty to despoiled China.

Meanwhile, there is a theft and two thieves.

I take note.

This, Sir, is how much approval I give to the China expedition.”

 

 

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The Destruction of China's Summer Palace

 

The sacking of the Yuanming Yuan

 

The earliest known photographs of the ruins of the European section of the Yuanming Yuan were taken by a young German clerk, Ernst Ohlmer, in 1873, just 13 years after the looting and destruction of the site. Although the buildings are damaged and the grounds overgrown with weeds, the basic architecture remains recognizable. This depicts the north side of the Xieqiqu (Palace of the Delights of Harmony), one of the main palaces. Beijing, 1873 - ©Ernst Ohlmer

 

Under Five Emperors of 150 years' constructing, the Yuanming Yuan (the Gardens of Perfect Brightness) also known as the Old Summer Palace became the largest and most luxurious royal garden in Qing Dynasty, which was regarded as the "real garden of all gardens".

Located 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) northwest of the walls of the Imperial City, it was built in the 18th and early 19th century as the place where the emperors of the Qing dynasty resided and handled government affairs (the Forbidden City was used for formal ceremonies).

 

The Imperial Gardens at the Old Summer Palace were made up of three gardens:

 

• Garden of Perfect Brightness, today known as the Summer Palace
• Elegant Spring Garden (Qǐchūn Yuán)
• Garden of Eternal Spring (Changchun Yuan),  to the north of which was standing the Xiyang Lou(Western mansion(s)) complex, 18th century European-style palaces, fountains and waterworks, and formal gardens designed by the Italian-French Jesuits Giuseppe Castiglione and Michel Benoist, who were employed by the Qianlong emperor to satisfy his taste for exotic buildings and objects.

 

Together, they covered an area of 3.5 square kilometres (860 acres), almost five times the size of the Forbidden City grounds. 

Hundreds of structures, such as halls, pavilions, temples, towers, terraces, corridors, pagodas, galleries, gardens, lakes, and bridges, with a total construction area of 150,000 square meters, stood on the grounds.

One-third of the ground of YuanMingYuan was taken up by over 200 small hills with steep sides, secluded valleys, rock walls and stone caves. Half of the garderns are covered by the waters of lakes, winding streams and ponds.

The southern part of YuanMingYuan was composed of more than 150 scenic spots, involving rare exotic flowers and trees from different parts of the country.

In addition, hundreds of examples of Chinese artwork and antiquities were stored in the halls, along with unique copies of literary works and compilations. 

Like the Forbidden City, no ordinary Chinese citizen had ever been allowed into the Summer Palace, as it was used exclusively by the Imperial family.

 

In 1860, during the Second Opium War, British and French expeditionary forces, having marched inland from the coast, reached Beijing.

On September 29, two British Envoys, Henry Loch and Harry Parkes, went ahead of the main force under a flag of truce to negotiate with the Chinese imperial commissioners at Tungchow. 

After a day of talks, they and their small escort of British and Indian troopers were suddenly surrounded and taken prisoner. They were taken to the Board of Punishments in Beijing where they were confined and tortured. Parkes and Loch were returned after two weeks, with fourteen other survivors. Twenty British, French and Indian captives died. Their bodies were barely recognizable.

 

The British forces continued to advance on Beijing, reaching the northern Anding Gate of the Forbidden City on October 5.

 

The Xianfeng emperor and most of the court had already fled to Chengde (Jehol), leaving the emperor’s younger brother, Prince Gong, in charge.

 

On the night of October 6, French units diverted from the main attack force towards the Old Summer Palace. 

The palace was then occupied only by a few eunuchs. Although the French commander Montaubanassured the British commander Grant that "nothing had been touched", French started an extensive looting. There was no significant resistance to the rampage, even though many Imperial soldiers were in the surrounding country.

 

On October 13, Prince Gong acceded to a British ultimatum and opened the Anding Gate, saving the city from siege.

 

When the British learned of the brutal fate of Parkes’ entourage, however—20 dead and evidence of torture—they decided on October 18 and 19 to burn down the Yuanmingyuan as a “solemn act of retribution.” 

In the imperialistic rhetoric of the time, wantonly destroying one of the greatest treasures and pleasures of the imperial court was justified as a fitting and civilized act by which to punish China and its leaders for their barbaric behavior.

British High Commissioner, James Bruce, better known as Lord Elgin — son of the Lord Elgin who removed the marble friezes from Greece’s Parthenon — later explained that he laid waste to the extensive Yuanmingyuan complex because this extraordinary imperial retreat was “the emperor’s favorite residence, and its destruction could not fail to be a blow to his pride as well as to his feelings.” And indeed the destruction of the Yuanmingyuan was not only a challenge to China’s sovereignty and authority, but also a symbolic act of violence against the emperor himself. 

 

The plunder that took place before the burning of the palaces was perhaps even more shocking than the destruction of the buildings themselves. The British said that the first round of “plunder and wanton destruction” was the work of the French. 

