Editing Victor Hugo (section)

==Political life and exile==
[[File:Maison natale Victor Hugo 079.JPG|thumb|right|Portrait as member of the [[National Assembly (France)|National Assembly]] of the Second Republic, 1848]]
After three unsuccessful attempts, Hugo was finally elected to the {{lang|fr|[[Académie française]]}} in 1841, solidifying his position in the world of French arts and letters. A group of French academicians, particularly {{lang|fr|[[Victor-Joseph Étienne de Jouy|Étienne de Jouy]]|italic=no}}, were fighting against the "romantic evolution" and had managed to delay Victor Hugo's election.<ref>On the role of E. de Jouy against V. Hugo, see {{lang|fr|Les aventures militaires, littéraires et autres de Etienne de Jouy de l'Académie française}} by {{lang|fr|Michel Faul|italic=no}} (Editions Seguier, France, 2009 {{ISBN|978-2-84049-556-7}})</ref> Thereafter, he became increasingly involved in French politics.

On the nomination of King {{lang|fr|[[Louis-Philippe]]|italic=no}}, Hugo entered the Upper Chamber of Parliament as a {{lang|fr|[[pair de France]]}} in 1845, where he spoke against the [[capital punishment in France|death penalty]] and [[social injustice]], and in favour of [[freedom of the press]] and [[self-government]] for Poland.

In 1848, Hugo was [[1848 French Constituent Assembly election|elected to the National Assembly]] of the [[French Second Republic|Second Republic]] as a conservative. In 1849, he broke with the conservatives when he gave a noted speech calling for the end of misery and poverty. Other speeches called for universal suffrage and free education for all children. Hugo's advocacy to abolish the death penalty was renowned internationally.{{refn|group=note|These parliamentary speeches are published in {{lang|fr|Œuvres complètes: actes et paroles I : avant l'exil, 1841–1851}}. Scroll down to the {{lang|fr|Assemblée Constituante 1848}} heading and subsequent pages.<ref>{{cite web |publisher=[[State Library of Victoria]] |title=Victor Hugo: Les Misérables – From Page to Stage research guide |url=http://guides.slv.vic.gov.au/content.php?pid=572687&sid=4722472}}</ref>}}
[[File:Charles Hugo - Victor Hugo on the Rock of the Exiles - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|Among the Rocks in [[Jersey]] (1853–1855)]]

When Louis Napoleon ([[Napoleon III]]) [[French coup d'état of 1851|seized complete power in 1851]], establishing an anti-parliamentary constitution, Hugo openly declared him a traitor to France. He moved to [[Brussels]], then [[Jersey]], from which he was expelled for supporting ''L'Homme'', a local newspaper that had published a letter to [[Queen Victoria]] by a French republican deemed [[treason]]ous. He finally settled with his family at [[Hauteville House]] in [[Saint Peter Port]], [[Guernsey]], where he would live in exile from October 1855 until 1870.

While in exile, Hugo published his famous political pamphlets against Napoleon III, {{lang|fr|[[Napoléon le Petit]]}} and {{lang|fr|[[Histoire d'un crime]]}}. The pamphlets were banned in France but nonetheless had a strong impact there. He also composed or published some of his best work during his period in [[Guernsey]], including {{lang|fr|[[Les Misérables]]}}, and three widely praised collections of poetry ({{lang|fr|[[Les Châtiments]]}}, 1853; {{lang|fr|[[Les Contemplations]]}}, 1856; and {{lang|fr|[[La Légende des siècles]]}}, 1859).

However, Víctor Hugo said in ''Les Misérables'':<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gallego Urrutia |first=María Teresa |title=Los miserables |publisher=Biblioteca de Traductores |year=2013 |edition=orhi |location=Madrid |pages=1784 |language=es-es}}(From castilian in the original Maria Teresa Gallego Urrutia' translation</ref>

{{Blockquote|text=The wretched moral character of Thénardier, the frustrated bourgeois, was hopeless; it was in America what it had been in Europe. Contact with a wicked man is sometimes enough to rot a good deed and cause something bad to come out of it. With Marius's money, Thénardier became a slave trader.}}

