"Do you give it to him, Laure," he said. "It is that patent of

nobility that he gave up. Acting for my King, who will, I am sure,

approve of what I have done, I return it to him. As he dies with the

spirit and soul of a gentleman, so also shall he die with the title.

_Monsieur le Comte d'Aumenier_, I, the head of the house, welcome you

into it. I salute you. Farewell. And now," the old man drew out his

snuff box, tendered it to the young man with all the grace of the

ancient régime. "No?" he said, as Marteau stared in bewilderment.

"The young generation has forgot how, it seems. Very well." He took a

pinch himself gracefully, closed the box, tapped it gently with his

long fingers, as was his wont. "Monsieur will forgive my back," he

said, turning abruptly and calling over his shoulder, "and in a moment

we must go."

Ah, he could be, he was a gentleman of the ancient school, indeed. It

seemed but a second to youth, although it was a long time to age,

before he tore them apart and led the half-fainting girl away.

CHAPTER XXVI

THEY MEET A LION IN THE WAY

Morning in the springtime, the sixth of March, 1815, bright and sunny,

the air fresh. The parade-ground was filled with troops. There were the

veterans of the old Seventh-of-the-Line, under the young Colonel

Labédoyère. Here were the close-ranked lines of the Fifth regiment,

Major Lestoype astride his big horse at the head of the first battalion.

Grenier, Drehon, Suraif and the other officers with their companies, the

men in heavy marching order, their white cockades shining in the bright

sunlight in their shakos. The artillery was drawn up on the walls, the

little squadron of household cavalry was in attendance upon the Marquis.

His lean, spare figure looked well upon a horse. He rode with all the

grace and ease of a boy.

Yes, there were the colors, too, the white flag of France with the golden

lily in the place of the Eagle on the staff, at the head of the column.

With ruffling of drums and presenting of arms the flag had been escorted

to its place, and from the little group of cavalry had come the words not

heard till recently for so many years in France:

"_Vive le Roi_!"

The troops had assembled silently, somewhat sullenly. They stood

undemonstrative now. What they would do no one could tell. The couriers

who had dashed into the town yesterday night had told the story to the

Marquis. Napoleon had landed five days before. He was within a day's

march of Grenoble. His following consisted of eleven hundred French

infantry, eighty Polish horsemen, and a few guns; troops of the line, and

the grenadiers of the Elba guard. The peasants had been apathetic. He

had carefully avoided garrisoned towns, choosing the unfrequented and

difficult route over the maritime Alps of Southern France. He was

marching straight into the heart of the country, to conquer or to die

with this little band. The messenger's news had been for the Governor's

ears alone, but it had got out. Indeed, the tidings spread everywhere.

Every wind that swept over the mountains seemed to be laden with the

story. The whole city knew that the foot of the idol was once more upon

the soil of France. They saw no feet of clay to that idol, then.

The news had reached Paris via Marseilles almost before it was known in

Grenoble. The terror-stricken government yet acted promptly. Troops

were put in motion, fast-riding expresses and couriers warned garrisons

and transmitted orders to capture or kill without mercy. By a singular

freak of fate most of these orders were perforce given to the old

companions in arms of the Emperor. Most of these were openly disaffected

toward the King, and eager to welcome Napoleon. A few were indifferent

or inimical to the prospective appeal of their former Captain. Still

fewer swore to capture him, and one "to bring him back in an iron cage!"

Only here and there a royalist pure and simple held high command, as the

Marquis at Grenoble.

The old noble acted with great promptitude and decision. As the Governor

of Dauphiné he had an extensive command. Grenoble was the most important

town in the southeast. Within its walls was a great arsenal. It was

strongly fortified, and adequately garrisoned. No better place to resist

the Emperor, if his initial force had grown sufficiently to make it

formidable, could be found. Rumor magnified that force immensely. The

Marquis gave the order for the concentration of all the troops in the

province, to the number of six thousand. He sent out scouting

detachments, and companies of engineers to break down bridges and block

up roads--none of whom, by the way, obeyed his orders. In short, he did

everything that experience, skill and devotion could suggest to stop the

Emperor and terminate the great adventure then and there.

The ruffling of the drums in the square ceased. The old Marquis detached

himself from his staff and the cavalry and rode out between the

regiments. He lifted his hand. There was an intensity of silence on

every hand. Even the people of the town had left their places of

business and were crowded close to the lines to hear and see what was to

be done.

"Bonaparte," said the Marquis, that high, thin, somewhat cracked old

voice carrying with astonishing clearness in every direction, "landed

from Elba in the Gulf of Juan a few days ago. This usurper, this

bloody-minded tyrant, has broken every oath, disregarded every treaty.

He is coming to Grenoble. He will be here to-day. As loyal subjects of

our gracious and most catholic Majesty, King Louis XVIII, whom God

preserve," continued the old man, taking off his hat, "it becomes our

duty to seize, and if he resists, to kill this treacherous monster, who

had plunged Europe into a sea of blood and well-nigh ruined France." The

old man did not mince words, it appeared! "You, gentlemen and comrades,

have all sworn oaths before God and man to be faithful to the King whose

bread you eat and whose uniform you wear. It has been said to me that

there is disaffection among you. I cannot believe that a soldier of

France can be false to his oaths and to his flag. The Fifth Regiment of

the Line will march with me to meet the Corsican. The cavalry and my

personal escort will keep the gates. If by any chance we should be

beaten, which I cannot think possible with such brave men and gallant

officers, the town must be held. Colonel Labédoyère, to you I commit the

charge. Have your men line the walls. Dispose the troops which will

soon be arriving advantageously. See that the guns are double-shotted.

If by any chance I do not return, hold the place to the last. Troops are

marching to your aid from all over France. Major Lestoype, move your

regiment. _Vive le Roi_!" ended the old man.

Again the cry was echoed, but not by many; the household cavalry, one or

two of the newer companies of the brigade, some of the citizens. The

Marquis noticed it; everybody noticed it. Well, what difference did it

make to the old man? They might cry or they might not cry. Fight they

must, and fight they should. He had something of the old Roman spirit in

him, the Marquis d'Aumenier. Upon him had devolved the conduct of the

critical issue. If he could stop Napoleon then and there his venture

would be a mere escapade and a sorry one. If he could not, then God help

France and the world.

From the window of his prison, which overlooked the parade, Marteau had

seen and heard all. The Emperor was coming and he would not be there to

extend him a welcome. He forgot that if Napoleon had been a day later it

would have made no difference to Marteau if he never came. He would have

given years of his life, if it had been possible, to have marched with

the column.

Orders had been published that morning postponing his execution until the

return of the regiment. Just what was in the Marquis' mind no one could

absolutely say, but he was shrewd enough to recognize the possibility of

an outbreak or an attempted mutiny among the troops, when the sentence of

execution was being carried out. He did not want any difficulties of

that kind then. Not because he feared them or felt unequal to them! Oh,

no. But because such an outbreak would make the regiment more difficult

to control in the greater emergency, and he knew he needed all the

influence and moral power and force he could exercise to keep it in line

for the graver duty and more tremendous responsibility it must now face.

And because he did not wish to leave it with Marteau in Grenoble, he took

the regiment with him. If he could force it to do its duty and arrest

Napoleon, he could deal with Marteau at his leisure. The Emperor was the

greater issue, and Marteau benefited by that fact.

So, with drums beating and flags flying, the Fifth-of-the-Line marched

down the road. With the Colonel and his staff rode Sir Gervaise Yeovil

and his son. They had asked permission and it had been accorded them.

Indeed, the staff was scanty. Young St. Laurent and an orderly, besides

the two Englishmen, alone accompanied the old man. Realizing how

critical the situation was, and how important it was that the town should

be held, he had left every officer and man upon whom he could count with

the cavalry, and with instructions to watch Labédoyère particularly, and

check any disloyalty, if possible. If the Marquis alone could not effect

his purpose with the regiment, no staff officer could aid him. He was a

lonely old man and a hard that morning. The odds against him were

tremendous, and his weapons were flawed and breaking in his hand. That

only made him the more firmly resolute. He knew how sometimes one man

could enforce his will on unwilling thousands. Was he that man that day?

He would see.

Some miles south of the town the winding road ran along the side of a

high and rocky hill. On the side opposite to the hill was a deep morass.

This place was known as the Gap. The Marquis, who had apparently thought

of everything, had reconnoitered the country, and had decided upon the

defensibleness of a place like this in the case of such an emergency as

he was about to face, for along that hillside ran the main highway to the

coast of France.

The troops reached it about noon-time. The road was high up on the

hillside. The Marquis, riding in advance of his regiment, saw far down

the long road and across a little river a moving column of men. Above

them floated the tricolor flag, the blue and the red vividly distinct in

the bright sun, which seemed to be reflected, as it were, from a crown of

glory at the top of the staff. There were perhaps twelve hundred

soldiers on foot and a few score on horseback. They were coming steadily

along the road. The distance was almost too great to distinguish men,

but one rode a white horse at the head. The soldiers could see with

their minds and hearts better than their eyes, and they recognized that

gray-coated figure on that familiar white horse. They could hear the

beating of drums faintly. The bridges had not been broken. The fords

were not guarded. The advance parties had failed. Presage of disaster!

The Marquis congratulated himself that he was in time to repair the

disobedience of orders, which he promised himself to punish at the first

opportunity. Instantly he directed Major Lestoype to deploy the men from

column into line, so that they filled the road, which was here very broad

and spacious. On a sloping hillside he placed flanking companies. The

command was given to load, and the ramrods soon rang in the gun-barrels.

Major Lestoype's voice shook as he gave the commands, which were repeated

hoarsely, brokenly, nervously, by the company and the platoon officers.

The dispositions of the men were soon concluded. The place of the

Marquis was behind the line, but he rode to the right of it in a little

depression cut out by the rains of winter in the side of the hill,

underneath a great tree which was just beginning to show its leaves in

the soft spring air and sunshine. From there he could command every part

of the line with his glance, or move to the front or rear as the occasion

might warrant. There he could see and be seen.

He was always pale, his old face seamed and drawn, but to his friends,

the Englishmen, he seemed paler and older than ever, as he sat quietly

calming his nervous horse. And Sir Gervaise Yeovil was pale, too. Not

that he had any bodily fear, but the incident was so fraught with

consequences which a man as experienced as he could so easily foresee,

appreciate and dread, that its possibilities oppressed his heart. Young

Frank Yeovil was all excitement, however. Napoleon had been buried in

Elba, but none mentioned his name in any country in Europe without a

thrill. Few do it now without a thrill, for that matter. The young man,

modestly in the background, as was proper, leaned forward in his saddle

and stared at the approaching men and the figure to the fore. So this

was the great Bonaparte? He longed earnestly for a nearer view.

