Waterloo

As the moon came out that night, her cold face was hateful to the fleeing French, for it lit the roads for the merciless pursuers.

The exhausted English had halted at La Belle Alliance.

The Prussians came thundering on, and the two victors, Wellington and Blücher, embraced. Each called the other the winner of the day. Justly so—for each was the winner. To success both had been necessary.

The Prussians had made a most fatiguing march in the morning, and had fought with desperation for many hours, but they alone had strength left for the pursuit. Wellington’s troops fell down among the dying and the dead, to rest and sleep. But not until they had cheered the Prussians passing by. “Hip, hip, hurrah!” shout the English, while the bands play.

The Prussians go by, singing Luther’s hymn, “Now praise we all our God.”

And then these devout Christians hot-foot upon the track of other Christians, hurry on to a moonlight hunt—vast, terrible, murderous. These Prussians remember the pursuit after Jena; yes, and the pursuit after Austerlitz; yes, and the long years of French military occupation of the Fatherland. And now it is their turn.

“As long as man and horse can go—push the pursuit!” cried Blücher.

Not a great many Prussians are needed. A few cannon to make a noise, a few bugles to sound the charge, a few drums to send terror ahead—these, with about 4,500 troops, will be quite sufficient to chase Napoleon’s army like a flock of sheep.

Forty thousand Frenchmen, unwounded, as brave a lot of men as ever stepped into line, are now so crushed by unexpected disaster, so filled with the terror of sheer panic, that no human power can check their stampede.

Ney has tried it, vainly. Napoleon has tried it, vainly. They abandon the artillery, they throw away their guns, they cast off their accouterments, intent only on running for dear life. They cut through the fields, they fight for passage on the road, they murder one another in their frantic efforts to get on.

The Prussians chase them, cut them down, ride over them—the roads, the fields, the woods are strewn with slaughtered Frenchmen. If any stand is made and a few of the firmer rally, the first blare of Prussian trumpets sets them running again. The 4,500 Prussians dwindle, as the chase lengthens, until scarcely a thousand pursue. But the French have lost their senses. The mere blare of a Prussian bugle throws them into agonies of fright. One drummer-boy, galloping on horseback, a dozen cavalrymen to yell the Prussian “Hourra!” are enough to keep the stampede going.

“No quarter!” cry the pursuers. Yet after Ligny Napoleon had gone, in person, to take care of the Prussian wounded, and had threatened the Belgian peasants with the terrors of hell if they did not succor these sufferers. “God bids us love our enemies,” said the Emperor to these peasants. “Take care of the wounded, or God will make you burn.” But the English had cried “No quarter!” as they charged down from Mont-Saint-Jean, and now the Prussians are repeating the cry and slaughtering, with indiscriminate fury, those who surrender, those who are wounded and those who are overtaken.

So mad is the panic of the French that at Gemappe, where the little river Dyle is only about fifteen feet wide and three feet deep, they have a frightful crush at the narrow bridge and never once think of wading across.

Here, once more Napoleon vainly endeavors to stop the rout. The Prussians appear, beat the drum, blow the trumpets, fire cannon, and the thousands of Frenchmen fight madly with each other for the privilege of running away. They slash each other with their swords, stab each other with their bayonets, and even shoot each other down.

To appreciate the state of mind of this fleeing army it is necessary that one should have a good idea of what happens to the crowd in a packed theater when the red tongues of the flames are seen in the hangings and the cry of “Fire! Fire!” smites the startled ear. The horrible scene which invariably follows is the outcome of exactly the uncontrollable, unreasoning terror which made the flight from Napoleon’s last battlefield such a disgrace to human nature.

The moon which held a light for the pursuit silvered also the slopes where the great battle had been fought, shone upon the unburied corpses that still lay at Ligny and Quatre Bras, shone upon 25,000 Frenchmen, 6,000 Prussians, and 10,000 of the English army, who lay on the field of Waterloo; shone also upon other thousands who lay dead or dying on the futile battle-ground of Wavre. Within three days and within the narrow radius of a few miles more than 70,000 men had been shot down—for what?

For what? To force upon the French a King and a system which they detested, and to prevent the spread of democratic principles to other countries where kings and aristocracies were in power.

Creasy numbers Waterloo among the Twelve Decisive Battles of the World, but it does not deserve the rank. It did not give democratic principles anything more than a temporary set-back. It did not permanently restore the Bourbons. It did not even keep the Bonaparte heir off the throne. Much less did it settle the principle that one nation may dictate to another its form of government.

In his old age, Wellington was asked to write his Memoirs. “No,” he answered. “It wouldn’t do. If I were to tell what I know, the people would tear me to pieces.”

I think I understand. If the ruling oligarchs of England,—Eldon, Castlereagh, Pitt, Canning, Liverpool, Bathurst,—had revealed the inner secrets of the Tory administration, the last one of them would have been torn to pieces—deservedly.

