OUGHT WATERLOO TO BE APPLAUDED?
There exists a highly respectable liberal school, which does not
detest Waterloo, but we do not belong to it. For us Waterloo is
only the stupefied date of liberty; for such an eagle to issue
from such a shell is assuredly unexpected. Waterloo, if we place
ourselves at the culminating point of the question, is intentionally
a counter-revolutionary victory,--it is Europe against France; it
is Petersburg, Berlin, and Vienna against Paris; it is the _statu
quo_ opposed to the initiative; it is the 14th July, 1789, attacked
through March 20, 1815; it is all the monarchies clearing the decks
to conquer the indomitable French spirit of revolt. The dream was to
extinguish this vast people which had been in a state of eruption
for six-and-twenty years; and for this purpose, Brunswick, Nassau,
the Romanoffs, Hohenzollern, and the Hapsburger coalesced with the
Bourbons, and Waterloo carries divine right on its pillion. It is true
that as the Empire was despotic, Royalty, by the natural reaction
of things, was compelled to be liberal, and a constitutional order
issued from Waterloo, much to the regret of the conquerors. The fact
is, that the Revolution can never be really conquered, and being
providential and absolutely fatal, it constantly reappears,--before
Waterloo in Napoleon overthrowing the old thrones; after Waterloo in
Louis XVIII. granting and enduring the charter. Bonaparte places a
postilion on the throne of Naples, and a sergeant on the throne of
Sweden, employing inequality to demonstrate equality; Louis XVIII. at
St. Ouen countersigns the declaration of the rights of man. If you
wish to understand what revolution is, call it progress; and if you
wish to understand what progress is, call it to-morrow. To-morrow ever
does its work irresistibly and does it to-day, and it ever strangely
attains its object. It employs Wellington to make an orator of Foy who
was only a soldier. Foy falls at Hougomont and raises himself in the
tribune. Such is the process of progress, and that workman has no bad
tools: it fits to its divine work the man who bestrode the Alps and the
old tottering patient of Père Élysée, and it employs both the gouty man
and the conqueror,--the conqueror externally, the gouty man at home.
Waterloo, by cutting short the demolition of thrones by the sword, had
no other effect than to continue the revolutionary work on another
side. The sabres have finished, and the turn of the thinkers arrives;
the age which Waterloo wished to arrest marched over it, and continued
its route, and this sinister victory was gained by liberty.
Still it is incontestable that what triumphed at Waterloo; what smiled
behind Wellington; what procured him all the marshals' staffs of
Europe, including, by the way, that of Marshal of France; what rolled
along joyously the wheelbarrows of earth mingled with bones to erect
the foundation for the lion, on whose pedestal is inscribed the date
June 18, 1815; what encouraged Blücher in cutting down the routed army;
and what from the plateau of Mont St. Jean hovered over France like a
prey,--was the counter-revolution. It is the counter-revolution that
muttered the hideous word "Dismemberment"; but on reaching Paris it had
a close view of the crater, it felt that the ashes burned its feet, and
it reflected. It went back to the job of stammering a charter.
Let us only see in Waterloo what there really is in it. There is no
intentional liberty, for the counter-revolution was involuntarily
liberal in the same way as Napoleon, through a corresponding
phenomenon, was involuntarily a Revolutionist. On June 18, 1815,
Robespierre on horseback was thrown.