Les Misérables
corners crowned N’s and eagles, Hessian boots over silk stockings,
silver spurs, the sword of Marengo,—that whole figure of the last of
the Cæsars is present to all imaginations, saluted with acclamations by
some, severely regarded by others.
That figure stood for a long time wholly in the light; this arose from
a certain legendary dimness evolved by the majority of heroes, and
which always veils the truth for a longer or shorter time; but to-day
history and daylight have arrived.
That light called history is pitiless; it possesses this peculiar and
divine quality, that, pure light as it is, and precisely because it is
wholly light, it often casts a shadow in places where people had
hitherto beheld rays; from the same man it constructs two different
phantoms, and the one attacks the other and executes justice on it, and
the shadows of the despot contend with the brilliancy of the leader.
Hence arises a truer measure in the definitive judgments of nations.
Babylon violated lessens Alexander, Rome enchained lessens Cæsar,
Jerusalem murdered lessens Titus, tyranny follows the tyrant. It is a
misfortune for a man to leave behind him the night which bears his
form.
CHAPTER V—THE QUID OBSCURUM OF BATTLES
Every one is acquainted with the first phase of this battle; a
beginning which was troubled, uncertain, hesitating, menacing to both
armies, but still more so for the English than for the French.
It had rained all night, the earth had been cut up by the downpour, the
water had accumulated here and there in the hollows of the plain as if
in casks; at some points the gear of the artillery carriages was buried
up to the axles, the circingles of the horses were dripping with liquid
mud. If the wheat and rye trampled down by this cohort of transports on
the march had not filled in the ruts and strewn a litter beneath the
wheels, all movement, particularly in the valleys, in the direction of
Papelotte would have been impossible.
The affair began late. Napoleon, as we have already explained, was in
the habit of keeping all his artillery well in hand, like a pistol,
aiming it now at one point, now at another, of the battle; and it had
been his wish to wait until the horse batteries could move and gallop
freely. In order to do that it was necessary that the sun should come
out and dry the soil. But the sun did not make its appearance. It was
no longer the rendezvous of Austerlitz. When the first cannon was
fired, the English general, Colville, looked at his watch, and noted
that it was thirty-five minutes past eleven.
The action was begun furiously, with more fury, perhaps, than the
Emperor would have wished, by the left wing of the French resting on
Hougomont. At the same time Napoleon attacked the centre by hurling
Quiot’s brigade on La Haie-Sainte, and Ney pushed forward the right
wing of the French against the left wing of the English, which rested
on Papelotte.
The attack on Hougomont was something of a feint; the plan was to draw
Wellington thither, and to make him swerve to the left. This plan would
have succeeded if the four companies of the English guards and the
brave Belgians of Perponcher’s division had not held the position
solidly, and Wellington, instead of massing his troops there, could
confine himself to despatching thither, as reinforcements, only four
more companies of guards and one battalion from Brunswick.
The attack of the right wing of the French on Papelotte was calculated,
in fact, to overthrow the English left, to cut off the road to
Brussels, to bar the passage against possible Prussians, to force
Mont-Saint-Jean, to turn Wellington back on Hougomont, thence on
Braine-l’Alleud, thence on Hal; nothing easier. With the exception of a
few incidents this attack succeeded. Papelotte was taken; La
Haie-Sainte was carried.
A detail to be noted. There was in the English infantry, particularly
in Kempt’s brigade, a great many raw recruits. These young soldiers
were valiant in the presence of our redoubtable infantry; their
inexperience extricated them intrepidly from the dilemma; they
performed particularly excellent service as skirmishers: the soldier
skirmisher, left somewhat to himself, becomes, so to speak, his own
general. These recruits displayed some of the French ingenuity and
fury. This novice of an infantry had dash. This displeased Wellington.
After the taking of La Haie-Sainte the battle wavered.
There is in this day an obscure interval, from midday to four o’clock;
the middle portion of this battle is almost indistinct, and
participates in the sombreness of the hand-to-hand conflict. Twilight
reigns over it. We perceive vast fluctuations in that fog, a dizzy
mirage, paraphernalia of war almost unknown to-day, pendant colbacks,
floating sabre-taches, cross-belts, cartridge-boxes for grenades,
hussar dolmans, red boots with a thousand wrinkles, heavy shakos
garlanded with torsades, the almost black infantry of Brunswick mingled
with the scarlet infantry of England, the English soldiers with great,
white circular pads on the slopes of their shoulders for epaulets, the
Hanoverian light-horse with their oblong casques of leather, with brass
hands and red horse-tails, the Scotch with their bare knees and plaids,
the great white gaiters of our grenadiers; pictures, not strategic
lines—what Salvator Rosa requires, not what is suited to the needs of
Gribeauval.
A certain amount of tempest is always mingled with a battle. _Quid
obscurum, quid divinum_. Each historian traces, to some extent, the
particular feature which pleases him amid this pell-mell. Whatever may
be the combinations of the generals, the shock of armed masses has an
incalculable ebb. During the action the plans of the two leaders enter
into each other and become mutually thrown out of shape. Such a point
of the field of battle devours more combatants than such another, just
as more or less spongy soils soak up more or less quickly the water
which is poured on them. It becomes necessary to pour out more soldiers
than one would like; a series of expenditures which are the unforeseen.
