Les Misérables, page 94
CHAPTER XVII--IS WATERLOO TO BE CONSIDERED GOOD?
There exists a very respectable liberal school which does not hateWaterloo. We do not belong to it. To us, Waterloo is but the stupefieddate of liberty. That such an eagle should emerge from such an egg iscertainly unexpected.
If one places one's self at the culminating point of view of thequestion, Waterloo is intentionally a counter-revolutionary victory. Itis Europe against France; it is Petersburg, Berlin, and Vienna againstParis; it is the _statu quo_ against the initiative; it is the 14thof July, 1789, attacked through the 20th of March, 1815; it is themonarchies clearing the decks in opposition to the indomitable Frenchrioting. The final extinction of that vast people which had been ineruption for twenty-six years--such was the dream. The solidarity of theBrunswicks, the Nassaus, the Romanoffs, the Hohenzollerns, the Hapsburgswith the Bourbons. Waterloo bears divine right on its crupper. It istrue, that the Empire having been despotic, the kingdom by the naturalreaction of things, was forced to be liberal, and that a constitutionalorder was the unwilling result of Waterloo, to the great regret of theconquerors. It is because revolution cannot be really conquered, andthat being providential and absolutely fatal, it is always croppingup afresh: before Waterloo, in Bonaparte overthrowing the old thrones;after Waterloo, in Louis XVIII. granting and conforming to the charter.Bonaparte places a postilion on the throne of Naples, and a sergeanton the throne of Sweden, employing inequality to demonstrate equality;Louis XVIII. at Saint-Ouen countersigns the declaration of the rightsof man. If you wish to gain an idea of what revolution is, call itProgress; and if you wish to acquire an idea of the nature of progress,call it To-morrow. To-morrow fulfils its work irresistibly, and it isalready fulfilling it to-day. It always reaches its goal strangely. Itemploys Wellington to make of Foy, who was only a soldier, an orator.Foy falls at Hougomont and rises again in the tribune. Thus doesprogress proceed. There is no such thing as a bad tool for that workman.It does not become disconcerted, but adjusts to its divine work theman who has bestridden the Alps, and the good old tottering invalidof Father Élysée. It makes use of the gouty man as well as of theconqueror; of the conqueror without, of the gouty man within. Waterloo,by cutting short the demolition of European thrones by the sword, hadno other effect than to cause the revolutionary work to be continued inanother direction. The slashers have finished; it was the turn of thethinkers. The century that Waterloo was intended to arrest has pursuedits march. That sinister victory was vanquished by liberty.
In short, and incontestably, that which triumphed at Waterloo; thatwhich smiled in Wellington's rear; that which brought him all themarshals' staffs of Europe, including, it is said, the staff of amarshal of France; that which joyously trundled the barrows full ofbones to erect the knoll of the lion; that which triumphantly inscribedon that pedestal the date "_June_ 18, 1815"; that which encouragedBlücher, as he put the flying army to the sword; that which, from theheights of the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean, hovered over France as overits prey, was the counter-revolution. It was the counter-revolutionwhich murmured that infamous word "dismemberment." On arriving in Paris,it beheld the crater close at hand; it felt those ashes which scorchedits feet, and it changed its mind; it returned to the stammer of acharter.
Let us behold in Waterloo only that which is in Waterloo. Of intentionalliberty there is none. The counter-revolution was involuntarily liberal,in the same manner as, by a corresponding phenomenon, Napoleon wasinvoluntarily revolutionary. On the 18th of June, 1815, the mountedRobespierre was hurled from his saddle.
