الفصل الفصل 84 · THE CATASTROPHE

The rout behind the Guard was melancholy.

The army yielded suddenly on all sides at once,—Hougomont, La

Haie-Sainte, Papelotte, Plancenoit. The cry “Treachery!” was followed

by a cry of “Save yourselves who can!” An army which is disbanding is

like a thaw. All yields, splits, cracks, floats, rolls, falls, jostles,

hastens, is precipitated. The disintegration is unprecedented. Ney

borrows a horse, leaps upon it, and without hat, cravat, or sword,

places himself across the Brussels road, stopping both English and

French. He strives to detain the army, he recalls it to its duty, he

insults it, he clings to the rout. He is overwhelmed. The soldiers fly

from him, shouting, “Long live Marshal Ney!” Two of Durutte’s regiments

go and come in affright as though tossed back and forth between the

swords 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 battalions

break and disperse against each other, like the tremendous foam of

battle. Lobau at one extremity, and Reille at the other, are drawn into

the tide. In vain does Napoleon erect walls from what is left to him of

his Guard; in vain does he expend in a last effort his last serviceable

squadrons. Quiot retreats before Vivian, Kellermann before Vandeleur,

Lobau before Bülow, Morand before Pirch, Domon and Subervic before

Prince William of Prussia; Guyot, who led the Emperor’s squadrons to

the charge, falls beneath the feet of the English dragoons. Napoleon

gallops past the line of fugitives, harangues, urges, threatens,

entreats them. All the mouths which in the morning had shouted, “Long

live the Emperor!” remain gaping; they hardly recognize him. The

Prussian cavalry, newly arrived, dashes forwards, flies, hews, slashes,

kills, exterminates. Horses lash out, the cannons flee; the soldiers of

the artillery-train unharness the caissons and use the horses to make

their escape; transports overturned, with all four wheels in the air,

clog the road and occasion massacres. Men are crushed, trampled down,

others walk over the dead and the living. Arms are lost. A dizzy

multitude fills the roads, the paths, the bridges, the plains, the

hills, the valleys, the woods, encumbered by this invasion of forty

thousand men. Shouts despair, knapsacks and guns flung among the rye,

passages forced at the point of the sword, no more comrades, no more

officers, no more generals, an inexpressible terror. Zieten putting

France to the sword at its leisure. Lions converted into goats. Such

was the flight.

At Genappe, an effort was made to wheel about, to present a battle

front, to draw up in line. Lobau rallied three hundred men. The

entrance to the village was barricaded, but at the first volley of

Prussian canister, all took to flight again, and Lobau was taken. That

volley of grape-shot can be seen to-day imprinted on the ancient gable

of a brick building on the right of the road at a few minutes’ distance

before you enter Genappe. The Prussians threw themselves into Genappe,

furious, no doubt, that they were not more entirely the conquerors. The

pursuit was stupendous. Blücher ordered extermination. Roguet had set

the lugubrious example of threatening with death any French grenadier

who should bring him a Prussian prisoner. Blücher outdid Roguet.

Duhesme, the general of 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 slew the prisoner. The victory was completed by the

assassination of the vanquished. Let us inflict punishment, since we

are history: old Blücher disgraced himself. This ferocity put the

finishing touch to the disaster. The desperate route traversed Genappe,

traversed Quatre-Bras, traversed Gosselies, traversed Frasnes,

traversed Charleroi, traversed Thuin, and only halted at the frontier.

Alas! and who, then, was fleeing in that manner? The Grand Army.

This vertigo, this terror, this downfall into ruin of the loftiest

bravery which ever astounded history,—is that causeless? No. The shadow

of an enormous right is projected athwart Waterloo. It is the day of

destiny. The force which is mightier than man produced that day. Hence

the terrified wrinkle of those brows; hence all those great souls

surrendering their swords. Those who had conquered Europe have fallen

prone on the earth, with nothing left to say nor to do, feeling the

present shadow of a terrible presence. _Hoc erat in fatis_. That day

the perspective of the human race underwent a change. Waterloo is the

hinge of the nineteenth century. The disappearance of the great man was

necessary to the advent of the great century. Some one, a person to

whom one replies not, took the responsibility on himself. The panic of

heroes can be explained. In the battle of Waterloo there is something

more than a cloud, there is something of the meteor. God has passed by.

At nightfall, in a meadow near Genappe, Bernard and Bertrand seized by

the skirt of his coat and detained a man, haggard, pensive, sinister,

gloomy, who, dragged to that point by the current of the rout, had just

dismounted, had passed the bridle of his horse over his arm, and with

wild eye was returning alone to Waterloo. It was Napoleon, the immense

somnambulist of this dream which had crumbled, essaying once more to

advance.