The man-hunt rolls off toward the Sambre, the drum dies away in the distance, the horror of the retreat goes farther and farther away,—while the moon looks down upon the English army, asleep on La Belle Alliance, upon the blood-stained valleys and slopes that lead to Mont-Saint-Jean, upon the smouldering ruins of Hougoumont, of La Haye-Sainte, of Papelotte, of Plancenoit. There are dead men everywhere. Everywhere are dying men, dismounted cannons, broken swords, abandoned guns and knapsacks, dead horses, and mangled horses that scream as they struggle with pain and death, wounded men who moan and groan and curse their fate.

A mile wide and two miles long, this strip of hell writhes beneath the unpitying stars; and perhaps the most awful sound that shocks the ear and the soul is that choked yell of terror and agony of the officer who is being clubbed to death with a musket by the night prowler who wants the officer’s watch, decorations and money.

Enter the ground of the Château of Hougoumont, pass the shattered buildings and go into the flower garden. Here was once the beauty of nature and the beauty of art, combined. This morning, when the sun broke through the mists, these formal walks were bordered by the bloom of flowers; these balustraded terraces were fragrant with the incense of the orange and the myrtle. The birds were singing in the garden overhead, along these quiet covered walks in the old Flemish garden, vine clad with honey-suckle and jessamine, where many a word of love had been spoken as lovers wandered here in years long past.

And now it is one of the frightful spots of the world, reeking with blood, cumbered with dead and dying men, torn by shells, gutted by fire. The well is ever so deep and ever so large, but is never so deep nor so large as to hold all the dead and the dying. To-morrow it will be filled. The dauntless defenders and the fearless assailants will embrace in the harmony of a common grave. And for many and many a year the peasant at his fireside at night will tell, in hushed tones, of the sounds—the groans, the faint calls for help—which are said to have been heard coming from the well, nights after its hasty filling in.

Few partisans of Napoleon now contend that he was free from serious fault in this, his last campaign.

First of all, he should have made his appeal to the people, put himself once more at their head as the hero of the French Revolution, remained in France, and nationalized the war.

Again, he should not have placed two such generals as Vandamme and Gérard under Grouchy.

He showed no vigor in following up his victory at Ligny, and made a capital error in not breaking up the retreating foe with cavalry charges.

He lost a great opportunity at Quatre Bras.

On the night of the 17th he should have sent definite orders to Grouchy, and should have hearkened to Soult when he was urged by that thorough soldier to call in at least a portion of Grouchy’s force.

He took the reports of Haxo and Ney, and based the battle upon their erroneous reports. The Napoleon of earlier years would have gone to see for himself.

He did not have a good view of the field and consequently missed detailed movements of immense importance.

He treated with too much scorn the opinion of Soult and Reillé (who had tested the English soldier in Spain), when they warned him that the English, properly posted and properly handled—as Wellington could handle them—were invincible.

He made the attack without maneuvering, in just the bare-breasted, full-face way that best lent itself to bloody repulse.

The premature cavalry movement which contributed most to the final disaster was under full headway,—too far advanced to be stopped,—before he knew that it was contemplated.

In holding off the Prussians, the Emperor displayed his genius, directing every movement himself. On the field of Waterloo, he left too much to Ney and Jerome. Had he taken Ney out of the fight at the time that he recalled Jerome, the issue might have been different.

The last grand charge should not have been made at all. He should have stopped, as Lee did at Gettysburg, in time to save his army, for by this time he knew that Grouchy would not come. To stake so much on one last desperate throw was the act of a man who was no longer what he had been at Aspern and Essling when he withdrew into the Island of Lobau.

When the Emperor was giving the order for the last great charge, General Haxo would have remonstrated. “But, Sire—” he began. Napoleon flapped his glove lightly across Haxo’s face and said, “Hold your tongue, my friend. There is Grouchy who will give us other news.” He had mistaken Bülow’s cannonade for Grouchy’s.

One can understand what was passing in his mind when he said to Gourgaud, a few weeks later, “Ah, if it were to be done over again!”

On Wellington’s side the management was superb. It was practically faultless. He made the most of every advantage, and made the most of the errors of his enemy.

With this exception: He left 18,000 of his men at Hal, four or five miles away, protecting a road which he feared the French might take. But with Napoleon facing him, here at Mont-Saint-Jean, the 18,000 men were no longer needed at Hal; and no one has ever been able to explain why Wellington did not call them in during the early morning of the 18th.

