A SURPRISE.
They were three thousand five hundred in number, and formed a front
a quarter of a league in length; they were gigantic men mounted on
colossal horses. They formed twenty-six squadrons, and had behind them,
as a support, Lefebvre Desnouette's division, composed of one hundred
and six picked gendarmes, the chasseurs of the Guard, eleven hundred
and ninety-seven sabres, and the lancers of the Guard, eight hundred
and eighty lances. They wore a helmet without a plume, and a cuirass
of wrought steel, and were armed with pistols and a straight sabre. In
the morning the whole army had admired them when they came up, at nine
o'clock, with bugles sounding, while all the bands played, "Veillons au
salut de l'Empire," in close column with one battery on their flank,
the others in their centre, and deployed in two ranks, and took their
place in that powerful second line, so skilfully formed by Napoleon,
which having at its extreme left Kellermann's cuirassiers, and on its
extreme right Milhaud's cuirassiers, seemed to be endowed with two
wings of steel.
The aide-de-camp Bernard carried to them the Emperor's order: Ney drew
his sabre and placed himself at their head, and the mighty squadrons
started. Then a formidable spectacle was seen: the whole of this
cavalry, with raised sabres, with standards flying, and formed in
columns of division, descended, with one movement and as one man, with
the precision of a bronze battering-ram opening a breach, the hill of
the Belle Alliance. They entered the formidable valley in which so many
men had already fallen, disappeared in the smoke, and then, emerging
from the gloom, reappeared on the other side of the valley, still in a
close compact column, mounting at a trot, under a tremendous canister
fire, the frightful muddy incline of the plateau of Mont St. Jean. They
ascended it, stern, threatening, and imperturbable; between the breaks
in the artillery and musketry fire the colossal tramp could be heard.
As they formed two divisions, they were in two columns: Wathier's
division was on the right, Delord's on the left. At a distance it
appeared as if two immense steel snakes were crawling toward the crest
of the plateau; they traversed the battle-field like a flash.
Nothing like it had been seen since the capture of the great redoubt
of the Moskova by the heavy cavalry: Murat was missing, but Ney was
there. It seemed as if this mass had become a monster, and had but one
soul; each squadron undulated, and swelled like the rings of a polype.
This could be seen through a vast smoke which was rent asunder at
intervals; it was a pell-mell of helmets, shouts, and sabres, a stormy
bounding of horses among cannon, and a disciplined and terrible array;
while above it all flashed the cuirasses like the scales of the hydra.
Such narratives seemed to belong to another age; something like this
vision was doubtless traceable in the old Orphean epics describing
the men-horses, the ancient hippanthropists, those Titans with human
faces and equestrian chest whose gallop escaladed Olympus,--horrible,
invulnerable, sublime; gods and brutes. It was a curious numerical
coincidence that twenty-six battalions were preparing to receive the
charge of these twenty-six squadrons. Behind the crest of the plateau,
in the shadow of the masked battery, thirteen English squares, each of
two battalions and formed two deep, with seven men in the first lines
and six in the second, were waiting, calm, dumb, and motionless, with
their muskets, for what was coming. They did not see the cuirassiers,
and the cuirassiers did not see them: they merely heard this tide
of men ascending. They heard the swelling sound of three thousand
horses, the alternating and symmetrical sound of the hoof, the clang
of the cuirasses, the clash of the sabres, and a species of great
and formidable breathing. There was a long and terrible silence, and
then a long file of raised arms, brandishing sabres, and helmets, and
bugles, and standards, and three thousand heads with great moustaches,
shouting, "Long live the Emperor!" appeared above the crest. The
whole of this cavalry debouched on the plateau, and it was like the
commencement of an earthquake.
All at once, terrible to relate, the head of the column of cuirassiers
facing the English left reared with a fearful clamor. On reaching
the culminating point of the crest, furious and eager to make their
exterminating dash on the English squares and guns, the cuirassiers
noticed between them and the English a trench, a grave. It was the
sunken road of Ohain. It was a frightful moment,--the ravine was there,
unexpected, yawning, almost precipitous, beneath the horses' feet,
and with a depth of twelve feet between its two sides. The second
rank thrust the first into the abyss; the horses reared, fell back,
slipped with all four feet in the air, crushing and throwing their
riders. There was no means of escaping; the entire column was one
huge projectile. The force acquired to crush the English, crushed the
French, and the inexorable ravine would not yield till it was filled
up. Men and horses rolled into it pell-mell, crushing each other, and
making one large charnel-house of the gulf, and when this grave was
full of living men the rest passed over them. Nearly one-third of
Dubois' brigade rolled into this abyss. This commenced the loss of
the battle. A local tradition, which evidently exaggerates, says that
two thousand horses and fifteen hundred men were buried in the sunken
road of Ohain. These figures probably comprise the other corpses cast
into the ravine on the day after the battle. It was this brigade of
Dubois, so fatally tried, which an hour before, charging unsupported,
had captured the flag of the Luxembourg battalion. Napoleon, before
ordering this charge, had surveyed the ground, but had been unable to
see this hollow way, which did not form even a ripple on the crest of
the plateau. Warned, however, by the little white chapel which marks
its juncture with the Nivelles road, he had asked Lacoste a question,
probably as to whether there was any obstacle. The guide answered No,
and we might almost say that Napoleon's catastrophe was brought about
by a peasant's shake of the head.
Other fatalities were yet to arise. Was it possible for Napoleon to win
the battle? We answer in the negative. Why? On account of Wellington,
on account of Blücher? No; on account of God. Buonaparte, victor at
Waterloo, did not harmonize with the law of the 19th century. Another
series of facts was preparing, in which Napoleon had no longer a place:
the ill will of events had been displayed long previously. It was
time for this vast man to fall; his excessive weight in human destiny
disturbed the balance. This individual alone was of more account than
the universal group: such plethoras of human vitality concentrated
in a single head--the world, mounting to one man's brain--would be
mortal to civilization if they endured. The moment had arrived for the
incorruptible supreme equity to reflect, and it is probable that the
principles and elements on which the regular gravitations of the moral
order as of the material order depend, complained. Streaming blood,
over-crowded grave-yards, mothers in tears, are formidable pleaders.
When the earth is suffering from an excessive burden, there are
mysterious groans from the shadow, which the abyss hears. Napoleon had
been denounced in infinitude, and his fall was decided. He had angered
God. Waterloo is not a battle, but a transformation of the Universe.