"Think you, my lord," whispered the Baronet to the old Marquis, his great

anxiety showing in his voice, "that your men are to be depended upon?

That they will----"

The Marquis shook his head, stared down the ranks at the men standing

grim and tensely silent at parade-rest.

"They look steady," he replied, shrugging his shoulders. "They have

taken an oath to the King, and--God only knows."

"What shall you do?"

"The best I can with the means at hand," was the indomitable answer.

"And if----"

"There are no 'ifs,' monsieur," was the imperious way in which the

Marquis silenced the other.

Recognizing that he had said enough, and indeed pitying the old man so

alone, the Baronet drew back a little.

"By heaven," whispered young Frank Yeovil to his father, "I wouldn't be

elsewhere for a thousand pounds."

"It may cost you that before you get away, and more," said the old man

grimly. "It will cost England millions, unless----"

"_Monsieur le Commandant_," said old Major Lestoype, riding up to the

group and saluting respectfully.

"Major Lestoype."

"The command is formed and ready, sir."

"Very good. Take your place and be prepared."

"Will _Monsieur le Marquis_ permit me?" asked the old soldier, who had

acquired a genuine respect for the old noble.

"Permit you what?"

"To return his advice," was the not unexpected reply.

"The thought of me, which is evidently back of your words, sir, inclines

me to overlook their meaning and its impropriety. Know, sir, that I am

always ready," was the grim comment of the ancient soldier.

"Indeed, sir--" began the other, but the Marquis cut him short with an

imperious gesture and a word.

"Retire."

The Major saluted, resumed his place in the line. No one spoke. The

approaching soldiers were nearer now. They were coming. The

Fifth-of-the-Line sensed rather than heard a command down the road. They

saw the guns of that little army come from their shoulders to a slanting

position across the breast--arms aport! It was the habit of the Guard to

go into action at arms aport. What had Dorsenne, _Le Beau Dorsenne_,

said on that famous day? "The Guard fights at the point of the bayonet!"

Would the guns come down to a charge? Would they have to meet bayonet

thrusts from these terrible soldiers?

There was something ominous in the slow movements of the men, picked men

they were, the grenadiers of the Elba Guard especially being of great

size, their huge bearskins towering above them. They were marching in

columns of fours, but the road was wide; another sharp command and the

men with slow yet beautiful precision deployed into a close column of

companies at half distance--the very formation for a charge in mass! The

brass drums were rolling a famous march, "La Grenadière," the grenadier's

march. The hearts of the Fifth-of-the-Line were keeping time to the

beating of those drums.

Ah, they were splendid soldiers, that regiment of infantry. Even the

youths got something from the veterans. They stood still, quiet, at

parade-rest, staring. The distance was growing shorter, shorter and

shorter. Some of the officers looked toward the Marquis. Even his

nervous horse seemed to have caught the spirit of the moment, for he was

at last still. The old man sat there immobile, his lips pressed, his

eyes fixed on the approaching troops and shining like sword-blades in the

sunlight--horse and man carved, as it were, out of the rock of the

mountains. Presently that high, thin, sharp voice rang out. Men heard

it above the rolling of the drums.

"Attention!" he cried. The men straightened up, swung the heavy muskets

to their sides. "Carry arms." As one man the battalion lifted its

weapons. "Make ready!" With a little crash the guns were dropped into

the outstretched hands.

The approaching men were nearer now. Still they came on with arms aport.

Still the drums ruffled and rolled at their head. They were not going to

make any response apparently to the fire of the Fifth-of-the-Line. Were

they, indeed, to come to death's grapple at the bayonet's point with that

irresistible Guard? But no, there was a sudden movement, a change in the

approaching ranks.

"Secure arms," cried old Cambronne, and with their guns reversed and

comfortably tucked under their arms, the old soldiers came on.

The meaning was plain, the battle was to be a moral one, evidently!

"Aim!" cried the sharp voice of the Marquis, and the guns came up to the

shoulders of the long line, as they bent their heads and mechanically

squinted along the barrels.

The moment had come! Out in the front had ridden the familiar figure on

the white horse. They could see the details of his person now. His pale

face was flushed under the familiar black, three-cornered cocked hat with

its tricolor cockade, his gray redingote was buttoned across his breast.

He suddenly raised his hand. The drums stopped beating, the moving

grenadiers halted. Ah, at last!

The Emperor sprang from his horse, not heavily, as of late, but with some

of the alertness of a boy. He nodded to the ranks. Old General

Cambronne, in command of the Guard, stepped forward. He took from the

colour-bearer the Eagle. Four grenadiers of the Colour Guard closed

about him--one of them was called Bullet-Stopper, by the way. In rear

and a little to the right of the Emperor he moved, holding up the flag

and the Eagle. A deep breath, almost a sob, ran down the line of the

regiment. Protended guns wavered. Napoleon stepped forward. He threw

back his gray overcoat, disclosing the familiar green uniform of the

Chasseurs of the Guard, which he affected. The cross of the Legion of

Honor glittered on his breast, a shining mark at which to aim.

The flush on his ivory face died as quickly as it had come. He was

apparently as composed and as steady as if he had been cut out of

granite. But tiny beads of sweat bedewed his brow, shaded by that

familiar cocked hat. What would the next moment disclose? Would he be a

prisoner, the laughing stock, the jest of Europe? Or would he lie dead

in the road, a French bullet in his heart? He had faced the guns of

every people in Europe, but he had never faced French guns before. Would

any finger in that line press a trigger? Only God knew, but the Emperor

would soon find out. Better death than exile without wife, child,

friend, or France. On the hazard of the moment he staked all. Yet he

who could have looked into that broad breast could have seen that heart

beating as never before. Firmly he stepped on.

CHAPTER XXVII

COMRADE! GENERAL! EMPEROR!

"Behold the traitor," shouted the Marquis, his emotion lending depth to

that thin voice. "Fire, soldiers!"

No finger pressed a trigger. The silence was ghastly.

Ah! a thrill of hope in the breast of the greater Captain, of despair

in the heart of the lesser.

"By God!" muttered Yeovil, "he has lost them!"

The Marquis spurred his horse forward.

"Your oath! For France! The King! Fire!" he shouted.

And now a greater voice broke the silence.

"Comrades! Do you not know me?" said the Emperor. Was there a tremble

in his clear, magnificent voice? He paused, his speech stopped.

"Behold your General," he resumed. He waited a few seconds again and

then finally, desperately, "Let any one among you who wishes to kill

his Emperor fire--now."

He raised his voice tremendously with that last word. It almost came

with the force and clearness of a battle-cry. The Marquis sat

stupefied, his face ghastly pale.

"There is yet time," he cried hoarsely at last. "Is there none here

faithful to his King? Fire!"

But the gun-barrels were coming down. "_Comrade! General! Emperor!_"

who could be indifferent to that appeal? Disregarding the old Marquis

absolutely, as if he were not on the earth, the Emperor came nearer

smiling. He was irresistible to these soldiers when he smiled.

"Well," he said, his hands outstretched and open, "soldiers of the

Fifth, who were with me in Italy, how are you all? I am come back to

see you again, _mes enfants_," he went on genially. "Is there any one

of you who wishes to kill me?"

"No, no, Sire. Certainly not," came the cry.

"Escape," whispered the Marquis to the Englishman, "while there is yet

time to take my niece away. To you I commit her. . . . St. Laurent,

to the town with the tidings!"

"By God, no," growled Yeovil, as St. Laurent saluted and galloped

rapidly down the road. "I am going to see the end of this. The damned

cravens!" he muttered, looking at the soldiers.

"And yet," continued Napoleon to the troops, "you presented your guns

at me."

"Sire," cried one of the veterans, dropping his musket and running his

ramrod down the barrel, "it is not loaded. We only went through the

motions."

The Emperor laughed. He was nearer.

"Lestoype," he said, "is it thou, old comrade, and Grenier and Drehon!"

It was astonishing that he should remember them, but so he did. He

went down the line, speaking to the men, inspecting them just as of

old. The officers could not keep them in line. They crowded about

their old leader. Shouts of "_Vive l'Empereur!_" rent the air. Men

took off their caps, tore out the hated white cockades, trampled them

under foot, and from pockets where they had concealed them for this

very moment, they replaced them with the tricolor.

In his movements the Emperor at last confronted the Marquis.

"And who is this?" asked Napoleon, staring up at him curiously.

The Marquis' heart was broken. It was not in the human power of any

servant of the King to dominate that scene. A greater personality than

his was there. The Emperor had shown himself as of yore, and exhibited

his mastery. But no greater ideal possessed any man than that in the

heart of the old noble. He hated, he loathed, he abominated the man

who looked up at him. He saw in the action of the soldiery a picture

of the action of France, the downfall of the King. Well, it flashed

into his mind that he at least, and perhaps he alone, might put a stop

to it. From his holster he whipped out a pistol and leveled it at the

Emperor. Lestoype, riding near, struck up his hand, the bullet sped

harmlessly, the Emperor stood unharmed. A roar of rage burst from the

soldiers who came running. Dropping the weapon and reining his

startled horse violently back, so as to give himself a certain present

and temporary freedom of action, the Marquis drew his other pistol.

Lestoype spurred his horse in front of the Emperor, but Napoleon was

not menaced.

"Have no fear," said the Marquis almost gently. "I have failed my

King. The bullet goes into a truer heart--my own," he added proudly.

Before any one could stop him there was a flash, a muffled report, the

spare figure reeled and fell forward on the saddle. He, at least,

after the manner of his house, would not survive a failure which,

although he could not prevent it, must inevitably be charged against

him.

"A brave man," said the Emperor coolly, staring at him with his hard,

bright, gray eyes. "See that his body is cared for in accordance with

his rank and his courage. But who are these?" he asked, remounting his

horse and facing the two Englishmen, who had dismounted and received

the body of the Marquis, stone dead instantly. "As I live, it is the

man of law," he said, his marvelous memory serving him well again, "who

was at the Château d'Aumenier. It only needs Marteau----"

"He is alive, your Majesty," interposed Lestoype eagerly. "He brought

back our Eagle and is----"

"Where is it, and why is he not with you?"

"The Eagle is in hiding somewhere in Grenoble, Marteau in prison. He

hid it, and because he would not tell where, the Marquis yonder

condemned him to death."

"He has not yet been shot?"

"Not yet, Sire. He waits the return of the regiment."

"Good," said the Emperor. "We will surprise him. Face the men about.

We shall go on to Grenoble and see what welcome awaits us there."

He was in high spirits. In this first clash with the troops of King

Louis he found that he exercised the old influence over them and from

the army, at least, he now realized that he had nothing to fear.

