1.C.1.3. THE EIGHTEENTH OF JUNE, 1815
LET Us turn back,— that is one of the story-teller's rights,—
and put ourselves 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 required 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 foundation of this wonderful captain was the man who,
in the report to the Directory 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 something
of the sharpshooter in his genius. To beat in squares,
to pulverize regiments, 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 himself? 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 giants 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 Bonapartes?
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 battle, according to Napoleon. Afterwards
people would see.
Of course, we do not here pretend to furnish a history of
the battle of Waterloo; one of the scenes of the foundation
of the story which we are relating is connected with this
battle, but this history is not our subject; this history, 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.
As for us, we leave the historians at loggerheads; we are but
a distant witness, a passerby 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 illusions, 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.