but a small part; but if we take Waterloo from Wellington and Blucher,
does that deprive England and Germany of anything? No. Neither
illustrious England nor august Germany is in question in the problem
of Waterloo, for, thank heaven! nations are great without the mournful
achievements of the sword. Neither Germany, nor England, nor France is
held in a scabbard; at this day when Waterloo is only a clash of
sabers, Germany has Goethe above Blucher, and England Byron above
Wellington. A mighty dawn of ideas is peculiar to our age; and in this
dawn England and Germany have their own magnificent flash. They are
majestic because they think; the high level they bring to civilization
is intrinsic to them; it comes from themselves, and not from an
accident. Any aggrandizement the nineteenth century may have can not
boast of Waterloo as its fountainhead; for only barbarous nations grow
suddenly after a victory--it is the transient vanity of torrents
swollen by a storm. Civilized nations, especially at the present day,
are not elevated or debased by the good or evil fortune of a captain,
and their specific weight in the human family results from something
more than a battle. Their honor, dignity, enlightenment, and genius
are not numbers which those gamblers, heroes, and conquerors can stake
in the lottery of battles. Very often a battle lost is progress
gained, and less of glory, more of liberty. The drummer is silent and
reason speaks; it is the game of who loses wins. Let us, then, speak
of Waterloo coldly from both sides, and render to chance the things
that belong to chance, and to God what is God's. What is Waterloo--a
victory? No; a quine in the lottery, won by Europe, and paid by
France; it was hardly worth while erecting a lion for it.
Waterloo, by the way, is the strangest encounter recorded in history;
Napoleon and Wellington are not enemies, but contraries. Never did
God, who delights in antitheses, produce a more striking contrast, or
a more extraordinary confrontation. On one side precision, foresight,
geometry, prudence, a retreat assured, reserves prepared, an obstinate
coolness, an imperturbable method, strategy profiting by the ground,
tactics balancing battalions, carnage measured by a plumb-line, war
regulated watch in hand, nothing left voluntarily to accident, old
classic courage and absolute correctness. On the other side we have
intuition, divination, military strangeness, superhuman instinct, a
flashing glance; something that gazes like the eagle and strikes like
lightning, all the mysteries of a profound mind, association with
destiny; the river, the plain, the forest, and the hill summoned, and,
to some extent, compelled to obey, the despot going so far as even to
tyrannize over the battle-field; faith in a star, blended with
strategic science, heightening, but troubling it. Wellington was the
Barême of war, Napoleon was its Michelangelo, and this true genius was
conquered by calculation. On both sides somebody was expected; and it
was the exact calculator who succeeded. Napoleon waited for Grouchy,
who did not come; Wellington waited for Blucher, and he came.
Wellington is the classical war taking its revenge; Bonaparte, in his
dawn, had met it in Italy, and superbly defeated it--the old owl fled
before the young vulture. The old tactics had been not only
overthrown, but scandalized. Who was this Corsican of six-and-twenty
years of age? What meant this splendid ignoramus, who, having
everything against him, nothing for him, without provisions,
ammunition, guns, shoes, almost without an army, with a handful of men
against masses, dashed at allied Europe, and absurdly gained
impossible victories? Who was this new comet of war who possest the
effrontery of a planet? The academic military school excommunicated
him, while bolting, and hence arose an implacable rancor of the old
Cæsarism against the new, of the old saber against the flashing sword,
and of the chessboard against genius. On June 18th, 1815, this rancor
got the best; and beneath Lodi, Montebello, Montenotte, Mantua,
Marengo, and Arcola, it wrote--Waterloo. It was a triumph of
mediocrity, sweet to majorities, and destiny consented to this irony.
In his decline, Napoleon found a young Suvarov before him--in fact, it
is only necessary to blanch Wellington's hair in order to have a
Suvarov. Waterloo is a battle of the first class, gained by a captain
of the second.
