Danton seems to be speaking! Kleber seems to be bellowing!
At that word from Cambronne, the English voice responded,
“Fire!”
The batteries flamed, the hill trembled, from all those brazen mouths belched a last terrible gush of grape-shot; a vast volume of smoke, vaguely white in the light of the rising moon, rolled out, and when the smoke dispersed, there was no longer anything there.
That formidable remnant had been annihilated; the Guard was dead.
The four walls of the living redoubt lay prone, and hardly was there discernible, here and there, even a quiver in the bodies; it was thus that the French legions, greater than the Roman legions, expired on Mont-Saint-Jean, on the soil watered with rain and blood, amid the gloomy grain, on the spot where nowadays Joseph, who drives the post-wagon from Nivelles, passes whistling, and cheerfully whipping up his horse at four o’clock in the morning.
CHAPTER XVI—QUOT LIBRAS IN DUCE?
The battle of Waterloo is an enigma.
It is as obscure to those who won it as to those who lost it.
For Napoleon it was a panic;10 Blucher sees nothing in it but fire; Wellington understands nothing in regard to it.
Look at the reports.
The bulletins are confused, the commentaries involved.
Some stammer, others lisp.
Jomini divides the battle of Waterloo into four moments; Muffling cuts it up into three changes; Charras alone, though we hold another judgment than his on some points, seized with his haughty glance the characteristic outlines of that catastrophe of human genius in conflict with divine chance.
All the other historians suffer from being somewhat dazzled, and in this dazzled state they fumble about.
It was a day of lightning brilliancy; in fact, a crumbling of the military monarchy which, to the vast stupefaction of kings, drew all the kingdoms after it—the fall of force, the defeat of war.
In this event, stamped with superhuman necessity, the part played by men amounts to nothing.
If we take Waterloo from Wellington and Blucher, do we thereby deprive England and Germany of anything?
No.
Neither that illustrious England nor that august Germany enter into the problem of Waterloo.
Thank Heaven, nations are great, independently of the lugubrious feats of the sword.
Neither England, nor Germany, nor France is contained in a scabbard.
At this epoch when Waterloo is only a clashing of swords, above Blucher, Germany has Schiller; above Wellington, England has Byron.
A vast dawn of ideas is the peculiarity of our century, and in that aurora England and Germany have a magnificent radiance.
They are majestic because they think.
The elevation of level which they contribute to civilization is intrinsic with them; it proceeds from themselves and not from an accident.
The aggrandizement which they have brought to the nineteenth century has not Waterloo as its source.
It is only barbarous peoples who undergo rapid growth after a victory.
That is the temporary vanity of torrents swelled by a storm.
Civilized people, especially in our day, are neither elevated nor abased by the good or bad fortune of a captain.
Their specific gravity in the human species results from something more than a combat.
Their honor, thank God! their dignity, their intelligence, their genius, are not numbers which those gamblers, heroes and conquerors, can put in the lottery of battles.
Often a battle is lost and progress is conquered.
There is less glory and more liberty.
The drum holds its peace; reason takes the word.
It is a game in which he who loses wins.
Let us, therefore, speak of Waterloo coldly from both sides.
Let us render to chance that which is due to chance, and to God that which is due to God.
What is Waterloo?
A victory?
No.
The winning number in the lottery.
The quine 11 won by Europe, paid by France.
It was not worthwhile to place a lion there.
Waterloo, moreover, is the strangest encounter in history.
Napoleon and Wellington.
They are not enemies; they are opposites.
Never did God, who is fond of antitheses, make a more striking contrast, a more extraordinary comparison.
On one side, precision, foresight, geometry, prudence, an assured retreat, reserves spared, with an obstinate coolness, an imperturbable method, strategy, which takes advantage of the ground, tactics, which preserve the equilibrium of battalions, carnage, executed according to rule, war regulated, watch in hand, nothing voluntarily left to chance, the ancient classic courage, absolute regularity; on the other, intuition, divination, military oddity, superhuman instinct, a flaming glance, an indescribable something which gazes like an eagle, and which strikes like the lightning, a prodigious art in disdainful impetuosity, all the mysteries of a profound soul, associated with destiny; the stream, the plain, the forest, the hill, summoned, and in a manner, forced to obey, the despot going even so far as to tyrannize over the field of battle; faith in a star mingled with strategic science, elevating but perturbing it.
Wellington was the Bareme of war; Napoleon was its Michael Angelo; and on this occasion, genius was vanquished by calculation.