THE GUARD.
The rest is known,--the irruption of a third army; the battle
dislocated; eighty-six cannon thundering simultaneously; Pirch I.
coming up with Bülow; Ziethen's cavalry led by Blücher in person:
the French driven back; Marcognet swept from the plateau of Ohain;
Durutte dislodged from Papelotte; Donzelot and Quiot falling back;
Lobau attacked on the flank; a new battle rushing at nightfall on
the weakened French regiments; the whole English line resuming the
offensive, and pushed forward; the gigantic gap made in the French army
by the combined English and Prussian batteries; the extermination, the
disaster in front, the disaster on the flank, and the guard forming
line amid this fearful convulsion. As they felt they were going to
death, they shouted, "Long live the Emperor!" History has nothing more
striking than this death-rattle breaking out into acclamations. The sky
had been covered the whole day, but at this very moment--eight o'clock
in the evening--the clouds parted in the horizon, and the sinister red
glow of the setting sun was visible through the elms on the Nivelles
road. It had been seen to rise at Austerlitz.
Each battalion of the Guard, for this _dénouement_, was commanded by
a general; Friant, Michel, Roguet, Harlot, Mallet, and Pont de Morvan
were there. When the tall bearskins of the Grenadiers of the Guard
with the large eagle device appeared, symmetrical in line, and calm,
in the twilight of this fight, the enemy felt a respect for France;
they fancied they saw twenty victories entering the battlefield with
outstretched wings, and the men who were victors, esteeming themselves
vanquished, fell back; but Wellington shouted, "Up, Guards, and take
steady aim!" The red regiment of English Guards, which had been lying
down behind the hedges, rose; a storm of canister rent the tricolor
flag waving above the heads of the French; all rushed forward, and the
supreme carnage commenced. The Imperial Guard felt in the darkness
the army giving way around them, and the vast staggering of the rout:
they heard the cry of "Sauve qui peut!" substituted for the "Vive
l'Empereur!" and with flight behind them they continued to advance,
hundreds falling at every step they took. None hesitated or evinced
timidity; the privates were as heroic as the generals, and not one
attempted to escape suicide.
Ney, wild, and grand in the consciousness of accepted death, offered
himself to every blow in this combat. He had his fifth horse killed
under him here. Bathed in perspiration, with a flame in his eye and
foam on his lips, his uniform unbuttoned, one of his epaulettes
half-cut through by the sabre-cut of a horse-guard, and his decoration
of the great Eagle dinted by a bullet,--bleeding, muddy, magnificent,
and holding a broken sword in his hand, he shouted, "Come and see how a
marshal of France dies on the battle-field!" But it was in vain; he did
not die. He was haggard and indignant, and hurled at Drouet d'Erlon the
question, "Are you not going to get yourself killed?" He yelled amid
the roar of all this artillery, crushing a handful of men, "Oh, there
is nothing for me! I should like all these English cannon-balls to
enter my chest!" You were reserved for French bullets, unfortunate man.