What must be admired in the battle of Waterloo is England, the English
firmness, the English resolution, the English blood, and what England
had really superb in it, is (without offense) herself; it is not her
captain, but her army. Wellington, strangely ungrateful, declares in
his dispatch to Lord Bathurst that his army, the one which fought on
June 18th, 1815, was a "detestable army." What does the gloomy pile of
bones buried in the trenches of Waterloo think of this? England has
been too modest to herself in her treatment of Wellington, for making
him so great is making herself small. Wellington is merely a hero,
like any other man. The Scotch Grays, the Life Guards, Maitland and
Mitchell's regiments, Pack and Kempt's infantry, Ponsonby and
Somerset's cavalry, the Highlanders playing the bagpipes under the
shower of canister, Ryland's battalions, the fresh recruits who could
hardly manage a musket, and yet held their ground against the old
bands of Essling and Rivoli--all this is grand. Wellington was
tenacious; that was his merit, and we do not deny it to him, but the
lowest of his privates and his troopers was quite as solid as he, and
the iron soldier is as good as the iron duke. For our part, all our
glorification is offered to the English soldier, the English army, the
English nation; and if there must be a trophy, it is to England that
this trophy is owing. The Waterloo column would be more just, if,
instead of the figure of a man, it raised to the clouds the statue of
a people.
But this great England will be irritated by what we are writing here;
for she still has feudal illusions, after her 1688 and the French
1789. This people believes in inheritance and hierarchy, and while no
other excels it in power and glory, it esteems itself as a nation and
not as a people. As a people, it readily subordinates itself, and
takes a lord as its head; the workman lets himself be despised; the
soldier puts up with flogging, It will be remembered that, at the
battle of Inkerman, a sergeant who, as it appears, saved the British
army, could not be mentioned by Lord Raglan, because the military
hierarchy does not allow any hero below the rank of officer to be
mentioned in dispatches. What we admire before all, in an encounter
like Waterloo, is the prodigious skill of chance. The night raid, the
wall of Hougomont, the hollow way of Ohain, Grouchy deaf to the
cannon, Napoleon's guide deceiving him, Bulow's guide enlightening
him--all this cataclysm is marvelously managed.
Altogether, we will assert, there is more of a massacre than of a
battle in Waterloo. Waterloo, of all pitched battles, is the one which
had the smallest front for such a number of combatants. Napoleon's
three-quarters of a league. Wellington's half a league, and
seventy-two thousand combatants on either side. From this density came
the carnage. The following calculation has been made and proportion
established: loss of men, at Austerlitz, French, fourteen per cent.;
Russian, thirty per cent.; Austrian, forty-four per cent.: at Wagram,
French, thirteen per cent.; Austrian, fourteen per cent.: at Moscow,
French, thirty-seven per cent.; Russian, forty-four per cent.: at
Bautzen, French, thirteen per cent.; Russian and Prussian, fourteen
per cent.: at Waterloo, French, fifty-six per cent.; allies,
thirty-one per cent.--total for Waterloo, forty-one per cent., or out
of one hundred and forty-four thousand fighting men, sixty thousand
killed.
The field of Waterloo has at the present day that calmness which
belongs to the earth, and resembles all plains; but at night, a sort
of visionary mist rises from it, and if any traveler walk about it,
and listen and dream, like Virgil on the mournful plain of Philippi,
the hallucination of the catastrophe seizes upon him. The frightful
June 18th lives again, the false monumental hill is leveled, the
wondrous lion is dissipated, the battle-field resumes its reality,
lines of infantry undulate on the plain; furious galloping crosses the
horizon; the startled dreamer sees the flash of sabers, the sparkle of
bayonets, the red light of shells, the monstrous collision of
thunderbolts; he hears, like a death groan from the tomb, the vague
clamor of the fantom battle. These shadows are grenadiers; these
flashes are cuirassiers; this skeleton is Napoleon; this skeleton is
Wellington; all this is nonexistent, and yet still combats, and the
ravines are stained purple, and the trees rustle, and there is fury
even in the clouds and in the darkness, while all the stern heights,
Mont St. Jean, Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, and Plancenoit, seem
confusedly crowned by hosts of specters exterminating one another.
II
THE BEGINNINGS AND EXPANSIONS OF PARIS[58]
The Paris of three hundred and fifty years ago, the Paris of the
fifteenth century, was already a gigantic city. We modern Parisians in
general are much mistaken in regard to the ground which we imagine it
has gained. Since the time of Louis XI Paris has not increased above
one-third; and certes it has lost much more in beauty than it has
acquired in magnitude.
[Footnote 58: From Book III, Chapter II, of "The Hunchback of Notre
Dame." From an anonymous, non-copyright translation published by A. L.
