الفصل الفصل 86 · CAMBRONNE

If any French reader object to having his susceptibilities offended,

one would have to refrain from repeating in his presence what is

perhaps the finest reply that a Frenchman ever made. This would enjoin

us from consigning something sublime to History.

At our own risk and peril, let us violate this injunction.

Now, then, among those giants there was one Titan,—Cambronne.

To make that reply and then perish, what could be grander? For being

willing to die is the same as to die; and it was not this man’s fault

if he survived after he was shot.

The winner of the battle of Waterloo was not Napoleon, who was put to

flight; nor Wellington, giving way at four o’clock, in despair at five;

nor Blücher, who took no part in the engagement. The winner of Waterloo

was Cambronne.

To thunder forth such a reply at the lightning-flash that kills you is

to conquer!

Thus to answer the Catastrophe, thus to speak to Fate, to give this

pedestal to the future lion, to hurl such a challenge to the midnight

rainstorm, to the treacherous wall of Hougomont, to the sunken road of

Ohain, to Grouchy’s delay, to Blücher’s arrival, to be Irony itself in

the tomb, to act so as to stand upright though fallen, to drown in two

syllables the European coalition, to offer kings privies which the

Cæsars once knew, to make the lowest of words the most lofty by

entwining with it the glory of France, insolently to end Waterloo with

Mardigras, to finish Leonidas with Rabellais, to set the crown on this

victory by a word impossible to speak, to lose the field and preserve

history, to have the laugh on your side after such a carnage,—this is

immense!

It was an insult such as a thunder-cloud might hurl! It reaches the

grandeur of Æschylus!

Cambronne’s reply produces the effect of a violent break. ’Tis like the

breaking of a heart under a weight of scorn. ’Tis the overflow of agony

bursting forth. Who conquered? Wellington? No! Had it not been for

Blücher, he was lost. Was it Blücher? No! If Wellington had not begun,

Blücher could not have finished. This Cambronne, this man spending his

last hour, this unknown soldier, this infinitesimal of war, realizes

that here is a falsehood, a falsehood in a catastrophe, and so doubly

agonizing; and at the moment when his rage is bursting forth because of

it, he is offered this mockery,—life! How could he restrain himself?

Yonder are all the kings of Europe, the general’s flushed with victory,

the Jupiter’s darting thunderbolts; they have a hundred thousand

victorious soldiers, and back of the hundred thousand a million; their

cannon stand with yawning mouths, the match is lighted; they grind down

under their heels the Imperial guards, and the grand army; they have

just crushed Napoleon, and only Cambronne remains,—only this earthworm

is left to protest. He will protest. Then he seeks for the appropriate

word as one seeks for a sword. His mouth froths, and the froth is the

word. In face of this mean and mighty victory, in face of this victory

which counts none victorious, this desperate soldier stands erect. He

grants its overwhelming immensity, but he establishes its triviality;

and he does more than spit upon it. Borne down by numbers, by superior

force, by brute matter, he finds in his soul an expression:

_“Excrément!”_ We repeat it,—to use that word, to do thus, to invent

such an expression, is to be the conqueror!

The spirit of mighty days at that portentous moment made its descent on

that unknown man. Cambronne invents the word for Waterloo as Rouget

invents the “Marseillaise,” under the visitation of a breath from on

high. An emanation from the divine whirlwind leaps forth and comes

sweeping over these men, and they shake, and one of them sings the song

supreme, and the other utters the frightful cry.

This challenge of titanic scorn Cambronne hurls not only at Europe in

the name of the Empire,—that would be a trifle: he hurls it at the past

in the name of the Revolution. It is heard, and Cambronne is recognized

as possessed by the ancient spirit of the Titans. Danton seems to be

speaking! Kléber seems to be bellowing!

At that word from Cambronne, the English voice responded, “Fire!” The

batteries flamed, the hill trembled, from all those brazen mouths

belched a last terrible gush of grape-shot; a vast volume of smoke,

vaguely white in the light of the rising moon, rolled out, and when the

smoke dispersed, there was no longer anything there. That formidable

remnant had been annihilated; the Guard was dead. The four walls of the

living redoubt lay prone, and hardly was there discernible, here and

there, even a quiver in the bodies; it was thus that the French

legions, greater than the Roman legions, expired on Mont-Saint-Jean, on

the soil watered with rain and blood, amid the gloomy grain, on the

spot where nowadays Joseph, who drives the post-wagon from Nivelles,

passes whistling, and cheerfully whipping up his horse at four o’clock

in the morning.