One of the men who had stood nearest the Emperor back of Cambronne was

an old grenadier. He had recognized the Marquis d'Aumenier, he had

heard the Emperor's conversation and the name of Marteau, and a thrill

went through the heart of old Bal-Arrêt when he learned that his

beloved officer and friend was yet alive.

The body of the old Marquis--covered with his cloak, and over his heart

the now discarded royal standard, for which nobody cared since he was

dead--was placed on a farm wagon and escorted back to Grenoble by some

of the officers of the regiment and two companies, with reversed arms.

He was watched over by the two Englishmen, whom Napoleon freely

permitted to follow their own pleasure in their movements, being

desirous of not adding fuel to any possible fire of animosity and of

showing every respect to every Frenchman, whatever his predilection.

With the Fifth-of-the-Line in the lead, the army moved forward after a

halt for noonday meal. The greatly relieved, happy and confident

Emperor, riding now with the old regiment of Italy in the van, and now

with the grenadiers in the rear, approached Grenoble late in the

afternoon. The short March day was drawing to a close when they came

in sight of the heavily garrisoned walls of the town.

Labédoyère had obeyed orders in some particulars. The ramparts had

been manned, the cannon were loaded, torches were blazing on the walls,

and the town was awake and seething with excitement. He had declared

for the Emperor, and after a sharp little conflict had disarmed the

royalist cavalry and himself held the gates. Every regiment that had

come in had cast its lot in with Napoleon. As the soldiers in the town

heard, in the twilight, the beating of the drums--"_La Grenadière_" the

old march again!--the Colonel of the Seventh, having seized the few

royalists, opened the gates, marched out at the head of the troops to

receive the Emperor with arms, yes, but with open arms. Amid the

shouts of the citizens and the delirious joy of the soldiery, the

Emperor entered the city; in his train, first fruits of the war, was

the body of the old servant of the unfortunate King.

It was Pierre who burst into the apartment of the little Countess with

the news.

"The Emperor is here, mademoiselle," he cried enthusiastically. "The

soldiers are bringing him to the palace."

"And Marteau?"

"He will be free."

"Thank God!" cried the girl, and then she remembered her uncle. "And

the Marquis?" she asked.

"My dearest Laure," said the kindly, sympathetic voice of Captain Frank

Yeovil, stepping out of the twilight of the hall into the bright light

of the little drawing-room where last night she had bade farewell to

Marteau, "prepare yourself for some dreadful----"

"Yes, yes, I know," she interrupted. "The Emperor is here."

"The troops went over to him."

"And my uncle?"

"He----"

"Speak, monsieur. What has happened? Did the Emperor----"

"No one harmed him. He could not survive the disgrace, mademoiselle.

Prepare yourself."

"Oh, for God's sake, delay not your tidings."

"He died like a soldier of France on the field, by his own hand rather

than survive what he wrongfully thought his shame."

It was the policy of the Emperor to be merciful; it was his wish to be

clement. If possible, he wanted peace. If mercy and gentleness could

get it he could have it. He gave free permission to Sir Gervaise

Yeovil and his son to return to England. He made no objection to their

taking with them the Countess Laure, now the last of the line. He,

himself, was present at the funeral of the Marquis, who was buried with

all the military honors of his rank and station. There were generous

hearts among those Frenchmen. As the representative of the King they

had hated him, but when he had died so gallantly rather than survive

what his nice sensibility believed to be his dishonor, his failure at

any rate, they honored him. If he had been a Marshal of France they

could have done no more.

Marteau, restored to his rank and position as aide to the Emperor, had

but a few moments with the grief-stricken woman.

"No," she said sadly, "it makes no difference. You know my heart. No

words that I can utter could add anything more to the testimony I have

given you. But I had promised my uncle, and now that he is dead, the

promise is doubly sacred. I must go. Thank your Emperor for me for

all he has done for me, his enemy, and for my friends, and for what he

has done for you. Tell him the story of the Eagle, and the little part

in it that I played and--you will not forget me as I will not forget

you."

"God grant," said the young soldier, "that I may die for France on some

battlefield, my last thought of you."

"Ah, if that should befall you, I should envy you your rest. Would to

God I might look forward to such a quick and happy ending," said the

grief-stricken woman, turning away.

The next morning, with great ceremony and much rejoicing, the Eagle was

brought out, and the Emperor once more presented it to the regiment.

He did more than that. He signalized the action of the

Fifth-of-the-Line, the news of which had been sent broadcast by

couriers and which struck a keynote for the army to follow, by

incorporating it as a supplementary Fifth regiment of Grenadiers of the

Guard. He promised them a new flag and new bearskins. He promoted

Lestoype to be a lieutenant-colonel, Labédoyère to be a general, and

promised every veteran officer his old rank or higher in the new army

to be formed. The men were promised bounties and rewards, and, with

high hopes and glorious anticipations, the march for Paris was begun.

So by the wayside and in the fields around this little army in that

springtime, the violets bloomed again.

BOOK III

THE LAST TRY

CHAPTER XXVIII

AT THE STAMP OF THE EMPEROR'S FOOT

The wonderful genius of Napoleon, which had been so clearly manifested in

so many ways during his varied career, was never exhibited to better

advantage than in the three months after his return from Elba. During

that period he reorganized the government, recreated and reëquipped an

army. The veterans flocked to his standards, and within the time

mentioned he had actually two hundred and fifty thousand men under arms.

With the better moiety of this force, the best armed, the best equipped,

the best officered contingent, he took the field early in the month of

June. The Emperor did not want war any more than France did. He began

his new reign with the most pacific of proclamations, which probably

reflected absolutely the whole desire of his heart. But the patience of

Europe had been exhausted and the belief of rulers and peoples in the

honesty of his professions, declarations or intentions, had been

hopelessly shattered.

His arrival effected an immediate resurrection of the almost moribund

Congress of Vienna. The squabbling, arguing, trifling plenipotentiaries

of the powers had burst into gigantic laughter--literally, actual

merriment, albeit of a somewhat grim character!--when they received the

news of Napoleon's return. They were not laughing at Napoleon but at

themselves. They had been dividing the lion's skin in high-flown

phrases, which meant nothing, endeavoring to incorporate the Decalogue

and the Sermon on the Mount in their protocols and treaties, when they

suddenly discovered that the Emperor was still to be reckoned with.

Differences were instantly laid aside and forgotten. Russia, Prussia and

Austria immediately agreed to put in the field two hundred and fifty

thousand men each. The smaller powers, Sweden, Spain, the Low Countries,

promised contingents. England once more assumed the familiar role of

paymaster by immediately placing a vast subsidy at the disposal of the

allies. She gave them also what was of more value than a subsidy, a

soldier of the first rank to command the armies in the field.

The Duke of Wellington had never crossed swords with the greatest captain

of his day and perhaps of all time. But he had measured himself with the

ablest and most famous of Napoleon's Marshals. With greatly inferior

forces, through four years of desperate fighting, he had defeated the

Marshals and armies of France. The dashing and gallant Junot had been

routed at Vimiero, Victor had been overwhelmed at Talavera. Wily old

Massena with all his ability could look back to the disaster of the

blood-stained hill of Busaco, Marmont, the dainty tactician, had been

smashed at Salamanca, stubborn Jourdan had been at last decisively

defeated at Victoria. Finally, the brilliant Soult had been hurled out

of the Pyrenees and had met his master at Toulouse. Still, great as were

these soldiers and highly trained as they had been in the best of

schools, not one of them was a Napoleon; all of them together were not,

for that matter. Would the luster of Wellington's fame, which extended

from the Ganges to the Ebro, be tarnished when he met the Emperor? It

was a foregone conclusion, of course, that Schwarzenberg would command

the Austrians; Blücher, the "Hussar General," the hard-fighting,

downright old "Marshal Vorwärts," the Prussians; and the Emperor

Alexander, with his veteran captains, the vast horde of Russians.

To assemble, arm, equip and move two hundred and fifty thousand men was a

great task in those days even for a rich and populous country flushed

with victory and in the enjoyment of an abundance of time and unlimited

means. The organizing, it almost might be said the creative, ability of

Napoleon was not shared by his opponents. Try as they would, June found

their preparations still woefully incomplete. The Austrians had scarcely

moved at all. The slower Russians, who were farther away and were to

constitute the reserve army, could be discounted from any present

calculation of the enemies of the Empire. The English and their smaller

allies from the Low Countries, and the Prussians, whose hatred of France

and the Emperor was greater than that of any other nation, were quicker

to move. Two hundred and fifteen thousand men, half of them Prussians, a

third of the other moiety English, the remaining two-thirds Belgians,

Hollanders, and other miscellaneous nationalities, had joined the colors

on the northwestern frontier of France. One-half of this joint assembly

was commanded by Blücher and the other half by Wellington.

Leaving the weaker half of his own great army to complete its equipment,

and placing strong detachments in fortress and at strategetic points to

oppose the Austrians should they advance, the Emperor, as has been said,

with about one hundred and twenty-five thousand men took the field.

Naturally, inevitably, Belgium, the immemorial battleground of the

nations, and the great English-Prussian army were his objectives. He saw

clearly the dangers that encompassed him, the demands he must meet and

the conditions over which he must triumph.

It was by no means certain, even if he decisively defeated his enemies in

Belgium and occupied Brussels, that his trouble would be over. There

would still be left a possible five hundred thousand trained and

disciplined men with whom he would have to deal, under rulers and

generals the inveteracy of whose hatreds he could well understand. But

at least his position would be greatly improved by a successful

preliminary campaign, any success in short, to say nothing of so great a

one. If he could show himself once more the inimitable Captain, the

thunderbolt of war, the organizer of victory, the Napoleon of other days,

the effect upon France, at least, would be electrical. And the world

would again take notice.

The Emperor had to admit that, save in the army, there had not been much

response from tired-out, exhausted France, to the appeals of its once

irresistible and beloved leader. But the spirit of the army was that of

devotion itself. There was a kind of a blind madness in it of which men

spoke afterward as a phenomenon that could only be recognized, that could

never be explained or understood. They could not account for it. Yet it

was a powerful factor, the most powerful, indeed, that enabled the

Emperor to accomplish so much, and fall short of complete triumph by so

narrow a margin.

The spirit of this new army was not that burning love of liberty which

had animated the armies of the early republic and turned its

tatterdemalion legions into paladins. It was not the heroic consecration

of the veterans of later years to their native land. It was a strange,

mysterious obsession, a personal attachment to Napoleon, the

individual--an unlimited, unbounded tribute to his fascination, to his

own unique personality. It has not died out, and seems destined to live.