Burt Company.]
The infant Paris was born, as everybody knows, in that ancient island
in the shape of a cradle, which is now called the City. The banks of
that island were its first enclosure; the Seine was its first ditch.
For several centuries Paris was confined to the island, having two
bridges, the one on the north, the other on the south, the two
_têtes-de-ponts_, which were at once its gates and its fortresses--the
Grand Chatelet on the right bank and the Petit Chatelet on the left.
In process of time, under the kings of the first dynasty, finding
herself straitened in her island and unable to turn herself about, she
crossed the water. A first enclosure of walls and towers then began to
encroach upon either bank of the Seine beyond the two Chatelets. Of
this ancient enclosure some vestiges were still remaining in the past
century; nothing is now left of it but the memory and here and there
a tradition. By degrees the flood of houses, always propelled from the
heart to the extremities, wore away and overflowed this enclosure.
Philip Augustus surrounded Paris with new ramparts. He imprisoned the
city within a circular chain of large, lofty, and massive towers. For
more than a century the houses, crowding closer and closer, raised
their level in this basin, like water in a reservoir. They began to
grow higher; story was piled upon story; they shot up like any
comprest liquid, and each tried to lift its head above its neighbors
in order to obtain a little fresh air. The streets became deeper and
deeper, and narrower and narrower; every vacant place was covered and
disappeared. The houses at length overleapt the wall of Philip
Augustus, and merrily scattered themselves at random over the plain,
like prisoners who had made their escape. There they sat themselves
down at their ease and carved themselves gardens out of the fields. So
early as 1367 the suburbs of the city had spread so far as to need a
fresh enclosure, especially on the right bank; this was built for it
by Charles V. But a place like Paris is perpetually increasing. It is
such cities alone that become capitals of countries. They are
reservoirs into which all the geographical, political, moral, and
intellectual channels of a country, all the natural inclined planes of
its population discharge themselves; wells of civilization, if we may
be allowed the expression, and drains also, where all that constitutes
the sap, the life, the soul of the nation, is incessantly collecting
and filtering, drop by drop, age by age.
The enclosure of Charles V consequently shared the same fate as that
of Philip Augustus. So early as the conclusion of the fifteenth
century it was overtaken, passed, and the suburbs kept traveling
onward. In the sixteenth it seemed very visibly receding more and more
into the ancient city, so rapidly did the new town thicken on the
other side of it. Thus, so far back as the fifteenth century, to come
down no further, Paris had already worn out the three concentric
circles of walls which, from the time of Julian the Apostate, lay in
embryo, if I may be allowed the expression, in the Grand and Petit
Chatelets. The mighty city had successively burst its four mural
belts, like a growing boy bursting the garments made for him a year
ago. Under Louis XI there were still to be seen ruined towers of the
ancient enclosures, rising at intervals above the sea of houses, like
the tops of hills from amid an inundation, like the archipelagos of
old Paris submerged beneath the new....
Each of these great divisions of Paris was, as we have observed, a
city, but a city too special to be complete, a city which could not do
without the two others. Thus they had three totally different aspects.
The City, properly so called, abounded in churches; the Ville
contained the palaces; and the University, the colleges. Setting aside
secondary jurisdictions, we may assume generally that the island was
under the bishop, the right bank under the provost of the merchants,
the left under the rector of the University, and the whole under the
provost of Paris, a royal and not a municipal officer. The City had
the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the Ville the Louvre and the Hotel de
Ville, and the University the Sorbonne. The Ville contained the
Halles, the City the Hotel Dieu, and the University the Pré aux
Clercs. For offenses committed by the students on the left bank, in
their Pré aux Clercs, they were tried at the Palace of Justice in the
island, and punished on the right bank at Montfaucon, unless the
rector, finding the University strong and the king weak, chose to
interfere; for it was a privilege of the scholars to be hung in their
own quarter.
Most of these privileges, be it remarked by the way, and some of them
were more valuable than that just mentioned, had been extorted from
different sovereigns by riots and insurrections. This is the
invariable course--the king never grants any boon but what is wrung
from him by the people.
