Of all the great battles in which I had the honour of drawing my sword
for the Emperor and for France there was not one which was lost. At
Waterloo, although, in a sense, I was present, I was unable to fight,
and the enemy was victorious. It is not for me to say that there is a
connection between these two things. You know me too well, my friends,
to imagine that I would make such a claim. But it gives matter for
thought, and some have drawn flattering conclusions from it.
After all, it was only a matter of breaking a few English squares
and the day would have been our own. If the Hussars of Conflans, with
Etienne Gerard to lead them, could not do this, then the best judges are
mistaken.
But let that pass. The Fates had ordained that I should hold my hand and
that the Empire should fall. But they had also ordained that this day of
gloom and sorrow should bring such honour to me as had never come when I
swept on the wings of victory from Boulogne to Vienna.
Never had I burned so brilliantly as at that supreme moment when the
darkness fell upon all around me. You are aware that I was faithful to
the Emperor in his adversity, and that I refused to sell my sword and my
honour to the Bourbons. Never again was I to feel my war horse between
my knees, never again to hear the kettledrums and silver trumpets behind
me as I rode in front of my little rascals. But it comforts my heart,
my friends, and it brings the tears to my eyes, to think how great I was
upon that last day of my soldier life, and to remember that of all the
remarkable exploits which have won me the love of so many beautiful
women, and the respect of so many noble men, there was none which, in
splendour, in audacity, and in the great end which was attained, could
compare with my famous ride upon the night of June 18th, 1815. I am
aware that the story is often told at mess-tables and in barrack-rooms,
so that there are few in the army who have not heard it, but modesty has
sealed my lips, until now, my friends, in the privacy of these intimate
gatherings, I am inclined to lay the true facts before you.
In the first place, there is one thing which I can assure you. In all
his career Napoleon never had so splendid an army as that with which
he took the field for that campaign. In 1813 France was exhausted. For
every veteran there were five children--Marie Louises, as we called
them; for the Empress had busied herself in raising levies while the
Emperor took the field. But it was very different in 1815. The prisoners
had all come back--the men from the snows of Russia, the men from the
dungeons of Spain, the men from the hulks in England.
These were the dangerous men, veterans of twenty battles, longing for
their old trade, and with hearts filled with hatred and revenge. The
ranks were full of soldiers who wore two and three chevrons, every
chevron meaning five years' service. And the spirit of these men was
terrible. They were raging, furious, fanatical, adoring the Emperor as
a Mameluke does his prophet, ready to fall upon their own bayonets if
their blood could serve him. If you had seen these fierce old veterans
going into battle, with their flushed faces, their savage eyes, their
furious yells, you would wonder that anything could stand against them.
So high was the spirit of France at that time that every other spirit
would have quailed before it; but these people, these English, had
neither spirit nor soul, but only solid, immovable beef, against which
we broke ourselves in vain. That was it, my friends! On the one side,
poetry, gallantry, self-sacrifice--all that is beautiful and heroic.
On the other side, beef. Our hopes, our ideals, our dreams--all were
shattered on that terrible beef of Old England.
You have read how the Emperor gathered his forces, and then how he and
I, with a hundred and thirty thousand veterans, hurried to the northern
frontier and fell upon the Prussians and the English. On the 16th of
June, Ney held the English in play at Quatre-Bras while we beat the
Prussians at Ligny. It is not for me to say how far I contributed to
that victory, but it is well known that the Hussars of Conflans covered
themselves with glory. They fought well, these Prussians, and eight
thousand of them were left upon the field. The Emperor thought that he
had done with them, as he sent Marshal Grouchy with thirty-two thousand
men to follow them up and to prevent their interfering with his plans.
Then with nearly eighty thousand men, he turned upon these “Goddam”
Englishmen. How much we had to avenge upon them, we Frenchmen--the
guineas of Pitt, the hulks of Portsmouth, the invasion of Wellington,
the perfidious victories of Nelson! At last the day of punishment seemed
to have arisen.
Wellington had with him sixty-seven thousand men, but many of them were
known to be Dutch and Belgian, who had no great desire to fight against
us. Of good troops he had not fifty thousand. Finding himself in
the presence of the Emperor in person with eighty thousand men, this
Englishman was so paralysed with fear that he could neither move himself
nor his army. You have seen the rabbit when the snake approaches. So
stood the English upon the ridge of Waterloo. The night before, the
Emperor, who had lost an aide-de-camp at Ligny, ordered me to join his
staff, and I had left my Hussars to the charge of Major Victor. I know
not which of us was the most grieved, they or I, that I should be
called away upon the eve of battle, but an order is an order, and a good
soldier can but shrug his shoulders and obey. With the Emperor I rode
across the front of the enemy's position on the morning of the 18th, he
looking at them through his glass and planning which was the shortest
way to destroy them. Soult was at his elbow, and Ney and Foy and others
who had fought the English in Portugal and Spain. “Have a care, Sire,”
said Soult. “The English infantry is very solid.”
“You think them good soldiers because they have beaten you,” said the
Emperor, and we younger men turned away our faces and smiled. But Ney
and Foy were grave and serious. All the time the English line, chequered
with red and blue and dotted with batteries, was drawn up silent and
watchful within a long musket-shot of us. On the other side of the
shallow valley our own people, having finished their soup, were
assembling for the battle. It had rained very heavily, but at this
moment the sun shone out and beat upon the French army, turning our
brigades of cavalry into so many dazzling rivers of steel, and twinkling
and sparkling on the innumerable bayonets of the infantry. At the sight
of that splendid army, and the beauty and majesty of its appearance, I
could contain myself no longer, but, rising in my stirrups, I waved my
busby and cried, “Vive l'Empereur!” a shout which growled and roared
and clattered from one end of the line to the other, while the horsemen
waved their swords and the footmen held up their shakos upon their
bayonets. The English remained petrified upon their ridge. They knew
that their hour had come.
And so it would have come if at that moment the word had been given and
the whole army had been permitted to advance. We had but to fall upon
them and to sweep them from the face of the earth. To put aside all
question of courage, we were the more numerous, the older soldiers, and
the better led. But the Emperor desired to do all things in order,
and he waited until the ground should be drier and harder, so that his
artillery could manoeuvre. So three hours were wasted, and it was eleven
o'clock before we saw Jerome Buonaparte's columns advance upon our left
and heard the crash of the guns which told that the battle had begun.
The loss of those three hours was our destruction. The attack upon
the left was directed upon a farm-house which was held by the English
Guards, and we heard the three loud shouts of apprehension which the
defenders were compelled to utter. They were still holding out, and
D'Erlon's corps was advancing upon the right to engage another portion
of the English line, when our attention was called away from the battle
beneath our noses to a distant portion of the field of action.
The Emperor had been looking through his glass to the extreme left of
the English line, and now he turned suddenly to the Duke of Dalmatia, or
Soult, as we soldiers preferred to call him.
“What is it, Marshal?” said he.
We all followed the direction of his gaze, some raising our glasses,
some shading our eyes. There was a thick wood over yonder, then a long,
bare slope, and another wood beyond. Over this bare strip between the
two woods there lay something dark, like the shadow of a moving cloud.
“I think that they are cattle, Sire,” said Soult.
At that instant there came a quick twinkle from amid the dark shadow.
“It is Grouchy,” said the Emperor, and he lowered his glass. “They are
doubly lost, these English. I hold them in the hollow of my hand. They
cannot escape me.”
He looked round, and his eyes fell upon me.
“Ah! here is the prince of messengers,” said he. “Are you well mounted,
Colonel Gerard?”