Even in death Napoleon, after a century, exercises the same fascination

over all sorts and conditions of men! Wise and foolish alike acknowledge

his spell. Men hate, men loathe much of that for which the Corsican

adventurer and soldier of fortune stood; they see clearly and admit

freely the thorough and entire selfishness of the colossal man, but they

cannot resist his appeal, even after one hundred years!

Yet in the long run no personal attachment, however deep, however ardent,

however complete, can take the place as the inspiration for heroic deeds

of that deeper passion of love of country. Nor can any personal devotion

to a mere man produce such a steadfastness of character as is brought

about by adherence to a great cause or a great land. A great passion

like the love of a people for a great country and that for which it

stands is eternal. Usually the feet of clay upon which the idol stands

have only to be recognized to dissipate the ardor and fervor of the

worshipers. But Napoleon was then an exception to all rules. Though he

slew men, wasted them, threw them away, they trusted him. We look at him

through the vista of years and in some way understand his soldiers.

Reason to the contrary, we can experience in some degree, at least, even

in the cold-blooded humanitarian materialism of the present, the old

thrill and the old admiration. Did his contemporaries love him because

they believed he thought in terms of France, we wonder?

So that this body of soldiery was probably the most formidable army in

the quality of its units that had ever been mustered on the globe. There

was not a man in it who was not a veteran. Some of them were veterans of

fifteen years of campaigning with Napoleon. This that came was to be the

sixtieth pitched battle in which some of them had participated. Even the

younger men had gone through more than one campaign and taken part in

much hard fighting. Back from the prisons where they had been confined

and the great fortresses they had held until the Emperor's abdication had

come the veterans. The Old Guard had been reconstituted. As a reward

for its action at Grenoble, the Fifth-of-the-Line had been incorporated

in it as a supplementary regiment, a second Fifth regiment of Grenadiers.

The ranks of the Guard had been most carefully culled, the unserviceable

had been weeded out, their places taken by men well fitted by their

record, their physical prowess and their personal appearance to belong to

that famous corps. Not the Immortals of Xerxes, the Spartan Band of

Leonidas, the Companion Cavalry of Alexander, the Carthaginians of

Hannibal, the Tenth Legion of Caesar, the Spanish Infantry of Parma, or

the Ironsides of Cromwell, had surpassed the record of these Pretorians

of Imperial France.

The same weeding-out process had been carried out in the rest of the

army. The flower of French cavalry, the matchless French artillery and

the famous infantry which had trampled down the world were ranged under

the Eagles. Other corps had been drained for equipment. But in some

particulars the army differed from the Imperial armies of the past. With

two exceptions, the great Marshals were not there. Murat, king of

horsemen and swordsmen, was a prisoner in his ignoble Neapolitan realm

awaiting trial and execution. Marmont and Mortier dared not present

themselves before the Emperor they had betrayed. Wily Massena, the

wisest and ablest of them all, was old and in convenient retirement.

Macdonald, the incorruptible, was with the fat-bodied, fat-witted Bourbon

King in Ghent. Berthier, with his marvelous mastery of detail and his

almost uncanny ability to translate the Emperor's thoughts even into

orders, had not rejoined the Eagles--a terrible loss, indeed.

There were but two of the Marshals of old with Napoleon. Soult, in some

respects the acutest strategist and finest tactician, was Chief of Staff.

He tried his best to fill Berthier's position and did it acceptably, if

not with the success of that master. The other Marshal was preëminently

the battle-leader, red-headed Michael Ney, the fighter of fighters, a man

whose personality was worth an army-corps, whose reputation and influence

with the soldiers was of the very highest.

The rest of the officers, while veterans, were younger and less-known

men. Drouet d'Erlon commanded one of the corps; Reille another; Grouchy

another; Druot was the leader of the Guard; Kellerman, Milhaud, Gerard

and Maurice the cavalry. It was an army of veterans, officered by young

men, commanded by the greatest of soldiers.

But the army had not yet "found itself." It had no natural coherence and

there had been no time to acquire any. It had not yet been welded

together. Officers, men, regiments, brigades, divisions were, more or

less, new and strange to one another. There was a vast deal of suspicion

in the ranks. The discipline was rather because of past habit than

present practice. That army needed a few victories, and badly needed

them. A welding process was required. Given time and success to shake

it together, and it might laugh at the world.

Would it get time and win victory? That was the question. And if it got

neither, what then? How would it stand up under the strain? Would the

tie that bound hold in defeat? Could the rest of the army live up to the

Guard, for instance? Yes, that was the grave, the all-important question.

There was an enormous disparity in numbers between the French army--or it

would better be called Napoleon's army--and that of the allies he

purposed to attack. The allies were to the French in the ratio of about

two to one. Whatever else was lacking, Napoleon had not lost his

audacity, nor when his intentions are disclosed by a study of his plans,

can it be argued that his strategic intention was lacking in brilliancy

or daring.

He determined with his smaller but compact and manageable army to thrust

himself between the two wings of the somewhat loosely coherent enemy

under its divided command; to hold off one while he smashed the other and

then to concentrate upon the surviving half and mete out to it the same

hard fortune. In other words, trusting to his ability, he deliberately

placed his own army between two others, each of which practically equaled

his own. He thrust himself within the jaws of a trap, to use a homely

simile, intending to hold one arm of the trap open while he broke up the

other. He intended to burst through the allied line and smash up each

half in succession.

Of course there was always the danger that he could not burst through

that line; or that he could not hold back one half while he fought the

other, or that holding back one half he could not beat the other, or

having beaten one half he would be too weak to fall on the other. There

was always the danger that the trap would be sprung, that he would be

caught in its jaws or, to change the metaphor, that he would be like the

wheat between the upper and the nether millstone. Still he did not think

so, and he did not go into the undertaking blindly. As he had said, in

his own case, "War was not a conjectural art," and he had most carefully

counted the cost, estimated the probabilities. In short, he looked well

before he leaped--yet a man may look well and leap wrong after all.

On these considerations he based his grand strategy. The army of the

Prussians had approached the French frontier from the east; the army of

the English and allies from the northwest. Napoleon had a complete

knowledge of one of the Captains opposing him. He knew and accurately

estimated Blücher. He did not know and he did not accurately estimate

Wellington. He viewed the latter with contempt; the former with a

certain amount of disdainful approbation, for while Blücher was no

strategist and less of a tactician, he was a fighter and a fighter is

always dangerous and to be dreaded. Gneisenau, a much more accomplished

soldier, was Blücher's second in command, but he was a negligible factor

in the Emperor's mind. The fact that Wellington had beaten all of

Napoleon's Marshals with whom he had come in contact had intensified the

Emperor's hatred. Instead of begetting caution in dealing with him,

Napoleon's antagonism had blinded him as to Wellington's ability.

He also rated the Prussians higher than the English as fighters, and when

his officers, who had felt the power of the thin red line which had so

often wrecked the French column, explained to him that there were no

better defensive fighters on earth than the English, not even the

Russians, he had laughed them to scorn, attributing their warnings to the

fact that they had been beaten in Spain and had grown timid. The Emperor

did not purpose to be beaten in France or Belgium by the stolid English.

In more detail his first plan was to confuse Wellington, who held the

right of the allied line, then fall upon him before he had time to

concentrate, and beat him or contain him with a detachment under Ney,

while the Emperor in person thereafter put Blücher to rout--and all of

these things he came very near accomplishing completely. Certainly, he

carried out his plans successfully and to the letter until the final day

of battle.

He reasoned that if he could beat Blücher and threaten his

communications, what was left of the Prussian army, which Napoleon hoped

would not be much, would immediately retreat eastward; and that when

Blücher had been thrown out of the game for the present, he could turn on

Wellington and his English and allies and make short work of him. It did

not occur to him that even if he beat Blücher and beat Wellington,

provided the defeats did not end in utter routs, and they both retreated,

they might withdraw on parallel lines and effect a junction later when

even after the double defeat they would still so greatly outnumber him

that his chances of success would be faint indeed.

The possibility of their pursuing any other course than that he had

forecast for them never entered his mind. His own conception of their

action was, in fact, an obsession with him. Yet that which he thought

they would do they did not; and that which he was confident they would

not do they did!

CHAPTER XXIX

WATERLOO--THE FINAL REVIEW

In a romance like this, in which campaigns and marches, maneuvers and

battles, however decisive they may be in history, are only incidental

to the careers of the characters herein presented to the reader, it is

not necessary for the chronicler to turn himself into a military

historian, much as he would like it. Therefore, in great restraint, he

presses on, promising hereafter only so much history as may serve to

show forth the somber background.

In this setting of the scene of the great drama to be played, young

Marteau has been necessarily somewhat lost sight of. He was very much

in evidence during that hundred days of feverish and frantic activity.

Napoleon had distinguished him highly. He had given him the rank of a

Colonel of the Guard, but he had still retained him on his staff. Good

and experienced staff-officers were rare, and the Emperor needed all he

could get; he could have used many more than were available. And as

Marteau was one of those who were attached to the Emperor by the double

motive of love of the man and love of his country, believing as he did

that the destiny of the two could not be dissevered, he had served the

Emperor most efficiently, with that blind, passionate devotion to duty

by which men give to a cause the best that is in them and which

sometimes leads them to almost inconceivable heights of achievements.

Suffice it to say that the great strategic conception of Napoleon was

carried out with rather striking success in the first three days of the

campaign. The Emperor, crossing the Sambre, interposed himself between

Wellington and Blücher, completely deceived the Englishman, who thought

his extreme right was threatened, detached Ney to seize the village of

Quatre Bras, where Wellington had at last decided to concentrate, and

with eighty thousand men fell on the Prussians at Ligny.

Ney did not seize Quatre Bras; Wellington got there ahead of him and

stubbornly held the position. Although Ney had twice the number of

troops at the beginning of the battle that the English Field-Marshal

could muster, they were not well handled and no adequate use was made

of the French preponderance. Napoleon, on the far right of Ney, at

Ligny, on the contrary, fought the Prussians with his old-time skill

and brilliance. The contending forces there were about equal, the

Prussians having the advantage in numbers, but victory finally declared

for the Emperor. It was the last victory, not the least brilliant and

not the least desperately fought of his long career. The importance

and quality of the battle has been lost sight of in the greater

struggle of Waterloo, which took place two days after, but it was a

great battle, nevertheless. One of the crude ways in which to estimate

a battle is by what is called the "butcher's bill" and eighteen

thousand dead and wounded Prussians and twelve thousand Frenchmen tells

its tale. But it was not the decisive battle that Napoleon had planned

to make it.

The Prussians retreated. They had to. But they retreated in good

order. Blücher having been unhorsed and temporarily incapacitated in a

charge, the command and direction of the retreat devolved upon

Gneisenau. His chief claim to military distinction lies in the fact

that he did not do what Napoleon expected, and what Blücher would have

done. He retreated to the north instead of the east! A pursuit was

launched, but it did not pursue the Prussians. It went off, as it

were, into thin air. It pursued Napoleon's idea, his forecast, which

owing to the accident to Blücher was wrong!

