L'Année terrible (French pronunciation: [lane tɛʁibl]) is a series of poems written by Victor Hugo and published in 1872.
Covering the period from August 1870 to July 1871, a group of poems encapsulates each month, blending Hugo's anguish over personal tragedies with his despair at the predicament of France.
J'entreprends de conter l'année épouvantable, Et voilà que j'hésite, accoudé sur ma table.
On 13 March 1871, the day before he intended to return to Paris, Hugo was attending a farewell dinner for friends at a restaurant in Bordeaux when a carriage bearing his son Charles arrived.
When the carriage door was opened, his son was found dead of a stroke and covered with blood from his mouth and nose.
The funeral took place at Père Lachaise Cemetery on 18 March, the same day that two generals were murdered, marking the beginnings of an insurrection.
While Hugo condemned the violence, he endorsed the idea of the state-within-a-state, and this led to his expulsion from Belgium on 1 June, after an attack on his lodgings.
When Marshal Patrice de Mac Mahon retook Paris, many were executed, and thousands more imprisoned or exiled.
Although he pleaded with God in one poem for the preservation of his surviving children, his other son François-Victor died on 26 December 1873 after a long illness.