Chapter Chapter 88 · IS WATERLOO TO BE CONSIDERED GOOD?

There exists a very respectable liberal school which does not hate

Waterloo. We do not belong to it. To us, Waterloo is but the stupefied

date of liberty. That such an eagle should emerge from such an egg is

certainly unexpected.

If one places one’s self at the culminating point of view of the

question, Waterloo is intentionally a counter-revolutionary victory. It

is Europe against France; it is Petersburg, Berlin, and Vienna against

Paris; it is the _statu quo_ against the initiative; it is the 14th of

July, 1789, attacked through the 20th of March, 1815; it is the

monarchies clearing the decks in opposition to the indomitable French

rioting. The final extinction of that vast people which had been in

eruption for twenty-six years—such was the dream. The solidarity of the

Brunswicks, the Nassaus, the Romanoffs, the Hohenzollerns, the

Hapsburgs with the Bourbons. Waterloo bears divine right on its

crupper. It is true, that the Empire having been despotic, the kingdom

by the natural reaction of things, was forced to be liberal, and that a

constitutional order was the unwilling result of Waterloo, to the great

regret of the conquerors. It is because revolution cannot be really

conquered, and that being providential and absolutely fatal, it is

always cropping up 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 sergeant on the throne of Sweden, employing inequality

to demonstrate equality; Louis XVIII. at Saint-Ouen countersigns the

declaration of the rights of man. If you wish to gain an idea of what

revolution is, call it Progress; 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 is already fulfilling it to-day. It always reaches

its goal strangely. It employs Wellington to make of Foy, who was only

a soldier, an orator. Foy falls at Hougomont and rises again in the

tribune. Thus does progress proceed. There is no such thing as a bad

tool for that workman. It does not become disconcerted, but adjusts to

its divine work the man who has bestridden the Alps, and the good old

tottering invalid of Father Élysée. It makes use of the gouty man as

well as of the conqueror; of the conqueror without, of the gouty man

within. Waterloo, by cutting short the demolition of European thrones

by the sword, had no other effect than to cause the revolutionary work

to be continued in another direction. The slashers have finished; it

was the turn of the thinkers. The century that Waterloo was intended to

arrest has pursued its march. That sinister victory was vanquished by

liberty.

In short, and incontestably, that which triumphed at Waterloo; that

which smiled in Wellington’s rear; that which brought him all the

marshals’ staffs of Europe, including, it is said, the staff of a

marshal of France; that which joyously trundled the barrows full of

bones to erect the knoll of the lion; that which triumphantly inscribed

on that pedestal the date “_June_ 18, 1815”; that which encouraged

Blücher, as he put the flying army to the sword; that which, from the

heights of the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean, hovered over France as over

its prey, was the counter-revolution. It was the counter-revolution

which murmured that infamous word “dismemberment.” On arriving in

Paris, it beheld the crater close at hand; it felt those ashes which

scorched its feet, and it changed its mind; it returned to the stammer

of a charter.

Let us behold in Waterloo only that which is in Waterloo. Of

intentional liberty there is none. The counter-revolution was

involuntarily liberal, in the same manner as, by a corresponding

phenomenon, Napoleon was involuntarily revolutionary. On the 18th of

June, 1815, the mounted Robespierre was hurled from his saddle.