One reason why the victory of Ligny and the drawn battle at Quatre Bras

were not decisive was because of a strange lack of generalship and a

strange confusion of orders for which Napoleon and Ney are both

responsible. Ney was constructively a victor at Quatre Bras, finally.

That is, the English retreated at nightfall and abandoned the field to

him; but they retreated not because they were beaten but because

Wellington, finding his position could be bettered by retirement and

concentration, decided upon withdrawal. But Ney could have been the

victor in every sense, in spite of his indifferent tactics, if it had

not been for the same blunder that the Emperor committed.

D'Erlon, at the head of perhaps the finest corps in the army, numbering

twenty thousand men, through the long hours of that hot June day

marched from the vicinity of Quatre Bras to Ligny, whence he could

actually see the battle raging, only to be summoned back from Ligny to

Quatre Bras by orders from Ney. Retracing his course, therefore, he

marched back over the route he had just traversed, arriving at Quatre

Bras too late to be of any service to Ney! Like the famous King of

France who with twenty thousand men marched up the hill and then

marched down again, this splendid corps which, thrown into either

battle, would have turned the Prussian retreat into a rout on the one

hand, or have utterly cut to pieces Wellington on the other, did

nothing. The principal fault was Napoleon's. He saw d'Erlon's corps

approaching, but he sent no order and took no steps to put it into the

battle.

Well, in spite of the fact that the energies of d'Erlon had been spent

in marching instead of fighting, the Emperor was a happy man that

night. He had got himself safely placed between the two armies and he

had certainly severely if not decisively beaten one of them.

Strategically, his operations had been characterized by unusual

brilliancy. If things went as he hoped, surmised and confidently

expected, all would be well. He was absolutely sure that Blücher was

retiring to the east, toward Namur. He dispatched Grouchy with

thirty-five thousand of his best men to pursue him in the direction

which he supposed he had taken.

Napoleon's orders were positive, and he was accustomed to exact

implicit obedience from his subordinates. He had a habit of

discouraging independent action in the sternest of ways, and for the

elimination of this great force from the subsequent battle the Emperor

himself must accept the larger responsibility. But all this does not

excuse Grouchy. He carried out his orders faithfully, to be sure, but

a more enterprising and more independent commander would have sooner

discovered that he was pursuing stragglers and would earlier have taken

the right course to regain his touch with his chief and to harry the

Prussian Field-Marshal. He did turn to the north at last, but when the

great battle was joined he was miles away and of no more use than if he

had been in Egypt. His attack on the Prussian rear-guard at Wavre,

while it brought about a smart little battle with much hard and gallant

fighting, really amounted to nothing and had absolutely no bearing on

the settlement of the main issue elsewhere. He did not disobey orders,

but many a man has gained immortality and fame by doing that very

thing. Grouchy had his chance and failed to improve it. He was a

veteran and a successful soldier, too.

Comes the day of Waterloo. Blücher had retreated north to Wavre and

was within supporting distance of Wellington. His army had been beaten

but not crushed, its spirit was not abated. The old Prussian Marshal,

badly bruised and shaken from being unhorsed and overridden in a

cavalry charge in which he had joined like a common trooper, but

himself again, promised in a famous interview between the two to come

to the support of the younger English Marshal, should he be attacked,

with his whole army. Wellington had retreated as far as he intended

to. He established his headquarters on a hill called Mont St. Jean,

back of a ridge near a village called Waterloo, where his army

commanded the junction point of the highroads to the south and west.

He drew up his lines, his red-coated countrymen and his blue-coated

allies on the long ridge in front of Mont St. Jean, facing south,

overlooking a gently sloping valley which was bounded by other parallel

ridges about a mile away. On the right center of Wellington's lines, a

short distance below the crest of the ridge, embowered in trees, lay a

series of stone buildings, in extent and importance between a château

and a farmhouse, called Hougomont. These were surrounded by a stone

wall and the place was impregnable against everything but artillery if

it were properly manned and resolutely held. Both those conditions

were met that day. Opposite the left center of the Duke's line was

another strong place, a farmhouse consisting of a series of stone

buildings on three sides of a square, the fourth closed by a wall,

called La Haye Sainte. These outposts were of the utmost value,

rightly used.

The Duke had sixty-seven thousand men and one hundred and eighty guns.

His right had been strengthened at the expense of his left, because he

expected Napoleon to attack the right and he counted on Blücher's

arrival to support his left. To meet him Napoleon had seventy-five

thousand men and two hundred and sixty guns. Off to the northeast lay

Blücher at Wavre with nearly eighty thousand more men and two hundred

guns, and wandering around in the outer darkness was Grouchy with

thirty-five thousand.

The valley was highly cultivated. The ripening grain still stood in

the fallow fields separated by low hedges. Broad roads ran through the

valley in different directions. The weather was horrible. It rained

torrents during the night and the earlier part of the morning. The

fields were turned into quagmires, the roads into morasses. It was hot

and close. The humidity was great. Little air was stirring.

Throughout the day the mist hung heavy over the valley and the ridges

which bordered it. But the rain ceased in the morning and Napoleon

made no attack until afternoon, waiting for the ground to dry out

somewhat. It was more important to him that his soldiers should have

good footing than to the English, for the offensive, the attack, the

charge fell to him. Wellington determined to fight strictly on the

defensive. Nevertheless, precious hours were wasted. Every passing

moment brought some accession to the allied army, and every passing

hour brought Blücher nearer. With all the impetuosity of his soul, the

old man was urging his soldiers forward over the horrible roads.

"Boys," he said in his rough, homely way to some bitterly complaining

artillerists stalled in the mud, "I promised. You would not have me

break my word, would you?"

Grouchy meanwhile had at last determined that the Prussians had gone

the other way. He had learned that they were at Wavre and he had swung

about and was coming north. Of course, he should have marched toward

the sound of the cannon--generally the safest guide for a

soldier!--but, at any rate, he was trying to get into touch with the

enemy. No one can question his personal courage or his loyalty to his

cause.

Napoleon, when he should have been on the alert, was very drowsy and

dull that day at Waterloo. He had shown himself a miracle of physical

strength and endurance in that wonderful four days of campaigning and

fighting, but the soldiers passing by the farmhouse of La Belle

Alliance--singular name which referred so prophetically to the

enemy--sometimes saw him sitting on a chair by a table outside the

house, his feet resting on a bundle of straw to keep them from the wet

ground, nodding, asleep! And no wonder. It is doubtful if he had

enjoyed as much as eight hours of sleep since he crossed the Sambre,

and those not consecutive! Still, if ever he should have kept awake,

that eighteenth of June was the day of days!

So far as one can discern his intention, his battle plan had been to

feint at Hougomont on the right center, cause the Duke of Wellington to

weaken his line to support the château, and then to break through the

left center and crush him by one of those massed attacks under

artillery fire for which he had become famous. The line once broken,

the end, of course, would be more or less certain.

The difference in the temperaments of the two great Captains was well

illustrated before the battle was joined. The Duke mainly concealed

his men behind the ridge. All that the French saw when they came on

the field were guns, officers and a few men. The English-Belgian army

was making no parade. What the British and Flemish saw was very

different. The Emperor displayed his full hand. The French, who

appeared not to have been disorganized at all by the hard fighting at

Ligny and Quatre Bras, came into view in most splendid style; bands

playing, drums rolling, swords waving, bayonets shining even in the

dull air of the wretched morning. They came on the field in solid

columns, deployed and took their positions, out of cannon-shot range,

of course, in the most deliberate manner. The uniforms of the army

were brand-new, and it was the fashion to fight in one's best in those

days. They presented a magnificent spectacle.

Presently the Duke, his staff, the gunners and the others who were on

the top of the ridge and watching, saw a body of horsemen gallop

rapidly along the French lines. One gray-coated figure riding a white

horse was in advance of the rest. The cheers, the almost delirious

shouts and cries, told the watchers that it was the Emperor. It was

his last grand review, his last moment of triumph.

It was after one o'clock before the actual battle began. More books

have been written about that battle than any other that was ever

fought. One is tempted to say, almost than all others that were ever

fought. And the closest reasoners arrive at different conclusions and

disagree as to many vital and important details. The Duke of

Wellington himself left two accounts, one in his dispatches and one in

notes written long afterward, which were irreconcilable, but some

things are certain, upon some things all historians are agreed.

The battle began with an attack on the Hougomont Château and the

conflict actually raged around that château for over six hours, or

until the French were in retreat. Macdonell, Home and Saltoun,

Scotsmen all, with their regiments of the Household Guard, held that

château, although it was assailed over and over again, finally, by the

whole of Reille's corps. They held that château, although it burned

over their heads, although the French actually broke into it on

occasion. They held it, although every other man in it was shot down

and scarcely a survivor was without a wound. It was assaulted with a

fury and a resolution which was only matched by the fury and resolution

of its defense. Why it was not battered to pieces with artillery no

one knows. At any rate, it occupied practically the whole of Reille's

corps during the whole long afternoon of fighting.

The space between Hougomont and La Haye Sainte was about a thousand

yards. La Haye Sainte was assaulted also but, to anticipate events, it

held out until about five o'clock in the evening, when, after another

wonderful defense, it was carried. The French established themselves

in it eighty yards from Wellington's line.

CHAPTER XXX

WATERLOO--THE CHARGE OF D'ERLON

Meanwhile the French had not confined their efforts to the isolated

forts, if they may be so called, on Wellington's center and left

center. After a tremendous artillery duel d'Erlon's men had been

formed up for that massed attack for which the Emperor was famous, and

with which it was expected the English line would be pierced and the

issue decided. The Emperor, as has been noted, had intended the attack

on Hougomont as a mere feint, hoping to induce the Duke of Wellington

to reinforce his threatened right and thereby to weaken his left

center. It was no part of the Emperor's plan that an attempt to

capture Hougomont should become the main battle on his own left that it

had, nor could he be sure that even the tremendous attack upon it had

produced the effect at which he aimed. Nevertheless, the movement of

d'Erlon had to be tried.

It must be remembered that Napoleon had never passed through the

intermediate army grades. He had been jumped from a regimental officer

to a General. He had never handled a regiment, a brigade, a division,

a corps--only an army, or armies. Perhaps that was one reason why he

was accustomed to leaving details and the execution of his plans to

subordinates. He was the greatest of strategists and the ablest of

tacticians, but minor tactics did not interest him, and the arrangement

of this great assault he left to the corps and its commander.