In the fifteenth century that part of the Seine comprehended within
the enclosure of Paris contained five islands: the Ile Louviers, then
covered with trees and now with timber, the Ile aux Vaches, and the
Ile Notre Dame, both uninhabited and belonging to the bishop [in the
seventeenth century these two islands were converted into one, which
has been built upon and is now called the Isle of St. Louis]; lastly
the City, and at its point the islet of the Passeur aux Vaches, since
buried under the platform of the Pont Neuf. The City had at that time
five bridges: three on the right--the bridge of Notre Dame and the
Pont au Change of stone, and the Pont aux Meuniers of wood; two on the
left--the Petit Pont of stone, and the Pont St. Michel of wood; all of
them covered with houses. The university had six gates, built by
Philip Augustus; these were, setting out from the Tournelle, the Gate
of St. Victor, the Gate of Bordelle, the Papal Gate, and the gates of
St. Jacques, St. Michel, and St. Germain. The Ville had six gates,
built by Charles V, that is to say, beginning from the Tower of Billy,
the gates of St. Antoine, the Temple, St. Martin, St. Denis,
Montmartre, and St. Honoré. All these gates were strong, and handsome,
too, a circumstance which does not detract from strength. A wide, deep
ditch, supplied by the Seine with water, which was swollen by the
floods of winter to a running stream, encircled the foot of the wall
all round Paris. At night the gates were closed, the river was barred
at the two extremities of the city by stout iron chains, and Paris
slept in quiet.
A bird's-eye view of these three towns, the City, the University, and
the Ville, exhibited to the eye an inextricable knot of streets
strangely jumbled together. It was apparent, however, at first sight
that these three fragments of a city formed but a single body. The
spectator perceived immediately two long parallel streets, without
break or interruption, crossing the three cities, nearly in a right
line, from one end to the other, from south to north, perpendicularly
to the Seine, incessantly pouring the people of the one into the
other, connecting, blending them together and converting the three
into one. The first of these streets ran from the Gate of St. Jacques
to the Gate of St. Martin; it was called in the University the street
of St. Jacques, in the City Rue de la Juiverie, and in the Ville, the
street of St. Martin; it crossed the river twice by the name of Petit
Pont and Pont Notre Dame. The second, named Rue de la Harpe on the
left bank, Rue de la Barillerie in the island, Rue St. Denis on the
right bank, Pont St. Michel over one arm of the Seine, and Pont au
Change over the other, Gate of St. Martin; it was called in the
University to the Gate of St. Denis in the Ville. Still, tho they bore
so many different names, they formed in reality only two streets, but
the two mother-streets, the two great arteries of Paris. All the other
veins of the triple city were fed by or discharged themselves into
these....
What, then, was the aspect of this whole, viewed from the summit of
the towers of Notre Dame in 1482? That is what we shall now attempt to
describe. The spectator, on arriving breathless at that elevation, was
dazzled by the chaos of roofs, chimneys, streets, bridges, belfries,
towers and steeples. All burst at once upon the eye--the carved gable,
the sharp roof, the turret perched upon the angles of the walls, the
stone pyramids of the eleventh century, the slated obelisk of the
fifteenth, the round and naked keep of the castle, the square and
embroidered tower of the church, the great and the small, the massive
and the light. The eye was long bewildered amid this labyrinth of
heights and depths in which there was nothing but had its originality,
its reason, its genius, its beauty, nothing, but issued from the hand
of art, from the humblest dwelling with its painted and carved wooden
front, elliptical doorway, and overhanging stories, to the royal
Louvre, which then had a colonnade of towers.
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
Born in 1802, died in 1870; his father a French general, his
grandmother a negress; at first a writer of plays; active in
the Revolution of 1830; wrote books of travel and short
stories, a great number of novels, some of them in
collaboration with others; "Les Trois Mousquetaires"
published in 1844; "Monte Cristo" in 1844-45; "Le Reine
Margot" in 1845; wrote also historical sketches and
reminiscences; his son of the same name famous also as a
writer of books and a playwright.
THE SHOULDER, THE BELT, AND THE HANDKERCHIEF[59]
Furious with rage, D'Artagnan crossed the anteroom in three strides,
and began to descend the stairs four steps at a time, without looking
where he was going; when suddenly he was brought up short by knocking
violently against the shoulder of a musketeer who was leaving the
apartments of M. De Treville. The young man staggered backward from
the shock, uttering a cry, or rather a yell.