The line of battle waves and undulates like a thread, the trails of
blood gush illogically, the fronts of the armies waver, the regiments
form capes and gulfs as they enter and withdraw; all these reefs are
continually moving in front of each other. Where the infantry stood the
artillery arrives, the cavalry rushes in where the artillery was, the
battalions are like smoke. There was something there; seek it. It has
disappeared; the open spots change place, the sombre folds advance and
retreat, a sort of wind from the sepulchre pushes forward, hurls back,
distends, and disperses these tragic multitudes. What is a fray? an
oscillation? The immobility of a mathematical plan expresses a minute,
not a day. In order to depict a battle, there is required one of those
powerful painters who have chaos in their brushes. Rembrandt is better
than Vandermeulen; Vandermeulen, exact at noon, lies at three o’clock.
Geometry is deceptive; the hurricane alone is trustworthy. That is what
confers on Folard the right to contradict Polybius. Let us add, that
there is a certain instant when the battle degenerates into a combat,
becomes specialized, and disperses into innumerable detailed feats,
which, to borrow the expression of Napoleon himself, “belong rather to
the biography of the regiments than to the history of the army.” The
historian has, in this case, the evident right to sum up the whole. He
cannot do more than seize the principal outlines of the struggle, and
it is not given to any one narrator, however conscientious he may be,
to fix, absolutely, the form of that horrible cloud which is called a
battle.
This, which is true of all great armed encounters, is particularly
applicable to Waterloo.
Nevertheless, at a certain moment in the afternoon the battle came to a
point.
CHAPTER VI—FOUR O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON
Towards four o’clock the condition of the English army was serious. The
Prince of Orange was in command of the centre, Hill of the right wing,
Picton of the left wing. The Prince of Orange, desperate and intrepid,
shouted to the Hollando-Belgians: “Nassau! Brunswick! Never retreat!”
Hill, having been weakened, had come up to the support of Wellington;
Picton was dead. At the very moment when the English had captured from
the French the flag of the 105th of the line, the French had killed the
English general, Picton, with a bullet through the head. The battle
had, for Wellington, two bases of action, Hougomont and La Haie-Sainte;
Hougomont still held out, but was on fire; La Haie-Sainte was taken. Of
the German battalion which defended it, only forty-two men survived;
all the officers, except five, were either dead or captured. Three
thousand combatants had been massacred in that barn. A sergeant of the
English Guards, the foremost boxer in England, reputed invulnerable by
his companions, had been killed there by a little French drummer-boy.
Baring had been dislodged, Alten put to the sword. Many flags had been
lost, one from Alten’s division, and one from the battalion of
Lunenburg, carried by a prince of the house of Deux-Ponts. The Scotch
Grays no longer existed; Ponsonby’s great dragoons had been hacked to
pieces. That valiant cavalry had bent beneath the lancers of Bro and
beneath the cuirassiers of Travers; out of twelve hundred horses, six
hundred remained; out of three lieutenant-colonels, two lay on the
earth,—Hamilton wounded, Mater slain. Ponsonby had fallen, riddled by
seven lance-thrusts. Gordon was dead. Marsh was dead. Two divisions,
the fifth and the sixth, had been annihilated.
Hougomont injured, La Haie-Sainte taken, there now existed but one
rallying-point, the centre. That point still held firm. Wellington
reinforced it. He summoned thither Hill, who was at Merle-Braine; he
summoned Chassé, who was at Braine-l’Alleud.
The centre of the English army, rather concave, very dense, and very
compact, was strongly posted. It occupied the plateau of
Mont-Saint-Jean, having behind it the village, and in front of it the
slope, which was tolerably steep then. It rested on that stout stone
dwelling which at that time belonged to the domain of Nivelles, and
which marks the intersection of the roads—a pile of the sixteenth
century, and so robust that the cannon-balls rebounded from it without
injuring it. All about the plateau the English had cut the hedges here
and there, made embrasures in the hawthorn-trees, thrust the throat of
a cannon between two branches, embattled the shrubs. There artillery
was ambushed in the brushwood. This punic labor, incontestably
authorized by war, which permits traps, was so well done, that Haxo,
who had been despatched by the Emperor at nine o’clock in the morning
to reconnoitre the enemy’s batteries, had discovered nothing of it, and
had returned and reported to Napoleon that there were no obstacles
except the two barricades which barred the road to Nivelles and to
Genappe. It was at the season when the grain is tall; on the edge of
the plateau a battalion of Kempt’s brigade, the 95th, armed with
carabines, was concealed in the tall wheat.
Thus assured and buttressed, the centre of the Anglo-Dutch army was
well posted. The peril of this position lay in the forest of Soignes,
then adjoining the field of battle, and intersected by the ponds of
Groenendael and Boitsfort. An army could not retreat thither without
dissolving; the regiments would have broken up immediately there. The
artillery would have been lost among the morasses. The retreat,
according to many a man versed in the art,—though it is disputed by
others,—would have been a disorganized flight.
To this centre, Wellington added one of Chassé’s brigades taken from