Giving orders to Ney and d'Erlon, therefore, the Emperor at last

launched his grand attack. One hundred and twenty guns were

concentrated on that part of the English left beyond the westernmost of

the two outlying positions, through which it was determined to force a

way. Under cover of the smoke, which all day hung thick and heavy in

the valley and clung to the ridges, d'Erlon's splendid corps, which had

been so wasted between Quatre Bras and Ligny, and which was burning to

achieve something, was formed in four huge parallel close-ranked

columns, slightly écheloned under Donzelot, Marcognet, Durutte and

Allix. With greatly mistaken judgment, these four columns were crowded

close together. The disposition was a very bad one. In the first

place, their freedom of movement was so impaired by lack of proper

distance as to render deployment almost impossible. Unless the columns

could preserve their solid formation until the very point of contact,

the charge would be a fruitless one. In the second place, they made an

enormous target impossible to miss. The attack was supported by light

batteries of artillery and the cavalry in the flanks.

Other things being equal, the quality of soldiers being the same, the

column is at an obvious disadvantage when attacking the line. It was

so in this instance. Although it was magnificently led by Ney and

d'Erlon in person, and although it comprised troops of the highest

order, the division commanders being men of superb courage and

resolution, no valor, no determination could make up for these

disadvantages. The tremendous artillery-fire of the French, which did

great execution among the English, kept them down until the dark

columns of infantry mounting the ridge got in the way of the French

guns which, of course, ceased to fire.

The drums were rolling madly, the Frenchmen were cheering loudly when

the ridge was suddenly covered with long red lines. There were not

many blue-coated allies left. Many of them had already laid down their

lives; of the survivors more were exhausted by the fierce battling of

the preceding days when the Belgians had nobly sustained the fighting

traditions of a race to which nearly two thousand years before Caesar

himself had borne testimony. As a matter of fact, most of the allies

were moved to the rear. They did not leave the field. They were

formed up again back of the battle line to constitute the reserve. The

English did not intend to flee either. They were not accustomed to it

and they saw no reason for doing it now.

Wellington moved the heavy cavalry over to support the threatened point

of the line and bade his soldiers restrain their fire. There was

something ominous in the silent, steady, rock-like red wall. It was

much more threatening to the mercuric Gallic spirit than the shouting

of the French was to the unemotional English disposition. Still, they

came intrepidly on.

Meanwhile, renewed attacks were hurled against the château and the

farmhouse. Ney and d'Erlon had determined to break the English line

with the bayonet. Suddenly, when the French came within point-blank

range, the English awoke to action. The English guns hurled shot into

the close-ranked masses, each discharge doing frightful execution.

Ney's horse was shot from under him at the first fire. But the

unwounded Marshal scrambled to his feet and, mounting another horse,

pressed on.

The slow-moving ranks were nearer. At point-blank range the English

infantrymen now opened fire. Shattering discharges were poured upon

the French. The fronts of the divisions were obliterated. The men in

advance who survived would have given back, but the pressure of the

masses in their rear forced them to go on. The divisions actually

broke into a run. Again and again the British battalions spoke, the

black muskets in the hands of the red coats were tipped with redder

flame. It was not in human flesh and blood to sustain very long such a

fire.

It was a magnificent charge, gloriously delivered, and such was its

momentum that it almost came in touch with the English line. It did

not quite. That momentum was spent at last. The French deployed as

well as they could in the crowded space and at half-pistol-shot

distance began to return the English fire. The French guns joined in

the infernal tumult. The advance had been stopped, but it had not been

driven back. The French cavalry were now coming up. Before they

arrived that issue had to be decided. The critical moment was at hand,

and Wellington's superb judgment determined the action. He let loose

on them the heavy cavalry, led by the Scots Grays on their big horses.

As the ranks of the infantry opened to give them room, the men of the

Ninety-second Highlanders, mad with the enthusiasm of the moment,

caught the stirrup-straps of the Horse and, half running, half dragged,

joined in the charge.

The splendid body of heavy cavalry fell on the flank of the halted

columns. There was no time for the French to form a square. Nay more,

there was no room for them to form a square. In an instant, however,

they faced about and delivered a volley which did great execution, but

nothing could stop the maddened rush of the gigantic horsemen. Back on

the heights of Rossomme Napoleon, aroused from his lethargy at last,

stared at the great attack.

"_Mon Dieu!_" he exclaimed as he saw the tremendous onfall of the

cavalrymen upon his helpless infantry, "how terrible are those gray

horsemen!"

Yes, they were more terrible to the men at the point of contact than

they were to those back of La Belle Alliance. No infantry that ever

lived in the position in which the French found themselves could have

stood up against such a charge as that. Trampling, hacking, slashing,

thrusting, the horses biting and fighting like the men, the heavy

cavalry broke up two of the columns. The second and third began to

retreat under an awful fire. But the dash of the British troopers was

spent. They had become separated, disorganized. They had lost

coherence. The French cavalry now arrived on the scene. Admirably

handled, they were thrown on the scattered English. There was nothing

for the latter to do but retire. Retire they did, having accomplished

all that anyone could expect of cavalry, fighting every step of the

way. Just as soon as they opened the fronts of the regiments' in line,

the infantry and artillery began again, and then the French cavalry got

its punishment in its turn.

It takes but moments to tell of this charge and, indeed, in the

battlefield it seemed but a few moments. But the French did not give

way until after long hard fighting. From the beginning of the

preliminary artillery-duel to the repulse of the charge an hour and a

half elapsed. Indeed, they did not give way altogether either, for

Donzelot and Allix, who commanded the left divisions, were the men who

finally succeeded in capturing La Haye Sainte. And both sides suffered

furiously before the French gave back.

There was plenty of fight left in the French yet. Ney, whatever his

strategy and tactics, showed himself as of yore the bravest of the

brave. It is quite safe to say that the hero of the retreat from

Russia, the last of the Grand Army, the star of many a hotly contested

battle, surpassed even his own glorious record for personal courage on

that day. Maddened by the repulse, he gathered up all the cavalry,

twelve thousand in number, and with Kellerman, greatest of cavalrymen,

to second him and with division leaders like Milhaud and Maurice, he

hurled himself upon the English line between Hougomont and La Haye

Sainte. But the English made no tactical mistakes like that of Ney and

d'Erlon. The artillerists stood to their guns until the torrent of

French horsemen was about to break upon them, then they ran back to the

safety of the nearest English square.

The English had been put in such formation that the squares lay

checkerwise. Each side was four men deep. The front rank knelt, the

second rank bent over at a charge bayonets, the third and the fourth

ranks stood erect and fired. The French horsemen might have endured

the tempest of bullets but they could not ride down the _chevaux de

frise_, the fringe of steel. They tried it. No one could find fault

with that army. It was doing its best; it was fighting and dying for

its Emperor. Over and over they sought to break those stubborn British

squares. One or two of them were actually penetrated, but unavailingly.

Men mad with battle-lust threw themselves and their horses upon the

bayonets. The guns were captured and recaptured. The horsemen overran

the ridge, they got behind the squares, they counter-charged over their

own tracks, they rode until the breasts of the horses touched the guns.

They fired pistols in the face of the English. One such charge is

enough to immortalize its makers, and during that afternoon they made

twelve!

Ney, raging over the field, had five horses killed under him. The

British suffered horribly. If the horsemen did draw off to take

breath, and reform for another effort, the French batteries, the

English squares presenting easy targets, sent ball after ball through

them. And nobody stopped fighting to watch the cavalry. Far and wide

the battle raged. Toward the close of the day some of the English

squares had become so torn to pieces that regiments, brigades and

divisions had to be combined to keep from being overwhelmed.

Still the fight raged around Hougomont. Now, from a source of

strength, La Haye Sainte had become a menace. There the English

attacked and the French held. Off to the northeast the country was

black with advancing masses of men. No, it was not Grouchy and his

thirty-five thousand who, if they had been there at the beginning,

might have decided the day. It was the Prussians.

They, at least, had marched to the sound of the cannon. Grouchy was

off at Wavre. He at last got in touch with one of Blücher's rear corps

and he was fighting a smart little battle ten miles from the place

where the main issue was to be decided. As a diversion, his efforts

were negligible, for without that corps the allies outnumbered the

French two to one.

Telling the troops that the oncoming soldiers were their comrades of

Grouchy's command who would decide the battle, Napoleon detached the

gallant Lobau, who had stood like a stone wall at Aspern, with the

Young Guard to seize the village of Planchenoit and to hold the

Prussians back, for if they broke in the end would be as certain as it

was swift. And well did Lobau with the Young Guard perform that task.

Bülow, commanding the leading corps, hurled himself again and again

upon the French line. His heavy columns fared exactly as the French

columns had fared when they assaulted the English. But it was not

within the power of ten thousand men to hold off thirty thousand

forever, and there were soon that number of Prussians at the point of

contact. Frantic messages from Lobau caused the Emperor to send one of

the divisions of the Old Guard, the last reserve, to his support.

It was now after six o'clock, the declining sun was already low on the

horizon, the long June day was drawing to a close. The main force of

the Prussians had not yet come up to the hill and ridge of Mont St.

Jean. Wellington, in great anxiety, was clinging desperately to the

ridge with his shattered lines wondering how long he could hold them,

whether he could sustain another of those awful attacks. His reserves,

except two divisions of light cavalry, Vivian's and Vandeleur's, and

Maitland's and Adams' brigades headed by Colborne's famous Fifty-second

Foot, among his troops the de luxe veterans of the Peninsula, had all

been expended.

Lobau was still holding back the Prussians by the most prodigious and

astounding efforts. If Napoleon succeeded in his last titanic effort

to break that English line, Blücher would be too late. Unless night or

Blücher came quickly, if Napoleon made that attack and it was not

driven back, victory in this struggle of the war gods would finally go

to the French.

Hougomont still held out. The stubborn defense of it was Wellington's

salvation. While it stood his right was more or less protected. But

La Haye Sainte offered a convenient point of attack upon him. If

Napoleon brought up his remaining troops behind it they would only have

a short distance to go before they were at death's grapple hand to hand

with the shattered, exhausted, but indomitable defenders of the ridge.

CHAPTER XXXI

WATERLOO--THE LAST OF THE GUARD

Long and earnestly, one from the heights of Mont St. Jean, the other

from those of Rossomme, the two great Captains scanned the opposing

line. Napoleon seemed to have recovered from his indisposition.

Indeed, he had undergone frightful fatigues which would have been

incredible if sustained by a younger man, and which would have been

impossible to any other man than he. To add to his fatigue, he was

ill. He could not sleep and the nature of his illness was such that it

was agony for him to mount a horse. This condition had been aggravated

by the awful exertion, physical and mental, he had made and the strain

of that long afternoon of desperate fighting. Nor had he eaten

anything the livelong day. Yet at about half after six that night he

did get into the saddle again. Conquering his anguish, he rode down to

the fifteen battalions of the Guard still held in reserve at La Belle

Alliance, all that was left intact of that proud and gallant army.

