Portsmouth

Portsmouth becomes a brief but decisive stop in Candide’s journey: its harbour presents him with a public execution defended as a lesson to other officers, and his shock turns the city into a place he refuses to enter.

The Harbour and the Execution

As Candide and Martin arrive, crowds line the coast and watch a man kneeling aboard a warship, his eyes bandaged. Four soldiers stand opposite him and each fires three shots; the assembly then disperses, apparently satisfied. Candide asks who the victim was and learns that he was an Admiral. The harbour is thus introduced not through trade or ordinary civic life, but as the setting for a state killing conducted with ceremony before a crowd.

The Stated Reason

The explanation makes the execution an instrument of military discipline. The Admiral had fought a French Admiral, but authorities judged that he had not come sufficiently close to his opponent. When Candide points out that the French Admiral was equally distant, the answer is that killing one Admiral from time to time is considered useful for encouraging the others. Portsmouth’s episode turns a technical judgment about a battle into a public punishment, while the crowd’s calm dispersal contrasts with the severity of the act.

Candide’s Departure

Shocked and bewildered by what he has seen and heard, Candide will not set foot on shore. He bargains with a Dutch skipper to take him directly to Venice, accepting the possibility that the skipper might rob him as the captain in Surinam had done. The skipper is ready two days later. Their route passes along the coast of France and within sight of Lisbon, where Candide trembles, then through the Straits and into the Mediterranean before they land at Venice. Portsmouth therefore marks a sharp change in his passage: the execution does not merely disturb him; it determines that he will leave England without landing.