CHAPTER III
THE EIGHTEENTH OF JUNE, 1815
Let us turn back,—that is one of the story–teller's rights,—and put our- selves once more in the year 1815, and even a little earlier than the epoch when the action narrated in the first part of this book took place.
If it had not rained in the night between the 17th and the 18th of June, 1815, the fate of Europe would have been different. A few drops of water, more or less, decided the downfall of Napoleon. All that Providence re- quired in order to make Waterloo the end of Austerlitz was a little more rain, and a cloud traversing the sky out of season sufficed to make a world crumble.
The battle of Waterloo could not be begun until half–past eleven o'clock, and that gave Blucher time to come up. Why? Because the ground was wet.
The artillery had to wait until it became a little firmer before they could manoeuvre.
Napoleon was an artillery officer, and felt the effects of this. The founda- tion of this wonderful captain was the man who, in the report to the Directo- ry on Aboukir, said: Such a one of our balls killed six men. All his plans of battle were arranged for projectiles. The key to his victory was to make the artillery converge on one point. He treated the strategy of the hostile general like a citadel, and made a breach in it. He overwhelmed the weak point with grape–shot; he joined and dissolved battles with cannon. There was some- thing of the sharpshooter in his genius. To beat in squares, to pulverize regi- ments, to break lines, to crush and disperse masses,—for him everything lay
in this, to strike, strike, strike incessantly,—and he intrusted this task to the cannon–ball. A redoubtable method, and one which, united with genius, rendered this gloomy athlete of the pugilism of war invincible for the space of fifteen years.
On the 18th of June, 1815, he relied all the more on his artillery, because he had numbers on his side. Wellington had only one hundred and fifty– nine mouths of fire; Napoleon had two hundred and forty.
Suppose the soil dry, and the artillery capable of moving, the action would have begun at six o'clock in the morning. The battle would have been won and ended at two o'clock, three hours before the change of fortune in favor of the Prussians. What amount of blame attaches to Napoleon for the loss of this battle? Is the shipwreck due to the pilot?
Was it the evident physical decline of Napoleon that complicated this epoch by an inward diminution of force? Had the twenty years of war worn out the blade as it had worn the scabbard, the soul as well as the body? Did the veteran make himself disastrously felt in the leader? In a word, was this genius, as many historians of note have thought, suffering from an eclipse?
Did he go into a frenzy in order to disguise his weakened powers from him- self? Did he begin to waver under the delusion of a breath of adventure?
Had he become—a grave matter in a general—unconscious of peril? Is there an age, in this class of material great men, who may be called the gi- ants of action, when genius grows short–sighted? Old age has no hold on the geniuses of the ideal; for the Dantes and Michael Angelos to grow old is to grow in greatness; is it to grow less for the Hannibals and the Bona- partes? Had Napoleon lost the direct sense of victory? Had he reached the point where he could no longer recognize the reef, could no longer divine the snare, no longer discern the crumbling brink of abysses? Had he lost his power of scenting out catastrophes? He who had in former days known all the roads to triumph, and who, from the summit of his chariot of lightning, pointed them out with a sovereign finger, had he now reached that state of sinister amazement when he could lead his tumultuous legions harnessed to it, to the precipice? Was he seized at the age of forty–six with a supreme madness? Was that titanic charioteer of destiny no longer anything more
than an immense dare–devil?
We do not think so.
His plan of battle was, by the confession of all, a masterpiece. To go straight to the centre of the Allies' line, to make a breach in the enemy, to
cut them in two, to drive the British half back on Hal, and the Prussian half on Tongres, to make two shattered fragments of Wellington and Blucher, to carry Mont–Saint–Jean, to seize Brussels, to hurl the German into the Rhine, and the Englishman into the sea. All this was contained in that bat- tle, according to Napoleon. Afterwards people would see.
Of course, we do not here pretend to furnish a history of the battle of Wa- terloo; one of the scenes of the foundation of the story which we are relat- ing is connected with this battle, but this history is not our subject; this his- tory, moreover, has been finished, and finished in a masterly manner, from one point of view by Napoleon, and from another point of view by a whole pleiad of historians.[7]
As for us, we leave the historians at loggerheads; we are but a distant wit- ness, a passer–by on the plain, a seeker bending over that soil all made of human flesh, taking appearances for realities, perchance; we have no right to oppose, in the name of science, a collection of facts which contain illu- sions, no doubt; we possess neither military practice nor strategic ability which authorize a system; in our opinion, a chain of accidents dominated the two leaders at Waterloo; and when it becomes a question of destiny, that mysterious culprit, we judge like that ingenious judge, the populace.
[7] Walter Scott, Lamartine, Vaulabelle, Charras, Quinet, Thiers.