"My children," he said hoarsely in last appeal, "I must sleep in

Brussels to-night. There is the enemy. Go and break the English line

for me."

Cambronne, to whom nature and education alike had denied every

attribute of grace or greatness except unbounded devotion and stubborn

courage, mustered the Guard. Ney, _le terrible Rougeaud_, the

soldiers' idol, his torn uniform covered with dust, one of his epaulets

slashed from his shoulder, his coat open, his shirt likewise, his bared

breast black with powder, his face red-streaked with blood, for many

bullets had grazed him, his hair matted with sweat--the weather had

grown frightfully hot, the air was terribly humid--his eyes blazing,

flecks of foam about his mouth, placed himself in the lead. Every

staff officer left joined the great Marshal.

With the brass drums beating "_La Grenadière_," that famous grenadier

quick-step, the great Guard moved out. Here, again, in the excitement

of the conflict, an opportunity was overlooked. They could have gone

up in rear of La Haye Sainte with practically no danger, but they went

straight out into the open, between farm and château. Up the road,

over the fields of bloody grain, through the torn hedges, trampling

over the bodies of their comrades, the last hope advanced to meet the

enemy.

All over the field the tide of battle ebbed and flowed. The armies

came together for the last try. Off to the right Lobau still held his

appointed station, but now the Prussians in great masses were swarming

on the field about Planchenoit. Division after division, avoiding

Lobau meanwhile, mounted the ridge to join the English line. It had

almost been broken by d'Erlon at La Haye Sainte. Mouffling,

Wellington's Prussian aide, had galloped over to Ziethen in command of

the advance with the news that unless the English were reinforced

heavily at once their line would be pierced and they would be routed.

On to the field opposite La Haye Sainte came the Prussians. Still

raged the battle around Hougomont and the English right, but the eyes

of every spectator not engaged in fighting for his life were

concentrated on the advance of the Guard.

Napoleon had ridden down from Rossomme to La Belle Alliance. He sat

his horse within easy cannon-shot of the English as the devoted Guard

passed by in its last review. His physical pain was forgot in the

great anxiety with which he watched them. The battle was practically

lost. This was the last desperate throw of the gambler, the last stake

he could place upon the board. He knew it, every officer knew it,

perhaps even the more experienced grenadiers like old Bullet-Stopper of

the Guard knew it. That did not matter to them. They were his men and

at his word, for him, they were going forward to conquer or die.

Tramp, tramp, tramp, keeping time to the long continuous rolling of the

drums whose notes were heard even above the roar of the cannon and the

tumult of the battle, the Guard, from whose lips came one continuous

cry of "_Vive l'Empereur_!" marched forward. Covered as usual by the

fire of one of those great batteries of concentrated guns so

conspicuous in Napoleonic tactics, through the smoke and the mist and

the shadows of the evening, they passed on. Napoleon himself with

three battalions in reserve followed a little distance behind them.

Now they were mounting the hill, now they were abreast of La Haye

Sainte; now the ridge in front of them was topped with English. Away

off could be heard the thunder of the oncoming Prussian horsemen, the

roar of the Prussian guns. Back of the ridge the brigades of light

cavalry stood ready. The infantry reserve with brave Colborne and the

Fifty-second, thirteen hundred strong, in the lead, were quivering with

excitement. Even the stolid British phlegm had vanished. This was the

last supreme moment. Throbbed wildly the usually steady hearts of the

cool islanders. If they could stop this grand advance the battle would

be gained. The hill would be held. Could they do it? And if not----!

Out of the smoke and mist opposite the English soldiers of the Royal

Guard came their Imperial enemies. The waiting British saw the black

bearskins of the tall Guard, the imperial insignia on cross-belts and

uniforms. They were so near that they could see the grim faces of the

old soldiers, their mustaches working, their lips drawn back over their

teeth, snarling, sputtering like savage beasts. Here and there mouths

were tight shut in a firm line. Here and there men came silently, but

mostly they were yelling. And they came up, arms aport, after the

precept and example of Dorsenne, _le beau Dorsenne_, alas, no longer

with them, to try conclusions for the last time with the soldiers'

white weapon, the bayonet, cold steel! Would the English wait for

that? They would not.

"Fire!" cried an English voice just when the suspense had become

unbearable.

The heavens were shattered by the discharge. Ney pitched from his

horse, the sixth that day to be shot under him. He was up in a moment,

his sword out. He advanced on foot at the head of the Guard. It was

his last charge. He was to face muskets again, but in Paris, in the

hands of a firing-squad, with his back to the wall. He was not given

the coveted privilege of dying on that stricken field, though he sought

for it wildly everywhere, but when he did die it was as he had lived,

undaunted. Now, his great voice uplifted, he led forward the devoted

and immortal band. His sword was shot out of his hand. Seizing a gun

and a bayonet from a falling grenadier, he fought in the ranks as in

Russia.

Again, the tactics were faulty, as d'Erlon's men the Guard came in

solid columns. Right in front of the rapid-firing English, the muskets

and cannon in one continuous roar now, they sought to deploy and return

that terrible withering fire. The Prussian infantry, panting like

dogs, now gained the crest of the ridge and, animated by more than

human hatred, fell into disorderly but determined lines and opened

fire. Harsh German oaths and exclamations mingled with hearty English

curses and cheers. The Guard was firing rapidly now, straight into the

faces of the English. And still the columns came on. Like a great

wave which rushes forward at first swiftly and then goes slower and

slower and slower as it rolls up the beach it advanced. By and by it

stopped. The end was at hand. With bent heads the men stood and took

the hail of lead and iron.

"Come!" said Ney, frantic with battle fever. "Come! See how a Marshal

of France can die."

Now was the crucial moment. The Iron Duke saw it. The two armies were

face to face firing into each other. To which side would the victory

incline? He spoke to Maitland, to Adams, to Colborne. That gallant

soldier threw his men on the exposed flank of the column which had

obliqued, bent to the right. Before they could face about out of the

smoke came the yelling English! They found the men on the flank of the

column the next morning just where it had stood lying in ordered ranks

dead.

Still they did not give back. Vivian and Vandeleur, daring light

horsemen, were now hurled on the devoted division. At it they ran. On

it they fell. Still it stood. It was incredible. It was almost

surrounded now. The attack had failed. To advance was impossible, to

retreat was dishonor. They would stand! Their case was hopeless.

Appeals were made for the survivors to lay down their arms and

surrender. Into the faces of the assailants vulgar but heroic

Cambronne hurled a disgusting but graphic word. No, nobody said so,

but the Guard would not surrender. It would die.

Back of his Guard, the Emperor, having stopped not far from the

château, watched them die. He was paler than ever, sweat poured from

his face, his eyes and lips twitched nervously and spasms of physical

pain added their torture to the mental agony of the moment. He

muttered again and again:

"_Mon Dieu! Mais ils sont mêlés ensemble._"

Now the Prussian horsemen, the Death-head Hussars, added their weight

to Vandeleur's and Vivian's swordsmen and lancers. Other regiments

supplemented the withering fire of the advancing Fifty-second and the

reserve brigades. Now, at last, the Guard began to give back. Slowly,

reluctantly, clinging to their positions, fighting, firing, savage,

mad--they began to give way.

"_Tout est perdu_," whispered Napoleon.

"The Guard retreats!" cried someone near the Emperor.

"_La Garde recule_!" rose here and there from the battlefield. "_La

Garde recule_!" Men caught up the cry in wonder and despair. Could it

be true? Yes. Back they came out of the smoke. Now was the supreme

opportunity for the allies. The Duke, recklessly exposing himself on

the crest of the hill, bullets flying about him, as they flew about

Napoleon, yet leading apparently a charmed life, closed his field-glass

and turned to the red line that had made good its defense.

"Up!" he cried, waving his hand and not finishing his sentence.

They needed no other signal. Their time to attack had come. Down the

hill they rushed, yelling, followed by Belgians, Netherlanders, and all

the rest, pressing hard upon their heels. La Haye Sainte was

recaptured in the twinkling of an eye. The shattered broken remains of

the Guard were driven in headlong rout. The assailers of Hougomont

were themselves assaulted. At last numbers had overwhelmed Lobau. The

survivors of an army of a hundred and thirty thousand flushed with

victory fell on the survivors of an army of seventy thousand already

defeated.

At half-past seven the battle was lost. At eight the withdrawal became

a retreat, the retreat a rout. At set of sun lost was the Emperor,

lost was the Empire. Ended was the age-long struggle which had begun

with the fall of the Bastile more than a score of years before. Once

again from France, with the downfall of Napoleon, had been snatched the

hegemony of the world.

There was no reserve. There was nothing to cover a retreat. Someone

raised the wild cry not often heard on battlefields overlooked by

Napoleon, and it was echoed everywhere:

"_Sauve qui peut._"

The army as an army was gone. Thousands of men in mad terror fled in

every direction. Still, there were left a few battalions of the Guard

which had not been in action. They formed three squares to receive the

English and Prussians. Into the nearest square Napoleon, bewildered,

overwhelmed, stricken by the catastrophe, was led on his horse. His

sword was out. He would fain have died on that field. Doubtless, many

a bullet marked him, but none struck him. For a little while these

squares of the Guard, Napoleon in the center one, another square on

either side of the center one, stayed the British and Prussian advance,

but it was not to be. "The stars in their courses fought against

Sisera!" The Emperor gave no order. Bertrand and Soult turned his

horse about and the squares retreated.

It was night. They were the sole organized body left. Well, they

upheld their ancient fame and glorious reputation and untarnished

honor. Through the calm and moonlit night pursuers and pursued could

hear the rolling of the brass drums far and wide over the countryside

as the Guard marched away from that field back to stricken France, to

that famous grenadier march, "_La Grenadière._"

Again and again they stopped to beat off the furious attack of the

cavalry. Again and again the Prussian pursuers hurled themselves

unavailingly on quadrangles of steel, worked up to a terrible pitch of

excitement by the possibility that they might seize the Emperor at

whose behest and for whose purpose fifty thousand men lay dead or

wounded on that fatal hill, in that dreadful valley. Happy the fate of

those who were dead--horrible the condition of those who were wounded.

English, Prussians, Germans, Bavarians, Hollanders, French, trampled

together in indistinguishable masses. Horses, guns, weapons,

equipment--everything in hopeless confusion. Every horror, every

anguish, every agony was there--incense burned about the altar of one

devouring ambition.

