CHAPTER XVI--QUOT LIBRAS IN DUCE?

  The battle of Waterloo is an enigma. It is as obscure to those who wonit as to those who lost it. For Napoleon it was a panic;10 Blücher seesnothing in it but fire; Wellington understands nothing in regard toit. Look at the reports. The bulletins are confused, the commentariesinvolved. Some stammer, others lisp. Jomini divides the battle ofWaterloo 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 thatcatastrophe of human genius in conflict with divine chance. All theother historians suffer from being somewhat dazzled, and in this dazzledstate they fumble about. It was a day of lightning brilliancy; in fact,a crumbling of the military monarchy which, to the vast stupefaction ofkings, drew all the kingdoms after it--the fall of force, the defeat ofwar.

  In this event, stamped with superhuman necessity, the part played by menamounts to nothing.

  If we take Waterloo from Wellington and Blücher, do we thereby depriveEngland and Germany of anything? No. Neither that illustrious Englandnor that august Germany enter into the problem of Waterloo. ThankHeaven, nations are great, independently of the lugubrious feats ofthe sword. Neither England, nor Germany, nor France is contained ina scabbard. At this epoch when Waterloo is only a clashing of swords,above Blücher, Germany has Schiller; above Wellington, England hasByron. A vast dawn of ideas is the peculiarity of our century, and inthat aurora England and Germany have a magnificent radiance. Theyare majestic because they think. The elevation of level which theycontribute to civilization is intrinsic with them; it proceeds fromthemselves and not from an accident. The aggrandizement which they havebrought to the nineteenth century has not Waterloo as its source. It isonly barbarous peoples who undergo rapid growth after a victory. That isthe temporary vanity of torrents swelled by a storm. Civilized people,especially in our day, are neither elevated nor abased by the good orbad fortune of a captain. Their specific gravity in the human speciesresults from something more than a combat. Their honor, thank God! theirdignity, their intelligence, their genius, are not numbers which thosegamblers, heroes and conquerors, can put in the lottery of battles.Often a battle is lost and progress is conquered. There is less gloryand more liberty. The drum holds its peace; reason takes the word. It isa game in which he who loses wins. Let us, therefore, speak of Waterloocoldly from both sides. Let us render to chance that which is dueto chance, and to God that which is due to God. What is Waterloo? Avictory? No. The winning number in the lottery.

  The quine 11 won by Europe, paid by France.

  It was not worth while to place a lion there.

  Waterloo, moreover, is the strangest encounter in history. Napoleon andWellington. They are not enemies; they are opposites. Never did God,who is fond of antitheses, make a more striking contrast, a moreextraordinary comparison. On one side, precision, foresight, geometry,prudence, an assured retreat, reserves spared, with an obstinatecoolness, an imperturbable method, strategy, which takes advantageof 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, militaryoddity, superhuman instinct, a flaming glance, an indescribablesomething which gazes like an eagle, and which strikes like thelightning, a prodigious art in disdainful impetuosity, all the mysteriesof a profound soul, associated with destiny; the stream, the plain, theforest, the hill, summoned, and in a manner, forced to obey, the despotgoing even so far as to tyrannize over the field of battle; faith ina star mingled with strategic science, elevating but perturbing it.Wellington was the Barême of war; Napoleon was its Michael Angelo; andon this occasion, genius was vanquished by calculation. On both sidessome one was awaited. It was the exact calculator who succeeded.Napoleon was waiting for Grouchy; he did not come. Wellington expectedBlücher; he came.

  Wellington is classic war taking its revenge. Bonaparte, at his dawning,had encountered him in Italy, and beaten him superbly. The old owl hadfled before the young vulture. The old tactics had been not only struckas by lightning, but disgraced. Who was that Corsican of six and twenty?What signified that splendid ignoramus, who, with everything againsthim, nothing in his favor, without provisions, without ammunition,without cannon, without shoes, almost without an army, with a merehandful of men against masses, hurled himself on Europe combined,and absurdly won victories in the impossible? Whence had issued thatfulminating convict, who almost without taking breath, and with the sameset of combatants in hand, pulverized, one after the other, the fivearmies of the emperor of Germany, upsetting Beaulieu on Alvinzi, Wurmseron Beaulieu, Mélas on Wurmser, Mack on Mélas? Who was this novice inwar with the effrontery of a luminary? The academical military schoolexcommunicated him, and as it lost its footing; hence, the implacablerancor of the old Cæsarism against the new; of the regular sword againstthe flaming sword; and of the exchequer against genius. On the 18th ofJune, 1815, that rancor had the last word, and beneath Lodi, Montebello,Montenotte, Mantua, Arcola, it wrote: Waterloo. A triumph of themediocres which is sweet to the majority. Destiny consented to thisirony. In his decline, Napoleon found Wurmser, the younger, again infront of him.

