THE CATASTROPHE.
The rout in the rear of the guard was mournful; the army suddenly
gave way on all sides simultaneously,--at Hougomont, La Haye Sainte,
Papelotte, and Plancenoit. The cry of "Treachery!" was followed by that
of "Sauve qui peut!" An army which disbands is like a thaw,--all gives
way, cracks, floats, rolls, falls, comes into collision, and dashes
forward. Ney borrows a horse, leaps on it, and without hat, stock, or
sword, dashes across the Brussels road, stopping at once English and
French. He tries to hold back the army, he recalls it, he insults it,
he clings wildly to the rout to hold it back. The soldiers fly from
him, shouting, "Long live Marshal Ney!" Two regiments of Durutte's
move backward and forward in terror, and as it were tossed between the
sabres of the Hussars and the musketry fire of Kempt's, Best's, and
Pack's brigades. A rout is the highest of all confusions, for friends
kill one another in order to escape, and squadrons and battalions dash
against and destroy one another. Lobau at one extremity and Reille
at the other are carried away by the torrent. In vain does Napoleon
build a wall of what is left of the Guard; in vain does he expend his
own special squadrons in a final effort. Quiot retires before Vivian,
Kellermann before Vandeleur, Lobau before Bülow, Moraud before Pirch,
and Domor and Subervie before Prince William of Prussia. Guyot, who
led the Emperor's squadrons to the charge, falls beneath the horses
of English Dragoons. Napoleon gallops along the line of fugitives,
harangues, urges, threatens, and implores them; all the mouths that
shouted "Long live the Emperor!" in the morning, remained wide open;
they hardly knew him. The Prussian cavalry, who had come up fresh, dash
forward, cut down, kill, and exterminate. The artillery horses dash
forward with the guns; the train soldiers unharness the horses from
the caissons and escape on them; wagons overthrown, and with their
four wheels in the air, block up the road and supply opportunities for
massacre. Men crush one another and trample over the dead and over the
living. A multitude wild with terror fill the roads, the paths, the
bridges, the plains, the hills, the valleys, and the woods, which are
thronged by this flight of forty thousand men. Cries, desperation;
knapsacks and muskets cast into the wheat; passages cut with the edge
of the sabres; no comrades, no officers, no generals recognized,--an
indescribable terror. Ziethen sabring France at his ease. The lions
become kids. Such was this fight.
At Genappe an effort was made to turn and rally; Lobau collected three
hundred men; the entrance of the village was barricaded, but at the
first round of Prussian canister all began flying again, and Lobau was
made prisoner. This volley of shot may still be seen, buried in the
gable of an old brick house on the right of the road, just before you
reach Genappe. The Prussians dashed into Genappe, doubtless furious at
being such small victors, and the pursuit was monstrous, for Blücher
commanded extermination. Roguet had given the mournful example of
threatening with death any French Grenadier who brought in a Prussian
prisoner, and Blücher surpassed Roguet Duchesme, general of the
young guard, who was pursued into the doorway of an inn in Genappe,
surrendered his sword to an Hussar of death, who took the sword and
killed the prisoner. The victory was completed by the assassination of
the vanquished. Let us punish, as we are writing history,--old Blücher
dishonored himself. This ferocity set the seal on the disaster; the
desperate rout passed through Genappe, passed through Quatre Bras,
passed through Sombreffe, passed through Frasnes, passed through Thuin,
passed through Charleroi, and only stopped at the frontier. Alas! and
who was it flying in this way? The grand army.
Did this vertigo, this terror, this overthrow of the greatest bravery
that ever astonished history, take place without a cause? No. The
shadow of a mighty right hand is cast over Waterloo; it is the day of
destiny, and the force which is above man produced that day. Hence
the terror, hence all those great souls laying down their swords.
Those who had conquered Europe, fell crushed, having nothing more to
say or do, and feeling a terrible presence in the shadow. _Hoc erat
in fatis._ On that day the perspective of the human race was changed,
and Waterloo is the hinge of the 19th century. The disappearance of
the great man was necessary for the advent of the great age, and He
who cannot be answered undertook the task. The panic of the heroes
admits of explanation: in the battle of Waterloo there is more than a
storm,--there is a meteor.
At nightfall, Bernard and Bertrand seized by the skirt of his coat, in
a field near Genappe, a haggard, thoughtful, gloomy man, who, carried
so far by the current of the rout, had just dismounted, passed the
bridle over his arm, and was now, with wandering eye, returning alone
to Waterloo. It was Napoleon, the immense somnambulist of the shattered
dream, still striving to advance.