CAMBRONNE.
Out of respect for the French reader, the grandest word that any
Frenchman has ever uttered must not be repeated. Dump no sublimity into
the stream of history.
At our own risk, we shall disregard this notice.
Among these giants, then, there was one Titan, Cambronne.
To speak out this word and then die, what could be more sublime than
this! For to be ready to die is to die, and it was no fault of his if
amid a storm of grape-shot he still lived.
The man who won the battle of Waterloo was not Napoleon routed; it was
not Wellington giving ground at four o'clock, driven to despair at
five; it was not Blücher, who had not fought at all: the man who won
the battle of Waterloo was Cambronne.
To overwhelm with such a word the thunder-bolt which kills you, is to
win the victory.
To reply thus to disaster, to say this to fate, to lay such a
foundation for the lion which was to mark the spot, to hurl this reply
to the night's rain, to the masked wall of Hougomont, to the sunken
road of Ohain, to the delay of Grouchy, to the arrival of Blücher,
to be Irony in the tomb, to struggle to his feet again after having
fallen, to drown in two syllables the European coalition, to offer to
kings these latrines already used by the Cæsars, to make the last of
words the first, lending it the splendor of France, to end Waterloo
with the jeers of the Mardi-Gras, to supplement Leonidas with Rabelais,
to sum up this victory in one last word impossible to repeat, to lose
ground and preserve history, after such carnage to have the laugh on
his side, this is grand.
This insult to the lightning reaches the sublimity of Æschylus.
Cambronne's exclamation has the effect of an explosion. It is the
bursting of a bosom with disdain; it is the surcharge of agony which
breaks out. Who did conquer? Was it Wellington? No. Without Blücher
he was lost. Was it Blücher? No. If Wellington had not begun, Blücher
could not have finished. This Cambronne, this new-comer upon the scene,
this unknown soldier, this infinitesimal atom of the war, feels that
there is a lie somewhere in the disaster, which doubles its bitterness;
and at the moment when he is bursting with rage, they offer him this
mockery, life! How could he help bursting out? They are there,--all the
kings of Europe, the conquering generals, the thundering Jupiters; they
have a hundred thousand victorious soldiers, and behind the hundred
thousand, a million; their cannon, the matches lighted, are yawning;
they have trampled under foot the Imperial Guard and the Grand Army;
they have just crushed Napoleon; only Cambronne is left; only this
earthworm remains to protest. He will protest. Then he looks about
for a word, as he would for a sword. Froth rises to his lips, and this
froth is the word. Before this victory, stupendous but commonplace,
before this victory without victors, driven to despair, he stands erect
again. He yields to its weight, but he proves its nothingness; and he
does more than spit upon it; and weighed down by numbers, by force, by
matter, he finds for his soul one expression, "Merde!" We repeat--to
say this, to do this, to find this, is to win the victory.
The spirit of the great past entered into this unknown man at this
fatal moment. Cambronne finds the word of Waterloo just as Rouget de
l'Isle finds the Marseillaise--by an inspiration from above. A magnetic
current from the divine whirlwind passes through these men and they
vibrate, and one sings the grand song, the other utters the terrible
cry. This word of superhuman scorn Cambronne hurls not alone at Europe
in the name of the Empire,--that would be little; he hurls it at the
past in the name of the Revolution. In Cambronne is heard and is
recognized the old soul of the giants. It seems as if it were Danton
speaking or Kleber roaring.
To this word of Cambronne's, the English voice replied, "Fire!" The
batteries blazed, the hill trembled, from all these brazen mouths
leaped a last fearful belching of grape, a dense cloud of smoke
rolled forth silvered in waves by the rising moon, and when the smoke
cleared away, there was nothing left there. This dreaded remnant was
annihilated. The four walls of the living redoubt lay low, there being
hardly perceptible here and there a quivering among the corpses; and
thus the French legions, greater than those of Rome, died at Mont
St. Jean, on the earth drenched with rain and blood, in the gloomy
wheat-fields, at the spot where now there passes at four o'clock in the
morning, whistling and gayly flicking his horse with the whip, Joseph,
who drives the Nivelles mail-cart.