Like most of his contemporaries, Hugo justified colonialism in terms of a [[civilizing]] mission and putting an end to the [[Barbary slave trade|slave trade]] on the Barbary coast. In a speech delivered on 18 May 1879, during a banquet to celebrate the abolition of slavery, in the presence of the French abolitionist writer and parliamentarian Victor Schœlcher, Hugo declared that the [[Mediterranean Sea]] formed a natural divide between "ultimate civilisation and... utter barbarism." Hugo declared that "God offers Africa to Europe. Take it" and "in the nineteenth century the white man made a man out of the black, in the twentieth century Europe will make a world out of Africa".<ref>{{cite book |title=In God's Empire French Missionaries and the Modern World |date=2012 |publisher=Oxford University Press |page=62}}</ref>

This might partly explain why, in spite of his deep interest and involvement in political matters, he remained silent on the Algerian issue. He knew about the atrocities committed by the French Army during the [[French conquest of Algeria]] as evidenced by his diary<ref>{{Cite book|title=Choses Vues|last=Hugo|first=Victor|publisher=Gallimard|year=1972|isbn=2-07-040217-7|location=Paris|pages=286–87}}</ref> but he never denounced them publicly; however, in ''Les Misérables'', Hugo wrote: "Algeria too harshly conquered, and, as in the case of India by the English, with more barbarism than civilization."<ref>''Les Misérables'', Random House Publishing Group, 2000, 1280 pages, {{ISBN|9780679641551}}, p. 720.</ref>

[[File:Victor Hugo Bruxelles Radoux 1861.jpg|thumb|Victor Hugo in 1861]]
After coming in contact with [[Victor Schœlcher]], a writer who fought for the abolition of slavery and French colonialism in the Caribbean, he started strongly campaigning against slavery. In a letter to American abolitionist [[Maria Weston Chapman]], on 6 July 1851, Hugo wrote: "Slavery in the United States! It is the duty of this republic to set such a bad example no longer... The United States must renounce slavery, or they must renounce liberty."{{sfn|Hugo|American Anti-Slavery Society|1860|p=7}} In 1859, he wrote a letter asking the United States government, for the sake of their own reputation in the future, to spare abolitionist [[John Brown (abolitionist)|John Brown's]] life, Hugo justified Brown's actions by these words: "Assuredly, if insurrection is ever a sacred duty, it must be when it is directed against Slavery."{{sfn|l'Esclavage}} Hugo agreed to diffuse and sell one of his best known drawings, "Le Pendu", an homage to John Brown, so one could "keep alive in souls the memory of this liberator of our black brothers, of this heroic martyr John Brown, who died for Christ just as Christ.{{sfn|Herrington|2005|p=131}}{{Blockquote|text=Only one slave on Earth is enough to dishonour the freedom of all men. So the abolition of slavery is, at this hour, the supreme goal of the thinkers.|author=Victor Hugo|title=17 January 1862|source={{sfn|Langellier|2014 |p=117}}}}

As a novelist, diarist, and member of Parliament, Victor Hugo fought a lifelong battle for the abolition of the death penalty. ''[[The Last Day of a Condemned Man]]'' published in 1829 analyses the pangs of a man awaiting execution; several entries in ''Things Seen'' (''Choses vues''), the diary he kept between 1830 and 1885, convey his firm condemnation of what he regarded as a barbaric sentence;<ref>{{Cite book|last=Hugo|first=Victor|title=Choses vues|publisher=Gallimard|year=1972|isbn=2-07-040217-7|location=Paris|pages=267–69}}</ref> on 15 September 1848, seven months after the [[French Revolution of 1848|Revolution of 1848]], he delivered a speech before the Assembly and concluded, "You have overthrown the throne. ... Now overthrow the scaffold."<ref>{{Cite web|last=Hugo|first=Victor|date=15 September 1848|title=Speech on the death penalty|url=https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Discours_%C3%A0_l%E2%80%99Assembl%C3%A9e_constituante_1848|access-date=31 January 2017|website=Wikisource.org}}</ref> His influence was credited in the removal of the death penalty from the constitutions of [[Capital punishment in Switzerland|Geneva]], [[Capital punishment in Portugal|Portugal]], and [[Colombia]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Victor Hugo, l'homme océan|url=http://expositions.bnf.fr/hugo/pedago/dossiers/mort/reperes/signe.htm|access-date=19 July 2012|publisher={{lang|fr|Bibliothèque nationale de France|italic=no}}}}</ref> He had also pleaded for [[Benito Juárez]] to spare the recently captured emperor [[Maximilian I of Mexico]], but to no avail.<ref>{{Cite web |date=21 September 2022 |title=Benito Juarez Life and History – Mexico Living |url=https://mexicoliving.org/benito-juarez-life-history/ |access-date=2 July 2023 |language=en-US}}</ref>

Although Napoleon III granted an amnesty to all political exiles in 1859, Hugo declined, as it meant he would have to curtail his criticisms of the government. It was only after Napoleon III fell from power and the [[French Third Republic|Third Republic]] was proclaimed that Hugo finally returned to his homeland in 1870, where he was promptly elected to the National Assembly and the Senate.