CHAPTER XXXII

AT LAST THE EAGLE AND THE WOMAN

Nearest the crest of the hill immortalized by the great conflict, in

advance of but in touch with the regular dead lines of the Guard, a

little group, friend and foe, lay intermingled. There was a young

officer of the Fifty-second infantry, one of Colborne's. He was

conscious but suffering frightfully from mortal wounds. One side of

his face where he had been thrown into the mud was covered with a red

compound of earth and blood; his bright head was dabbled with the same

hideous mixture. Blood frothed out of his mouth as he breathed. He

murmured from time to time a woman's name. "Water," was sometimes the

sputtering syllable that came from him.

His left hand clutched uneasily at his breast, where his torn uniform

showed a gaping wound. But his right hand was still. The arm was

broken, paralyzed, but the fingers of his right hand were tightly

closed around a broken blue staff and next to his cheek, the

blood-stained one, and cold against it, was a French Eagle. He had

seized that staff in the heat of battle and in the article of death he

held it.

At the feet of the English officer lay a French officer wearing the

insignia of a Colonel of the Guard. He was covered with wounds,

bayonet thrusts, a saber-slash, and was delirious. Although helpless,

he was really in much better case than the young Englishman. He, too,

in his delirium muttered a woman's name.

They spoke different tongues, these two. They were born in different

lands. They were children of the same God, although one might have

doubted it, but no one could mistake the woman's name. For there Frank

Yeovil and Jean Marteau, incapable of doing each other any further

harm, each thought of the same woman.

Did Laure d'Aumenier back in England waiting anxiously for news of

battle, fearing for one of those men, hear those piteous, broken

murmurs of a woman's name--her own?

Around these two were piled the dead. Marteau had seized the Eagle.

Yes, he and a few brave men had stayed on the field when the great Ney,

raging like a madman, and seeking in vain the happy fortune of a bullet

or sword-thrust, had been swept away, and on him had fallen Yeovil with

another group of resolute English, and together they had fought their

little battle for the Eagle. And Marteau had proved the Englishman's

master. He had beaten him down. He had shortened his sword to strike

when he recognized him. Well, the battle was over, the Eagle was lost,

the Emperor was a fugitive, hope died with the retreating Guard, the

Empire was ended. Marteau might have killed him, but to what end?

"For your wife's sake," he cried, lowering his sword, and the next

minute he paid for his mercy, for the other English threw themselves

upon him.

But Frank Yeovil did not get off scot free. There was one lad who had

followed Marteau, who had marched with the Guard, who had no

compunctions of conscience whatever, and with his last pistol Pierre

gave the reeling Englishman the fatal shot. Yes, Pierre paid too.

They would certainly have spared him, since he was only a boy, but

maddened by the death of their officer, half a dozen bayonets were

plunged into his breast.

Thither the next day came Sir Gervaise Yeovil, who had been with the

Duke at the Duchess of Richmond's famous ball in Brussels. Young Frank

had left that ball at four o'clock in the morning, according to order,

only to find that later orders had directed the army to march at two

and that his baggage had gone. He had fought that day in pumps and

silk stockings which he had worn at the ball; dabbled, gory, muddy,

they were now.

Sir Gervaise Yeovil was an old friend of the Duke of Wellington. The

Iron Duke, as they called him, was nevertheless very tender-hearted

that morning. He told the Baronet that his son was somewhere on the

field. Colonel Colborne of the Fifty-second had marked him in the

charge, but that was all. Neither Vivian nor Vandeleur could throw any

light on the situation. There were twenty thousand of the allied

armies on that field and thirty thousand French.

"My God," said Sir Gervaise, staring along the line of the French

retreat, "what is so terrible as a defeat?"

"Nothing," said the Duke gravely. Then looking at the nearer hillside

he added those tremendous words which epitomized war in a way in which

no one save a great modern captain has ever epitomized it. "Nothing,"

he said slowly, "unless it be a victory."

They found the Guard. That was easy. There they lay in lines where

they had fallen; the tall bearskins on their heads, the muskets still

clasped in their hands. There, too, they found young Yeovil at last.

They revived him. Someone sought to take the Eagle from him, but with

a sudden accession of strength he protested against it.

"Father," he whispered to the old man bending over him, his red face

pale and working, "mine."

"True," said the Duke. "He captured it. Let him keep it."

"O God!" broke out the Baronet. "Frank! Can nothing be done?"

"Nothing. Stop." His lips moved, his father bent nearer. "Laure----"

he whispered.

"Yes, yes, what of her?"

"That Frenchman she loved----"

"Marteau?"

The young Englishman closed his eyes in assent.

"He could have killed me but spared--for her--he--is there," he

faltered presently.

"There is life in this Frenchman yet," said one of the surgeons,

looking up at the moment.

"My Lord!" said old Sir Gervaise Yeovil, starting up, choking down a

sob and endeavoring to keep his voice steady. "My boy yonder----"

"Yes," said the Duke, "a brave lad."

"He's---- It is all up with him. You will let me take him back to

England, and--the Frenchman and the Eagle?"

"Certainly. I wish to God it had never happened, Yeovil," went on the

soldier. "But it had to be. Bonaparte had to be put down, the world

freed. And somebody had to pay."

"I thank God," said the old man, "that my boy dies for his King and his

country and for human liberty."

"Nor shall he die in vain," said the soldier.

Frank Yeovil died on the vessel Sir Gervaise chartered to carry him and

Marteau and some other wounded officers of his acquaintance back to

England. They did not bury him at sea. At his earnest request they

took him back to his own land to be laid with his ancestors, none of

whom had spent themselves more gloriously or for a greater cause than

he.

Marteau, frightfully weak, heart-broken and helpless, by Sir Gervaise

Yeovil's command was taken to the Baronet's own house.

"I did my best," he said brokenly from the bed on which he lay as Laure

d'Aumenier bent over him, Sir Gervaise standing grim and silent with

folded arms in the background.

"For France and the Emperor," whispered the woman.

"Yes, that, but for your husband as well. He fell upon me. I was

trying to rally the Guard--the Eagle--he was beaten down--but I

recognized him. I would not have harmed him."

"He told me," said the Baronet, "what you said. 'For your wife's

sake,'" he quoted in his deep voice, looking curiously at the girl.

"Sir Gervaise," said the Countess, looking up at him entreatingly, "I

am alone in this world but for you. I was to have been your daughter.

May I speak?"

"I wish it."

"Marteau--Jean," she said softly, "I was not his wife. Perhaps now

that he is dead it would have been better if I had been, but----"

"And you are free?"

Again the Countess looked at the Englishman. Simple and homely though

he was, he showed the qualities of his birth and rank.

"Mademoiselle," he began gravely, almost tenderly. He looked a long

time at her. "Little Laure," he continued at last, taking her slender

hand in his own great one, "I had hoped that you might some day call me

father but that hope is gone--since Waterloo. If I were your real

father now I should say----"

"Monsieur!" whispered the woman, her eyes brightening, her hand

tightening in the clasp of the other.

"And I think the old Marquis would say that it is the will of God,

now----" He bit his lip. It was all so different from what he

imagined.

"Go on, if you please," whispered Marteau. "I am ill. I cannot

bear----"

"If she be guided by me she will be your wife, young sir," said Sir

Gervaise decisively.

He dropped the woman's hand. He turned and walked heavily out of the

room without a backward glance. He could do no more.

"And will you stoop to me?" pleaded Marteau.

For answer the woman knelt by his bed and slipped her arm tenderly

under his head. She bent and kissed him.

"When you are stronger," she replied, "you shall raise me up to your

own high level of courage and devotion and self-sacrifice, but

meanwhile it is upon my bosom that your head must lie."

"Alas," said Marteau, after a little, "the Emperor is taken, the Empire

is lost, my poor France!"

"I will go back with you and we will help to build it up again," said

the woman.

That was the best medicine that could be given to the young man. His

recovery was slow but it was sure and it was the more rapid because of

the gracious care of the woman he loved, who lavished upon him all the

pent-up passion of her fond adoring heart.

Sir Gervaise Yeovil, whose interest at court was great, exerted himself

to secure a reconfirmation of Marteau's patent of nobility and to see

that no difficulties were placed in the way of the young couple in

obtaining repossession of their estates. So that once more there

should be a d'Aumenier and perhaps a renewal of the ancient house in

the old château in Champagne. This was easier since Marteau had never

taken oath to King Louis and therefore had broken no faith.

At the quiet wedding that took place as soon as Marteau recovered his

strength a little, Sir Gervaise continued to act the father's part to

the poor woman. After the ceremony he delighted the heart of the

soldier by giving to him what he loved after the woman, the Eagle which

had been Frank Yeovil's prize.

"You will think of the lad, sometimes," said the old Baronet to the

girl. "He was not lucky enough to win you, but he loved you and he

died with your name on his lips."

"I shall remember him always," said the new-made wife.

"His name shall be held in highest honor in my house as a brave

soldier, a true lover and a most gallant gentleman," added the new-made

husband.

Marteau would never forget the picture of the Emperor sitting on his

horse at La Belle Alliance that June evening, stern, terrific, almost

sublime, watching the Guard go by to death. He was glad he had not

seen him in the retreat of which he afterward heard from old Bal-Arrêt.

But that was not the last picture of the Emperor that he had. Although

he was scarcely strong enough to be moved, he insisted on being taken

to Portsmouth with his young wife. Sir Gervaise went with him. He had

no other object in life it seemed but to provide happiness for these

young people. He could scarcely bear them out of his sight.

One day, a bright and sunny morning late in July, they put the

convalescing soldier into a boat with his wife and the old Baronet and

the three were rowed out into the harbor as near as the cordon of

guard-boats allowed them to approach to a great English

ship-of-the-line, across the stern of which in gold letters they read

the name, "_Bellerophon_."

"Bonaparte gener'ly comes out 'n the quarter-gal'ry of the ship, 'bout

this hour in the mornin'," said one of the boatmen. "An' if he does we

can see him quite plain from yere."

There were other boats there whose occupants were moved by curiosity

and various emotions, but when the figure of the little man with the

three-cornered cocked hat on his head, still wearing the green uniform

of the chasseurs of the Guard stepped out on the quarter-gallery, his

eyes, as it were instinctively, sought that particular boat.

"Help me up," said Marteau brokenly.

The boat was a large one and moving carefully they got the young

officer to his feet. He was wearing his own battle-stained uniform.

He lifted his trembling hand to his head in salute. The little Emperor

bent over the rail and stared hard at the trio. Did he recognize

Marteau? Ah, yes! He straightened up presently, his own hand returned

the salute and then he took off that same cocked hat and bared his brow

and bent his head low and, with a gesture of farewell, he turned and

reëntered his cabin--Prometheus on the way to his chains at St. Helena!

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's The Eagle of the Empire, by Cyrus Townsend Brady