[Footnote 59: From "The Three Musketeers."]
"Excuse me," said D'Artagnan, trying to pass him, "but I am in a great
hurry."
He had hardly placed his foot on the next step, when he was stopt by
the grasp of an iron wrist on his sash.
"You are in a great hurry!" cried the musketeer, whose face was the
color of a shroud; "and you think that is enough apology for nearly
knocking me down? Not so fast, my young man. I suppose you imagine
that because you heard M. De Treville speaking to us rather brusquely
to-day, that everybody may treat us in the same way? But you are
mistaken, and it is as well you should learn that you are not M. De
Treville."
"Upon my honor," replied D'Artagnan, recognizing Athos, who was
returning to his room after having his wound drest, "upon my honor, it
was an accident, and therefore I begged your pardon. I should have
thought that was all that was necessary. I repeat that I am in a very
great hurry, and I should be much obliged if you would let me go my
way."
"Monsieur," said Athos, loosening his hold, "you are sadly lacking in
courtesy, and one sees that you must have had a rustic upbringing."
D'Artagnan was by this time half-way down another flight; but on
hearing Athos's remark he stopt short.
"My faith, monsieur!" exclaimed he, "however rustic I may be, I shall
not come to you to teach me manners."
"I am not so sure of that," replied Athos.
"Oh, if I was only not in such haste," cried D'Artagnan; "if only I
was not pursuing somebody--"
"Monsieur, you will find me without running after me. Do you
understand?"
"And where, if you please?"
"Near Carmes-Deschaux."
"At what hour?"
"Twelve o'clock."
"Very good. At twelve I will be there."
"And don't be late, for at a quarter-past twelve I will cut off your
ears for you."
"All right," called out D'Artagnan, dashing on down-stairs after his
man; "you may expect me at ten minutes before the hour."
But he was not to escape so easily. At the street door stood Porthos,
talking to a sentry, and between the two men there was barely space
for a man to pass. D'Artagnan took it for granted that he could get
through, and darted on, swift as an arrow, but he had not reckoned on
the gale that was blowing. As he passed, a sudden gust wrapt Porthos's
mantle tight round him; and tho the owner of the garment could easily
have freed him had he so chosen, for reasons of his own he preferred
to draw the folds still closer.
D'Artagnan, hearing the volley of oaths let fall by the musketeers,
feared he might have damaged the splendor of the belt, and struggled
to unwind himself; but when he at length freed his head, he found that
like most things in this world the belt had two sides, and while the
front bristled with gold, the back was mere leather; which explains
why Porthos always had a cold and could not part from his mantle.
"Confound you!" cried Porthos, struggling in his turn, "have you gone
mad, that you tumble over people like this?"
"Excuse me," answered D'Artagnan, "but I am in a great hurry. I am
pursuing some one, and--"
"And I suppose that on such occasions you leave your eyes behind you?"
asked Porthos.
"No," replied D'Artagnan, rather nettled; "and thanks to my eyes, I
often see things that other people don't."
Possibly Porthos might have understood this allusion, but in any case
he did not attempt to control his anger, and said sharply:
"Monsieur, we shall have to give you a lesson if you take to tumbling
against the musketeers like this!"
"A lesson, monsieur!" replied D'Artagnan; "that is rather a severe
expression."
"It is the expression of a man who is always accustomed to look his
enemies in the face."
"Oh, if that is all, there is no fear of your turning your back on
anybody," and enchanted at his own wit, the young man walked away in
fits of laughter.
Porthos foamed with rage, and rushed after D'Artagnan.
"By and by, by and by," cried the latter; "when you have not got your
mantle on."
"At one o'clock then, behind the Luxembourg."
"All right; at one o'clock," replied D'Artagnan as he vanished around
the corner....
Moreover, he had gotten himself into two fierce duels with two men,
each able to kill three D'Artagnans; in a word, with two
musketeers--beings he set so high that he placed them above all other
men.
It was a sad lookout. To be sure, as the youth was certain to be
killed by Athos, he was not much disturbed about Porthos. As hope is
the last thing to die in a man's heart, however, he ended by hoping
that he might come out alive from both duels, even if dreadfully
injured; and on that supposition he scored himself in this way for
his conduct: