Les Mutins

The mutineer Don Saturnino and the abandonment of the Harkis

In 1898, the Spanish garrison of Baler in the Philippines (Luzon island) heroically resisted the assault of the revolutionary Villacortas troops. When the Spanish general staff decides to abandon the colony, the young lieutenant Don Saturnino refuses to retreat in the name of honor and the fatherland. Colonel Don Cristóbal attempts to call him to order. But Don Saturnino, sure of being right, refuses any compromise that would only be a capitulation. He is not ready to hand over his Filipino comrades, these Harkis avant la lettre, to the enemy.

The Algiers putsch in 1961

The transposition is obvious: the drama of Don Saturnino and his comrades in the Philippines is the one that so many French officers experienced in Algeria faced with General De Gaulles policy of abandonment. In April 1961, the putsch of Generals Challe, Jouhaud, Zeller, and Salan failed. This was followed by a resurgence of terrorism, a ruthless civil war, the shameful Evian Accords, the shooting on the Rue dIsly, the ordeal of the French of Algeria, and the massacre of tens of thousands of former Harkis.

The drama of the French Army in Algeria

After Cette haine qui ressemble à lamour, a great novelistic fresco on the Algerian war published in 1961, Jean Brune chose in 1967 the dramatic genre to illustrate the atrocious tearing apart of the French Army in the face of the unexpected decisions of the political power and the General Staff. In The Mutineers, it is a question of honor and duty, of dream and idealism in this secular order that the Army represents. And above all of a sincere love that is not afraid of the pathetic: Don Saturnino, this monk-soldier, feels an equal tenderness for Spain, for his wife Isabelle, and for his brothers in arms, both Spanish and Filipino.

An unfinished play

Jean Brunes manuscript stops in the middle of the last act when Don Saturnino is brought before the Military Tribunal. He presents himself before his judges with his head held high, assumes his responsibility, and begins his defense with the support of Padre Gómez Carreño.

It is therefore up to the reader to weigh the arguments, to judge for themselves, and to choose their own ending.