Soon, however, the British did more than their share. They ransacked each building, appropriating the contents of the private quarters and public rooms. Great amounts of gold, furs, robes, silks, jades, porcelains, and statues were taken, as well as Western clocks and ornaments—gifts of the 1793 Macartney mission, or from European contacts of earlier eras. Much was destroyed or damaged in the melee.

 

Numerous first-person accounts by both British and French dramatize the total, unbridled greed and savagery, and the extent to which the violence was wreaked on material objects.

Frederick Stephenson, adjutant-general of the British army, wrote his brother: “The rooms and halls of audience... and specially the Emperor’s bedroom, were literally crammed with the most lovely  knick-knacks you can conceive.... Large magazines full of richly ornamented robes lined with costly furs, such as ermine and sable, were ruthlessly pulled from their shelves, and those that did not please the eye, thrown aside and trampled under foot. There were large storerooms full of fans. Mandarins’ hats, and clothes of every description, others again piled up to the ceiling with rolls of silk, all embroidered, and to an incredible amount.... All these were plundered and pulled to pieces, floors were literally covered with fur robes, jade ornaments, porcelain, sweetmeats, and beautiful wood carvings”.

 

Garnet Wolseley, a lieutenant-colonel with the British forces at the time, later recalled arriving at the Yuanmingyuan just in time to see “a string of French soldiers going in empty-handed and another coming out laden with loot of all sorts and kinds. Many were dressed in the richly embroidered gowns of women, and almost all wore fine Chinese hats instead of the French kepi.”  

 

Both the British and French called attention to the fact that local Chinese also took advantage of the chaos at the Yuanmingyuan to help themselves to works of art and other precious items. Many of  these looted goods showed up in the antique shops at Liulichang, which the British called “Curiosity Street.”

 

The burning of the palace two weeks later was accompanied by mixed feelings of triumph, awe, and revulsion. 

Charles George Gordon, then a 27-year-old captain in the Royal Engineers, wrote home to his mother and sister that after receiving orders to burn the palace: “We accordingly went out, and after pillaging it, burned the whole place, destroying in a Vandal-like manner most valuable property, which would not be replaced for four millions. We got upward of £48 apiece prize money...I have done well. The [local] people are very civil, but I think the grandees hate us, as they must after what we did the Palace. You can scarcely imagine the beauty and magnificence of the places we burnt. It made one’s heart sore to burn them; in fact these palaces were so large, and we were so pressed for time, that we could not plunder them carefully. Quantities of gold ornaments were burnt, considered as brass. It was wretchedly demoralizing work for an army. Everybody was wild for plunder”. 

 

It took 3,500 British troops to set the entire place ablaze, taking a total of three days to burn. Only 13 royal buildings survived intact, most of them in the remote areas or by the lakeside.

As soon as these events occurred, conflicting accusations flew: the British saw the French as the initiators of the looting, while the French pointed out that they had not participated in the burning of the palaces. 

 

Just days later, on October 24, the agreement now called the Treaty of Beijing was signed.  Following the decisive defeat of the Chinese, Prince Gong was compelled to sign two treaties on behalf of the Qing government with Lord Elgin and Baron Gros, who represented Britain and France respectively. Although Russia had not been a belligerent, Prince Gong also signed a treaty with Nikolay Ignatyev. 

 

Both the British and French illustrated press published engravings depicting this vandalism, and the great French writer Victor Hugo expressed his shame over his country’s actions in scathing words that carry a ring of prophesy to the present day:

Writing to his friend Captain Butler, he wrote emotionally and scathingly of the wanton destruction of the Summer Palace.

"To Captain Butler

Hauteville House,

25 November, 1861

 

You ask my opinion, Sir, about the China expedition. You consider this expedition to be honourable and glorious, and you have the kindness to attach some consideration to my feelings; according to you, the China expedition, carried out jointly under the flags of Queen Victoria and the Emperor Napoleon, is a glory to be shared between France and England, and you wish to know how much approval I feel I can give to this English and French victory.

 

Since you wish to know my opinion, here it is:

There was, in a corner of the world, a wonder of the world; this wonder was called the Summer Palace. Art has two principles, the Idea, which produces European art, and the Chimera, which produces oriental art. The Summer Palace was to chimerical art what the Parthenon is to ideal art. All that can be begotten of the imagination of an almost extra-human people was there. It was not a single, unique work like the Parthenon. It was a kind of enormous model of the chimera, if the chimera can have a model. Imagine some inexpressible construction, something like a lunar building, and you will have the Summer Palace. Build a dream with marble, jade, bronze and porcelain, frame it with cedar wood, cover it with precious stones, drape it with silk, make it here a sanctuary, there a harem, elsewhere a citadel, put gods there, and monsters, varnish it, enamel it, gild it, paint it, have architects who are poets build the thousand and one dreams of the thousand and one nights, add gardens, basins, gushing water and foam, swans, ibis, peacocks, suppose in a word a sort of dazzling cavern of human fantasy with the face of a temple and palace, such was this building. The slow work of generations had been necessary to create it. This edifice, as enormous as a city, had been built by the centuries, for whom? For the peoples. For the work of time belongs to man. Artists, poets and philosophers knew the Summer Palace; Voltaire talks of it. People spoke of the Parthenon in Greece, the pyramids in Egypt, the Coliseum in Rome, Notre-Dame in Paris, the Summer Palace in the Orient. If people did not see it they imagined it. It was a kind of tremendous unknown masterpiece, glimpsed from the distance in a kind of twilight, like a silhouette of the civilization of Asia on the horizon of the civilization of Europe.

