Les Misérables, page 90
CHAPTER XIII--THE CATASTROPHE
The rout behind the Guard was melancholy.
The army yielded suddenly on all sides at once,--Hougomont, LaHaie-Sainte, Papelotte, Plancenoit. The cry "Treachery!" was followed bya cry of "Save yourselves who can!" An army which is disbanding islike a thaw. All yields, splits, cracks, floats, rolls, falls, jostles,hastens, is precipitated. The disintegration is unprecedented. Neyborrows a horse, leaps upon it, and without hat, cravat, or sword,places himself across the Brussels road, stopping both English andFrench. He strives to detain the army, he recalls it to its duty, heinsults it, he clings to the rout. He is overwhelmed. The soldiers flyfrom him, shouting, "Long live Marshal Ney!" Two of Durutte's regimentsgo and come in affright as though tossed back and forth between theswords of the Uhlans and the fusillade of the brigades of Kempt, Best,Pack, and Rylandt; the worst of hand-to-hand conflicts is the defeat;friends kill each other in order to escape; squadrons and battalionsbreak and disperse against each other, like the tremendous foam ofbattle. Lobau at one extremity, and Reille at the other, are drawn intothe tide. In vain does Napoleon erect walls from what is left to him ofhis Guard; in vain does he expend in a last effort his last serviceablesquadrons. Quiot retreats before Vivian, Kellermann before Vandeleur,Lobau before Bülow, Morand before Pirch, Domon and Subervic beforePrince William of Prussia; Guyot, who led the Emperor's squadrons to thecharge, falls beneath the feet of the English dragoons. Napoleon gallopspast the line of fugitives, harangues, urges, threatens, entreatsthem. All the mouths which in the morning had shouted, "Long livethe Emperor!" remain gaping; they hardly recognize him. The Prussiancavalry, newly arrived, dashes forwards, flies, hews, slashes, kills,exterminates. Horses lash out, the cannons flee; the soldiers of theartillery-train unharness the caissons and use the horses to make theirescape; transports overturned, with all four wheels in the air, clog theroad and occasion massacres. Men are crushed, trampled down, others walkover the dead and the living. Arms are lost. A dizzy multitude fills theroads, the paths, the bridges, the plains, the hills, the valleys,the woods, encumbered by this invasion of forty thousand men. Shoutsdespair, knapsacks and guns flung among the rye, passages forced atthe point of the sword, no more comrades, no more officers, no moregenerals, an inexpressible terror. Zieten putting France to the sword atits leisure. Lions converted into goats. Such was the flight.
At Genappe, an effort was made to wheel about, to present a battlefront, to draw up in line. Lobau rallied three hundred men. The entranceto the village was barricaded, but at the first volley of Prussiancanister, all took to flight again, and Lobau was taken. That volley ofgrape-shot can be seen to-day imprinted on the ancient gable of a brickbuilding on the right of the road at a few minutes' distance before youenter Genappe. The Prussians threw themselves into Genappe, furious, nodoubt, that they were not more entirely the conquerors. The pursuit wasstupendous. Blücher ordered extermination. Roguet had set the lugubriousexample of threatening with death any French grenadier who should bringhim a Prussian prisoner. Blücher outdid Roguet. Duhesme, the generalof the Young Guard, hemmed in at the doorway of an inn at Genappe,surrendered his sword to a huzzar of death, who took the sword and slewthe prisoner. The victory was completed by the assassination of thevanquished. Let us inflict punishment, since we are history: oldBlücher disgraced himself. This ferocity put the finishing touch to thedisaster. The desperate route traversed Genappe, traversed Quatre-Bras,traversed Gosselies, traversed Frasnes, traversed Charleroi, traversedThuin, and only halted at the frontier. Alas! and who, then, was fleeingin that manner? The Grand Army.
This vertigo, this terror, this downfall into ruin of the loftiestbravery which ever astounded history,--is that causeless? No. The shadowof an enormous right is projected athwart Waterloo. It is the day ofdestiny. The force which is mightier than man produced that day. Hencethe terrified wrinkle of those brows; hence all those great soulssurrendering their swords. Those who had conquered Europe have fallenprone on the earth, with nothing left to say nor to do, feeling thepresent shadow of a terrible presence. _Hoc erat in fatis_. That day theperspective of the human race underwent a change. Waterloo is thehinge of the nineteenth century. The disappearance of the great man wasnecessary to the advent of the great century. Some one, a person to whomone replies not, took the responsibility on himself. The panic of heroescan be explained. In the battle of Waterloo there is something more thana cloud, there is something of the meteor. God has passed by.
At nightfall, in a meadow near Genappe, Bernard and Bertrand seized bythe skirt of his coat and detained a man, haggard, pensive, sinister,gloomy, who, dragged to that point by the current of the rout, had justdismounted, had passed the bridle of his horse over his arm, and withwild eye was returning alone to Waterloo. It was Napoleon, the immensesomnambulist of this dream which had crumbled, essaying once more toadvance.
