CHAPTER IX--THE UNEXPECTED

  There were three thousand five hundred of them. They formed a front aquarter of a league in extent. They were giant men, on colossal horses.There were six and twenty squadrons of them; and they had behind them tosupport them Lefebvre-Desnouettes's division,--the one hundred and sixpicked gendarmes, the light cavalry of the Guard, eleven hundred andninety-seven men, and the lancers of the guard of eight hundred andeighty lances. They wore casques without horse-tails, and cuirassesof beaten iron, with horse-pistols in their holsters, and longsabre-swords. That morning the whole army had admired them, when, atnine o'clock, with braying of trumpets and all the music playing "Let uswatch o'er the Safety of the Empire," they had come in a solid column,with one of their batteries on their flank, another in their centre, anddeployed in two ranks between the roads to Genappe and Frischemont,and taken up their position for battle in that powerful second line,so cleverly arranged by Napoleon, which, having on its extreme leftKellermann's cuirassiers and on its extreme right Milhaud's cuirassiers,had, so to speak, two wings of iron.

  Aide-de-camp Bernard carried them the Emperor's orders. Ney drew hissword and placed himself at their head. The enormous squadrons were setin motion.

  Then a formidable spectacle was seen.

  All their cavalry, with upraised swords, standards and trumpets flung tothe breeze, formed in columns by divisions, descended, by a simultaneousmovement and like one man, with the precision of a brazen battering-ramwhich is effecting a breach, the hill of La Belle Alliance, plunged intothe terrible depths in which so many men had already fallen, disappearedthere in the smoke, then emerging from that shadow, reappeared on theother side of the valley, still compact and in close ranks, mounting ata full trot, through a storm of grape-shot which burst upon them,the terrible muddy slope of the table-land of Mont-Saint-Jean. Theyascended, grave, threatening, imperturbable; in the intervals betweenthe musketry and the artillery, their colossal trampling was audible.Being two divisions, there were two columns of them; Wathier's divisionheld the right, Delort's division was on the left. It seemed as thoughtwo immense adders of steel were to be seen crawling towards the crestof the table-land. It traversed the battle like a prodigy.

  Nothing like it had been seen since the taking of the great redoubt ofthe Muskowa by the heavy cavalry; Murat was lacking here, but Ney wasagain present. It seemed as though that mass had become a monster andhad but one soul. Each column undulated and swelled like the ring of apolyp. They could be seen through a vast cloud of smoke which was renthere and there. A confusion of helmets, of cries, of sabres, a stormyheaving of the cruppers of horses amid the cannons and the flourish oftrumpets, a terrible and disciplined tumult; over all, the cuirasseslike the scales on the hydra.

  These narrations seemed to belong to another age. Something parallel tothis vision appeared, no doubt, in the ancient Orphic epics, which toldof the centaurs, the old hippanthropes, those Titans with humanheads and equestrian chests who scaled Olympus at a gallop, horrible,invulnerable, sublime--gods and beasts.

  Odd numerical coincidence,--twenty-six battalions rode to meettwenty-six battalions. Behind the crest of the plateau, in the shadow ofthe masked battery, the English infantry, formed into thirteen squares,two battalions to the square, in two lines, with seven in the firstline, six in the second, the stocks of their guns to their shoulders,taking aim at that which was on the point of appearing, waited, calm,mute, motionless. They did not see the cuirassiers, and the cuirassiersdid not see them. They listened to the rise of this flood of men. Theyheard the swelling noise of three thousand horse, the alternate andsymmetrical tramp of their hoofs at full trot, the jingling of thecuirasses, the clang of the sabres and a sort of grand and savagebreathing. There ensued a most terrible silence; then, all at once,a long file of uplifted arms, brandishing sabres, appeared above thecrest, and casques, trumpets, and standards, and three thousand headswith gray mustaches, shouting, "Vive l'Empereur!" All this cavalrydebouched on the plateau, and it was like the appearance of anearthquake.

  All at once, a tragic incident; on the English left, on our right, thehead of the column of cuirassiers reared up with a frightful clamor. Onarriving at the culminating point of the crest, ungovernable, utterlygiven over to fury and their course of extermination of the squares andcannon, the cuirassiers had just caught sight of a trench,--a trenchbetween them and the English. It was the hollow road of Ohain.

  It was a terrible moment. The ravine was there, unexpected, yawning,directly under the horses' feet, two fathoms deep between its doubleslopes; the second file pushed the first into it, and the third pushedon the second; the horses reared and fell backward, landed on theirhaunches, slid down, all four feet in the air, crushing and overwhelmingthe riders; and there being no means of retreat,--the whole column beingno longer anything more than a projectile,--the force which had beenacquired to crush the English crushed the French; the inexorable ravinecould only yield when filled; horses and riders rolled there pell-mell,grinding each other, forming but one mass of flesh in this gulf: whenthis trench was full of living men, the rest marched over them andpassed on. Almost a third of Dubois's brigade fell into that abyss.

  This began the loss of the battle.

  A local tradition, which evidently exaggerates matters, says that twothousand horses and fifteen hundred men were buried in the hollow roadof Ohain. This figure probably comprises all the other corpses whichwere flung into this ravine the day after the combat.

  Let us note in passing that it was Dubois's sorely tried brigade which,an hour previously, making a charge to one side, had captured the flagof the Lunenburg battalion.

  Napoleon, before giving the order for this charge of Milhaud'scuirassiers, had scrutinized the ground, but had not been able to seethat hollow road, which did not even form a wrinkle on the surface ofthe plateau. Warned, nevertheless, and put on the alert by the littlewhite chapel which marks its angle of junction with the Nivelleshighway, he had probably put a question as to the possibility of anobstacle, to the guide Lacoste. The guide had answered No. We mightalmost affirm that Napoleon's catastrophe originated in that sign of apeasant's head.

  Other fatalities were destined to arise.

  Was it possible that Napoleon should have won that battle? We answer No.Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blücher? No. Because of God.

  Bonaparte victor at Waterloo; that does not come within the law of thenineteenth century. Another series of facts was in preparation, in whichthere was no longer any room for Napoleon. The ill will of events haddeclared itself long before.

  It was time that this vast man should fall.

  The excessive weight of this man in human destiny disturbed the balance.This individual alone counted for more than a universal group. Theseplethoras of all human vitality concentrated in a single head; the worldmounting to the brain of one man,--this would be mortal to civilizationwere it to last. The moment had arrived for the incorruptible andsupreme equity to alter its plan. Probably the principles and theelements, on which the regular gravitations of the moral, as of thematerial, world depend, had complained. Smoking blood, over-filledcemeteries, mothers in tears,--these are formidable pleaders. Whenthe earth is suffering from too heavy a burden, there are mysteriousgroanings of the shades, to which the abyss lends an ear.

  Napoleon had been denounced in the infinite and his fall had beendecided on.

  He embarrassed God.

  Waterloo is not a battle; it is a change of front on the part of theUniverse.