________________________________________________
_ Every one knows the rest,--the irruption of a third army; the battle
broken to pieces; eighty-six months of fire thundering simultaneously;
Pirch the first coming up with Bulow; Zieten's cavalry led
by Blucher in person, the French driven back; Marcognet swept
from the plateau of Ohain; Durutte dislodged from Papelotte;
Donzelot and Quiot retreating; Lobau caught on the flank; a fresh
battle precipitating itself on our dismantled regiments at nightfall;
the whole English line resuming the offensive and thrust forward;
the gigantic breach made in the French army; the English grape-shot
and the Prussian grape-shot aiding each other; the extermination;
disaster in front; disaster on the flank; the Guard entering the line
in the midst of this terrible crumbling of all things.
Conscious that they were about to die, they shouted, "Vive l'Empereur!"
History records nothing more touching than that agony bursting
forth in acclamations.
The sky had been overcast all day long. All of a sudden, at that
very moment,--it was eight o'clock in the evening--the clouds on
the horizon parted, and allowed the grand and sinister glow of the
setting sun to pass through, athwart the elms on the Nivelles road.
They had seen it rise at Austerlitz.
Each battalion of the Guard was commanded by a general for this
final catastrophe. Friant, Michel, Roguet, Harlet, Mallet,
Poret de Morvan, were there. When the tall caps of the grenadiers
of the Guard, with their large plaques bearing the eagle appeared,
symmetrical, in line, tranquil, in the midst of that combat,
the enemy felt a respect for France; they thought they beheld twenty
victories entering the field of battle, with wings outspread,
and those who were the conquerors, believing themselves to be vanquished,
retreated; but Wellington shouted, "Up, Guards, and aim straight!"
The red regiment of English guards, lying flat behind the hedges,
sprang up, a cloud of grape-shot riddled the tricolored flag
and whistled round our eagles; all hurled themselves forwards,
and the final carnage began. In the darkness, the Imperial Guard
felt the army losing ground around it, and in the vast shock of
the rout it heard the desperate flight which had taken the place
of the "Vive l'Empereur!" and, with flight behind it, it continued
to advance, more crushed, losing more men at every step that it took.
There were none who hesitated, no timid men in its ranks.
The soldier in that troop was as much of a hero as the general.
Not a man was missing in that suicide.
Ney, bewildered, great with all the grandeur of accepted death,
offered himself to all blows in that tempest. He had his fifth horse
killed under him there. Perspiring, his eyes aflame, foaming at
the mouth, with uniform unbuttoned, one of his epaulets half cut
off by a sword-stroke from a horseguard, his plaque with the great
eagle dented by a bullet; bleeding, bemired, magnificent, a broken
sword in his hand, he said, "Come and see how a Marshal of France
dies on the field of battle!" But in vain; he did not die.
He was haggard and angry. At Drouet d'Erlon he hurled this question,
"Are you not going to get yourself killed?" In the midst of all
that artillery engaged in crushing a handful of men, he shouted:
"So there is nothing for me! Oh! I should like to have all these
English bullets enter my bowels!" Unhappy man, thou wert reserved
for French bullets! _
Read next: VOLUME II - COSETTE: BOOK FIRST - WATERLOO: CHAPTER XIII. The Catastrophe
Read previous: VOLUME II - COSETTE: BOOK FIRST - WATERLOO: CHAPTER XI. A Bad Guide to Napoleon; a Good Guide to Bulow
Table of content of Les Miserables
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