  In fact, to get Wurmser, it sufficed to blanch the hair of Wellington.

  Waterloo is a battle of the first order, won by a captain of the second.

  That which must be admired in the battle of Waterloo, is England; theEnglish firmness, the English resolution, the English blood; the superbthing about England there, no offence to her, was herself. It was nother captain; it was her army.

  Wellington, oddly ungrateful, declares in a letter to Lord Bathurst,that his army, the army which fought on the 18th of June, 1815, was a"detestable army." What does that sombre intermingling of bones buriedbeneath the furrows of Waterloo think of that?

  England has been too modest in the matter of Wellington. To makeWellington so great is to belittle England. Wellington is nothing buta hero like many another. Those Scotch Grays, those Horse Guards, thoseregiments of Maitland and of Mitchell, that infantry of Pack and Kempt,that cavalry of Ponsonby and Somerset, those Highlanders playing thepibroch under the shower of grape-shot, those battalions of Rylandt,those utterly raw recruits, who hardly knew how to handle a musketholding their own against Essling's and Rivoli's old troops,--that iswhat was grand. Wellington was tenacious; in that lay his merit, and weare not seeking to lessen it: but the least of his foot-soldiers and ofhis cavalry would have been as solid as he. The iron soldier is worthas much as the Iron Duke. As for us, all our glorification goes to theEnglish soldier, to the English army, to the English people. If trophythere be, it is to England that the trophy is due. The column ofWaterloo would be more just, if, instead of the figure of a man, it boreon high the statue of a people.

  But this great England will be angry at what we are saying here. Shestill cherishes, after her own 1688 and our 1789, the feudal illusion.She believes in heredity and hierarchy. This people, surpassed by nonein power and glory, regards itself as a nation, and not as a people. Andas a people, it willingly subordinates itself and takes a lord for itshead. As a workman, it allows itself to be disdained; as a soldier, itallows itself to be flogged.

  It will be remembered, that at the battle of Inkermann a sergeant whohad, it appears, saved the army, could not be mentioned by Lord Paglan,as the English military hierarchy does not permit any hero below thegrade of an officer to be mentioned in the reports.

  That which we admire above all, in an encounter of the nature ofWaterloo, is the marvellous cleverness of chance. A nocturnal rain, thewall of Hougomont, the hollow road of Ohain, Grouchy deaf to the cannon,Napoleon's guide deceiving him, Bülow's guide enlightening him,--thewhole of this cataclysm is wonderfully conducted.

  On the whole, let us say it plainly, it was more of a massacre than of abattle at Waterloo.

  Of all pitched battles, Waterloo is the one which has the smallest frontfor such a number of combatants. Napoleon three-quarters of a league;Wellington, half a league; seventy-two thousand combatants on each side.From this denseness the carnage arose.

  The following calculation has been made, and the following proportionestablished: Loss of men: at Austerlitz, French, fourteen per cent;Russians, thirty per cent; Austrians, forty-four per cent. At Wagram,French, thirteen per cent; Austrians, fourteen. At the Moskowa, French,thirty-seven per cent; Russians, forty-four. At Bautzen, French,thirteen per cent; Russians and Prussians, fourteen. At Waterloo,French, fifty-six per cent; the Allies, thirty-one. Total for Waterloo,forty-one per cent; one hundred and forty-four thousand combatants;sixty thousand dead.

  To-day the field of Waterloo has the calm which belongs to the earth,the impassive support of man, and it resembles all plains.

  At night, moreover, a sort of visionary mist arises from it; and if atraveller strolls there, if he listens, if he watches, if he dreamslike Virgil in the fatal plains of Philippi, the hallucination of thecatastrophe takes possession of him. The frightful 18th of June livesagain; the false monumental hillock disappears, the lion vanishes inair, the battle-field resumes its reality, lines of infantry undulateover the plain, furious gallops traverse the horizon; the frighteneddreamer beholds the flash of sabres, the gleam of bayonets, the flare ofbombs, the tremendous interchange of thunders; he hears, as it were,the death rattle in the depths of a tomb, the vague clamor of the battlephantom; those shadows are grenadiers, those lights are cuirassiers;that skeleton Napoleon, that other skeleton is Wellington; all this nolonger exists, and yet it clashes together and combats still; and theravines are empurpled, and the trees quiver, and there is fury even inthe clouds and in the shadows; all those terrible heights, Hougomont,Mont-Saint-Jean, Frischemont, Papelotte, Plancenoit, appear confusedlycrowned with whirlwinds of spectres engaged in exterminating each other.