"PEOPLE'S ANCESTORS ARE HISTORY'S GAME": BYRON'S DON JUAN AND RUSSIAN HISTORY

Studies in the Literary Imagination, Fall 2003 by Walker, David

Of those European nations that Byron mentions, the English and the French are most heavily represented. Between stanzas 18 and 22, the mercurial nature of French and English participants in the siege is highlighted. They are fighting for individual advancement and not the cause of liberty, that clarion call of Enlightenment political action that can do no more than murmur in canto 6, stanza 93, when Byron is referring to the dubious legitimacy of Catherine and her heirs. Moreover, it is the ordinariness of the English participants in the conflict-signified in these stanzas by their surnames, Thomson and Smith, and by their Christian names, Peters and "Jacks and Gills and Wills and Bills" (5.7.19-20)-that testifies to the war's modernity. This is no romantic and idealistic battle for higher principles, fought by a moral and ethical aristocratic elite according to chivalric rules. Indeed, Smith is so common a name "that one would think the first who bore it Adam" (5.7.25). The French fare no better. Referring elliptically in stanza 22 to the history of antipathy between France and Great Britain both in the past and in the present, Byron takes ironic refuge behind his patriotism, saving himself the trouble of naming the French. Indeed, patriotism is seen to be an empty word signifying nothing, especially when the motive for action is no more than greed and self-aggrandisement:

The battle for Ismail was a bloody affair that in many ways was ill advised. The Russian forces numbered 31,000 and were attacking the fortress at the wrong time of the year; sickness and hunger decimated the Russian army led by Ivan Gudevich, Grigory Potemkin, and Nikolai Samoilov. Before them stood what seemed to be an impregnable fortress "built into a natural amphitheatre which was defended by 265 cannons and a garrison of 35,000 men" (Montefiore 448). In overall command of the war against the Turkish was Prince Potemkin, a man, Byron suggests, who derived his greatness from his love of "homicide and harlotry" (5.7.36-37) and gained his position from his relationship with Catherine the Great (Chandler 38O).14 Despite their initial failure to take Ismail, the Russians persisted. Potemkin appointed as general Count Suvarov, a man he was confident could get the job done. This proved to be the case, though the cost in human life was horrendous in what proved to be an extremely close-fought battle:

Byron looks upon the siege of Ismail with a cynical eye, one attuned to man's glorification of war ratified by cant. Byron relates Potemkin's appointment of Suvarov with reference to the letter exhorting the general to carry the siege to a successful conclusion. This letter, says Byron, would be "worthy of a Spartan, had the cause / Been one to which a good heart could be partial" (5.7.40). In Byron's view, the cause for which the war was being fought was a bad one: neither Potemkin nor Suvarov is motivated by "Defence of freedom, country, or of laws; / But as it was mere lust of power to o'erarch all / With its proud brow." The letter, therefore, "merits slight applause, / Save for its style, which said all in a trice, / 'You will take Ismail at whatever price.'" (5.7.40). The use of the word price is an appropriate one both in terms of human cost and motivation. These are warriors, says Byron, who fight for "cash and conquest" (5.7.64); he pursues the fiscal metaphor further at the beginning of canto 8: