1.C.1.5. THE QUID OBSCURUM OF BATTLES
EVERY one is acquainted with the first phase of this battle;
a beginning which was troubled, uncertain, hesitating, menacing
to both armies, but still more so for the English than for
the French.
It had rained all night, the earth had been cut up by the
downpour, the water had accumulated here and there in the
hollows of the plain as if in casks; at some points the gear of
the artillery carriages was buried up to the axles, the circingles
of the horses were dripping with liquid mud. If the wheat
and rye trampled down by this cohort of transports on the
march had not filled in the ruts and strewn a litter beneath the
wheels, all movement, particularly in the valleys, in the direction
of Papelotte would have been impossible.
The affair began late. Napoleon, as we have already explained,
was in the habit of keeping all his artillery well in
hand, like a pistol, aiming it now at one point, now at another,
of the battle; and it had been his wish to wait until the horse
batteries could move and gallop freely. In order to do that it
was necessary that the sun should come out and dry the soil.
But the sun did not make its appearance. It was no longer
the rendezvous of Austerlitz. When the first cannon was fired,
the English general, Colville, looked at his watch, and noted
that it was thirty-five minutes past eleven.
The action was begun furiously, with more fury, perhaps,
than the Emperor would have wished, by the left wing of the
French resting on Hougomont. At the same time Napoleon
attacked the centre by hurling Quiot's brigade on La Haie-Sainte,
and Ney pushed forward the right wing of the
French against the left wing of the English, which rested on
Papelotte.
The attack on Hougomont was something of a feint; the
plan was to draw Wellington thither, and to make him swerve
to the left. This plan would have succeeded if the four companies
of the English guards and the brave Belgians of Perponcher's
division had not held the position solidly, and Wellington,
instead of massing his troops there, could confine
himself to despatching thither, as reinforcements, only four
more companies of guards and one battalion from Brunswick.
The
attack of the right wing of the French on Papelotte was
calculated, in fact, to overthrow the English left, to cut off the
road to Brussels, to bar the passage against possible Prussians,
to force Mont-Saint-Jean, to turn Wellington back on Hougomont,
thence on Braine-l'Alleud, thence on Hal; nothing
easier. With the exception of a few incidents this attack succeeded
Papelotte was taken; La Haie-Sainte was carried.
A detail to be noted. There was in the English infantry,
particularly in Kempt's brigade, a great many raw recruits.
These young soldiers were valiant in the presence of our redoubtable
infantry; their inexperience extricated them intrepidly
from the dilemma; they performed particularly excellent
service as skirmishers: the soldier skirmisher, left somewhat
to himself, becomes, so to speak, his own general. These
recruits displayed some of the French ingenuity and fury.
This novice of an infantry had dash. This displeased Wellington.
After
the taking of La Haie-Sainte the battle wavered.
There is in this day an obscure interval, from mid-day to
four o'clock; the middle portion of this battle is almost indistinct,
and participates in the sombreness of the hand-to-hand
conflict. Twilight reigns over it. We perceive vast fluctuations
in that fog, a dizzy mirage, paraphernalia of war almost
unknown to-day, pendant colbacks, floating sabre-taches, cross-belts,
cartridge-boxes for grenades, hussar dolmans, red boots
with a thousand wrinkles, heavy shakos garlanded with torsades,
the almost black infantry of Brunswick mingled with
the scarlet infantry of England, the English soldiers with
great, white circular pads on the slopes of their shoulders for
epaulets, the Hanoverian light-horse with their oblong casques
of leather, with brass hands and red horse-tails, the Scotch
with their bare knees and plaids, the great white gaiters
of our grenadiers; pictures, not strategic lines— what Salvator
Rosa requires, not what is suited to the needs of
Gribeauval.
A certain amount of tempest is always mingled with a battle.
Quid obscurum, quid divinum. Each historian traces, to some
extent, the particular feature which pleases him amid this pell-mell.
Whatever may be the combinations of the generals, the
shock of armed masses has an incalculable ebb. During the
action the plans of the two leaders enter into each other and
become mutually thrown out of shape. Such a point of the
field of battle devours more combatants than such another,
just as more or less spongy soils soak up more or less quickly
the water which is poured on them. It becomes necessary to
pour out more soldiers than one would like; a series of expenditures
which are the unforeseen. The line of battle waves
and undulates like a thread, the trails of blood gush illogically,
the fronts of the armies waver, the regiments form capes and
gulfs as they enter and withdraw; all these reefs are continually
moving in front of each other. Where the infantry stood
the artillery arrives, the cavalry rushes in where the artillery
was, the battalions are like smoke. There was something
there; seek it. It has disappeared; the open spots change
place, the sombre folds advance and retreat, a sort of wind
from the sepulchre pushes forward, hurls back, distends, and
disperses these tragic multitudes. What is a fray? an oscillation?
The immobility of a mathematical plan expresses a
minute, not a day. In order to depict a battle, there is required
one of those powerful painters who have chaos in their
brushes. Rembrandt is better than Vandermeulen; Vandermeulen,
exact at noon, lies at three o'clock. Geometry is deceptive;
the hurricane alone is trustworthy. That is what confers
on Folard the right to contradict Polybius. Let us add,
that there is a certain instant when the battle degenerates into
a combat, becomes specialized, and disperses into innumerable
detailed feats, which, to borrow the expression of Napoleon
himself, "belong rather to the biography of the regiments than
to the history of the army." The historian has, in this case,
the evident right to sum up the whole. He cannot do more
than seize the principal outlines of the struggle, and it is not
given to any one narrator, however conscientious he may be,
to fix, absolutely, the form of that horrible cloud which is
called a battle.
This, which is true of all great armed encounters, is particularly
applicable to Waterloo.
Nevertheless, at a certain moment in the afternoon the battle
came to a point.