In other books than this you will read of how the wreck of Napoleon, the man, and the wreck of Napoleon, the Emperor, found their way to Paris; how the well-meaning but weak-headed La Fayette, dreaming of an impossible Republic, worked in reality for the Bourbon restoration in working against Napoleon; how the Chambers, honeycombed by the intrigues of Fouché, demanded the second abdication; how the wreck of Napoleon floated aimlessly down the current of misfortune; how he signed away his throne; how the masses thronged about his palace, wildly clamoring for him to put himself at the head of a national uprising; how he sends his empty coach and six through the mob, and makes off by the back way in a cab; how he stops at Malmaison, weeps for his lost Josephine, listens to all kinds of counsel, takes none, and has no plan; how the soldiers, marching past in straggling detachments, cheer him with the same old enthusiasm, and how he calmly remarks, “They had better have stood and fought at Waterloo.”

Napoleon was no longer the volcanic man of action, of connected ideas, of sustained exertion, of inflexible purpose. The Waterloo campaign had been a sputtering of the candle in the socket—a brief eruption of a Vesuvius that made Europe quiver; and then all was over.

From Malmaison he is ordered off by Fouché, and he meekly obeys. At Rochefort he dawdles, doubts, delays, and does nothing. Logically, he becomes a prisoner to those by whom he has been beaten.

To St. Helena, and a few years of torture; to hopeless captivity and the bitter inbrooding that eat the heart out; to the depths of humiliation and the canker of impotent rage; to weary days of depression and dreary nights of pain; to a long agony of vain regrets, of wrath against fate, of soul-racking memories—to these go Napoleon Bonaparte, the greatest man ever born of woman.

At last, the reprieve comes. At last there comes the day when the little man can no longer torture the big one. Sir Hudson Lowe may at length rest easy—the sweat of the final pain gathers on his captive’s brow. English sentinels may slacken their vigilance now—the death rattle is in the prisoner’s throat.

The storm comes up from out the wrathful sea, and the terrible anger of the tempest beats upon the tropical rock. The thunder, peal on peal, volleys over the crags, and the glare of the lightning lights up the track of devastation. Within the renovated cow-house, and within a room which will soon be used again as a cow-stall, is stretched the dying warrior.

What was it that the storm said to the unconscious soldier? By what mysterious law, yet to be made plain, does the sub-consciousness move and speak when deep sleep or the delirium of disease has paralyzed the normal consciousness of man? We do not know. In poetry, the sub-conscious produces the weird “Kubla Khan”; in music it notates “The Devil’s Sonata.” It is the sub-conscious which often gives warning of evil to come; it is the sub-conscious that sometimes tells us the right road when all is doubt.

As the thunder volleyed over Longwood, and the roar of the storm held on, the dying Captain was strangely affected. Just such thunder had rolled over his head that Saturday night and Sunday morning, when he went the rounds of his outposts in the drenching rain—which may have been the main cause of his loss of Waterloo. He and the faithful Bertrand had made those night-rounds alone, and Napoleon, as he stopped to listen to the thunder, muttered, “We agree.”

It must have been that in his delirium he fancied he was again on the front line, listening to the storm which preceded his last battle.

“The Army! The head of the Army!” he muttered. “Desaix! Bessiéres! Hasten the attack! Press on! The enemy gives way—they are ours!”

With a convulsive start he sprang up, out of the bed, and got upon his feet. Montholon seized him, but he bore the Count to the floor. Others rushed in; he was already exhausted, and they put him back in bed. Afterward he lay still, and the boat drifted on, quietly on, toward the bar.

The storm had passed away, and the Emperor, lying on his back, with one hand out of the bed, fixed his eyes “as though in deep meditation.”

Those about the bed thought they heard him say, “France! Josephine!” Then he spoke no more.

A light foam gathered on the parted lips. There was peace on his face—for the pain had done what it came to do.

As the clear sun dipped beneath the distant rim of the sea, Napoleon died.

It was May 5th, 1821.

In Hillaire Belloc’s magnificent study of Danton, the author makes reference to a legend which is said to be current among the peasants of Russia.

It is a story of “a certain somber, mounted figure, unreal, only an outline and a cloud, that passed away to Asia, to the East and North. They saw him move along their snows through the long, mysterious twilight of the Northern autumn, in silence, with the head bent and the reins in the left hand, loose, following some enduring purpose, reaching toward an ancient solitude and repose. They say that it was Napoleon. After him, there trailed for days the shadows of the soldiery, vague mists bearing faintly the forms of companies of men. It was as though the cannon-smoke of Waterloo, borne on the light west wind of that June day, had received the spirits of twenty years of combat, and had drifted farther and farther during the fall of the year over the endless plains.

“But there was no voice and no order. The terrible tramp of the Guard and the sound that Heine loved, the dance of the French drums, was extinguished; there was no echo of their songs, for the army was of ghosts and was defeated. They passed in the silence which we can never pierce, and somewhere remote from men they sleep in bivouac round the most splendid of human swords.”