 

This wonder has disappeared.

 

One day two bandits entered the Summer Palace. One plundered, the other burned. Victory can be a thieving woman, or so it seems. The devastation of the Summer Palace was accomplished by the two victors acting jointly. Mixed up in all this is the name of Elgin, which inevitably calls to mind the Parthenon. What was done to the Parthenon was done to the Summer Palace, more thoroughly and better, so that nothing of it should be left. All the treasures of all our cathedrals put together could not equal this formidable and splendid museum of the Orient. It contained not only masterpieces of art, but masses of jewelry. What a great exploit, what a windfall! One of the two victors filled his pockets; when the other saw this he filled his coffers. And back they came to Europe, arm in arm, laughing away. Such is the story of the two bandits.

 

We Europeans are the civilized ones, and for us the Chinese are the barbarians. This is what civilization has done to barbarism.

 

Before history, one of the two bandits will be called France; the other will be called England. But I protest, and I thank you for giving me the opportunity! the crimes of those who lead are not the fault of those who are led; Governments are sometimes bandits, peoples never.

 

The French empire has pocketed half of this victory, and today with a kind of proprietorial naivety it displays the splendid bric-a-brac of the Summer Palace. I hope that a day will come when France, delivered and cleansed, will return this booty to despoiled China.

 

Meanwhile, there is a theft and two thieves.

 

I take note.

 

This, Sir, is how much approval I give to the China expedition."

 

The quantity of treasures stolen from the Yuanmingyuan that reached European museums and private collections was staggering. 

Professor James Hevia of the University of Chicago has argued that the public seizure, flaunting, display, and later sales of the crowns, jewels, silks, furs, and other personal artifacts belonging to the emperor and his family was in the first instance a sign of the triumph of European imperialism over the Chinese empire. 

During the looting, some of the more conspicuous items were plundered explicitly in the name of Queen Victoria or Emperor Napoleon III. 

A Pekinese dog taken from the emperor’s palace was named “Looty” by the British officers, and later presented personally to Queen Victoria.

 

After the sack of the Yuanmingyuan, French officers presented a large cache of treasures to Napoleon III and his empress Eugénie. 

Initially displayed at the Tuileries Palace, they were moved to Fontainebleau Castle near Paris in 1863. Some 400 treasures from the Yuanmingyuan—many dating from the Qianlong period (1736 to 1795) including jades, cloisonné, lacquer, textiles, and objects in gold as well as bronze—filled a suite of three rooms at Fontainebleau called the Musée Chinois (Chinese Museum), where they remain to the present day.

 

Valuable objects from the imperial collections were offered for sale at fashionable auction houses in London and Paris. Between March 1861 and June 1866, more than a dozen sales were held at London auction houses. Over the years, many of these objects changed hands more than once, increasing their financial value. The availability of such prized “collector’s items” launched another phase or stage ofOrientalism. Although Chinese porcelains and designs had long been valued by the monarchs and aristocrats of Europe, and even popularized through Chinese export-ware, in the mid-19th century the taste for chinoiserie received a great boost from the looting of the Yuanmingyuan.

 

Still other items were retained in family collections in private homes all over Europe, but particularly in England.

 

In the succeeding decades, the site was continually plundered for its raw materials and remaining artifacts. During the Boxer uprising and the siege of Beijing in 1900 to 1901, Western troops participated in further plunder. 

But much of the subsequent looting and damage was the work of local Chinese vandals, who sold antiquities in the local markets.   

 

The sacking of the Old Summer Palace marked the final chapter in the so-called Second Opium War (1856-60), and became a vivid symbol of rapacious Western imperialism to which Chinese historians have never ceased to call attention.

As a result, in Chinese popular consciousness the destruction of the Yuanmingyuan has lived on as perhaps the single most powerful symbol of modern China’s humiliation at the hands of the rapacious foreigners. 

The ruins of the Western buildings have been turned into a popular theme park—simultaneously a stark reminder of Western barbarity and celebration of Chinese nationalism. 

 

 

 

 

Publié il y a 28th June 2014 par Elsa Lescoumères

Localisation : Pékin, Chine

 

 

 

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