THE LAST SQUARE.
A few squares of the Guard, standing motionless in the swash of the
rout, like rocks in running water, held out till night. They awaited
the double shadow of night and death, and let them surround them. Each
regiment, isolated from the others, and no longer connected with the
army which was broken on all sides, died where it stood. In order to
perform this last exploit, they had taken up a position, some on the
heights of Rossomme, others on the plain of Mont St. Jean. The gloomy
squares, deserted, conquered, and terrible, struggled formidably with
death, for Ulm, Wagram, Jena, and Friedland were dying in it. When
twilight set in at nine in the evening, one square still remained at
the foot of the plateau of Mont St. Jean. In this mournful valley,
at the foot of the slope scaled by the cuirassiers, now inundated by
the English masses, beneath the converging fire of the hostile and
victorious artillery, under a fearful hailstorm of projectiles, this
square still resisted. It was commanded by an obscure officer of the
name of Cambronne. At each volley the square diminished, but continued
to reply to the canister with musketry fire, and each moment contracted
its four walls. Fugitives in the distance, stopping at moments to draw
breath, listened in the darkness to this gloomy diminishing thunder.
When this legion had become only a handful, when their colors were but
a rag, when their ammunition was exhausted, and muskets were clubbed,
and when the pile of corpses was greater than the living group, the
victors felt a species of sacred awe, and the English artillery ceased
firing. It was a sort of respite; these combatants had around them an
army of spectres, outlines of mounted men, the black profile of guns,
and the white sky visible through the wheels; the colossal death's-head
which heroes ever glimpse in the smoke of a battle, advanced and
looked at them. They could hear in the twilight gloom that the guns
were being loaded; the lighted matches, resembling the eyes of a
tiger in the night, formed a circle round their heads. The linstocks
of the English batteries approached the guns, and at this moment an
English general,--Colville according to some, Maitland according to
others,--holding the supreme moment suspended over the heads of these
men, shouted to them, "Brave Frenchmen, surrender!"
Cambronne answered, "Merde!"