He was in Paris during the [[Siege of Paris (1870–71)|siege by the Prussian Army in 1870]], famously eating animals given to him by the Paris Zoo. As the siege continued, and food became ever more scarce, he wrote in his diary that he was reduced to "eating the unknown".<ref>{{cite news |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=7NtVAAAAIBAJ&pg=5281%2C6531479 |title=Victor Hugo's diary tells how Parisians dined on zoo animals |newspaper=[[The Spokesman-Review]] |location=Spokane, Washington |page=3 |date=7 February 1915 }}</ref>

[[File:Combats dans la rue Rivoli.jpg|thumb|[[Paris Commune|Communards]] defending a barricade on the Rue de Rivoli]]During the [[Paris Commune]]—the revolutionary government that took power on 18 March 1871 and was toppled on 28 May—Victor Hugo was harshly critical of the atrocities committed on both sides. On 9 April, he wrote in his diary, "In short, this Commune is as idiotic as the National Assembly is ferocious. From both sides, folly."<ref>Hugo, Victor. ''Choses vues'', 1870–1885, Gallimard, 1972, {{ISBN|2-07-036141-1}}, p. 164.</ref> Yet he made a point of offering his support to members of the Commune subjected to brutal repression. He had been in [[Brussels]] since 22 March 1871 when in the 27 May issue of the Belgian newspaper ''l'Indépendance'' Victor Hugo denounced the government's refusal to grant political asylum to the Communards threatened with imprisonment, banishment or execution.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/actesetparoles06hugogoog|quote=l'indépendance.|title=Actes et paroles: 1870–1871–1872|first=Victor|last=Hugo|date=1 January 1872|publisher=Michel Lévy frères|access-date=3 April 2017|via=Internet Archive}}</ref> This caused so much uproar that in the evening a mob of fifty to sixty men attempted to force their way into the writer's house shouting, "Death to Victor Hugo! Hang him! Death to the scoundrel!"<ref>Hugo, Victor. ''Choses vues'', Gallimard, 1972, {{ISBN|2-07-036141-1}}, pp. 176–77.</ref>

Hugo, who said "A war between Europeans is a civil war,"<ref>Hugo, Victor. ''Choses vues'', Gallimard, 1972, {{ISBN|2-07-036141-1}}, p. 258.</ref> was a strong advocate for the creation of the [[European Federation|United States of Europe]]. He expounded his views on the subject in a speech he delivered during the [[International Peace Congress]] which took place in Paris in 1849.<ref>Peace Congress, 2d, Paris, 1849. Report of the proceedings of the second general Peace Congress, held in Paris on the 22, 23, and 24 August 1849. Compiled from authentic documents under the superintendence of the Peace Congress Committee. London, Charles Gilpin, 1849</ref> Here he declared "nations of the continent, will, without losing your distinctive qualities and glorious individuality, be blended into a superior unity and constitute a European fraternity, just as [[Normandy]], [[Brittany]], [[Burgundy]], [[Lorraine]], have been blended into France", this new state would be administered by "a great Sovereign senate which will be to Europe what the Parliament is to England".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Efron |first1=Reuben |last2=Nanes |first2=Allan S. |title=The Genesis of European Unity |journal=Social Science |date=October 1969 |volume=44 |issue=4 |page=215 |jstor=41885808 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41885808}}</ref>

Because of his concern for the rights of artists and [[copyright]], he was a founding member of the {{lang|fr|[[Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale]]}}, which led to the [[Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works]]. However, in {{lang|fr|Pauvert|italic=no}}'s published archives, he states strongly that "any work of art has two authors: the people who confusingly feel something, a creator who translates these feelings, and the people again who consecrate his vision of that feeling. When one of the authors dies, the rights should totally be granted back to the other, the people." He was one of the earlier supporters of the concept of ''[[domaine public payant]]'', under which a nominal fee would be charged for copying or performing works in the public domain, and this would go into a common fund dedicated to helping artists, especially young people.