1.C.1.13. THE CATASTROPHE
THE rout behind the Guard was melancholy.
The army yielded suddenly on all sides at once,— Hougomont,
La Haie-Sainte, Papelotte, Plancenoit. The cry
"Treachery!" was followed by a cry of "Save yourselves who
can!" An army which is disbanding is like a thaw. All
yields, splits, cracks, floats, rolls, falls, jostles, hastens, is precipitated.
The disintegration is unprecedented. Ney borrows
a horse, leaps upon it, and without hat, cravat, or sword, places
himself across the Brussels road, stopping both English and
French. He strives to detain the army, he recalls it to its duty,
he insults it, he clings to the rout. He is overwhelmed. The
soldiers fly from him, shouting, "Long live Marshal Ney!"
Two of Durutte's regiments go and come in affright as though
tossed back and forth between the swords of the Uhlans and
the fusillade of the brigades of Kempt, Best, Pack, and Rylandt;
the worst of hand-to-hand conflicts is the defeat;
friends kill each other in order to escape; squadrons and
battalions break and disperse against each other, like the
tremendous foam of battle. Lobau at one extremity, and
Reille at the other, are drawn into the tide. In vain does
Napoleon erect walls from what is left to him of his Guard; in
vain does he expend in a last effort his last serviceable squadrons.
Quiot retreats before Vivian, Kellermann before Vandeleur,
Lobau before Bulow, Morand before Pirch, Domon and
Subervic before Prince William of Prussia; Guyot, who led
the Emperor's squadrons to the charge, falls beneath the feet
of the English dragoons. Napoleon gallops past the line of
fugitives, harangues, urges, threatens, entreats them. All the
mouths which in the morning had shouted, "Long live the
Emperor!" remain gaping; they hardly recognize him. The
Prussian cavalry, newly arrived, dashes forwards, flies, hews,
slashes, kills, exterminates. Horses lash out, the cannons flee;
the soldiers of the artillery-train unharness the caissons and
use the horses to make their escape; transports overturned,
with all four wheels in the air, clog the road and occasion
massacres. Men are crushed, trampled down, others walk over
the dead and the living. Arms are lost. A dizzy multitude
fills the roads, the paths, the bridges, the plains, the hills, the
valleys, the woods, encumbered by this invasion of forty thousand
men. Shouts despair, knapsacks and guns flung among
the rye, passages forced at the point of the sword, no more
comrades, no more officers, no more generals, an inexpressible
terror. Zieten putting France to the sword at its leisure.
Lions converted into goats. Such was the flight.
At Genappe, an effort was made to wheel about, to present
a battle front, to draw up in line. Lobau rallied three hundred
men. The entrance to the village was barricaded, but at
the first volley of Prussian canister, all took to flight again, and
Lobau was taken. That volley of grape-shot can be seen to-day
imprinted on the ancient gable of a brick building on the
right of the road at a few minutes' distance before you enter
Genappe. The Prussians threw themselves into Genappe, furious,
no doubt, that they were not more entirely the conquerors.
The pursuit was stupendous. Blucher ordered extermination.
Roguet had set the lugubrious example of threatening
with death any French grenadier who should bring him a
Prussian prisoner. Blucher outdid Roguet. Duhesme, the
general of the Young Guard, hemmed in at the doorway of an
inn at Genappe, surrendered his sword to a huzzar of death,
who took the sword and slew the prisoner. The victory was
completed by the assassination of the vanquished. Let us
inflict punishment, since we are history: old Blucher disgraced
himself. This ferocity put the finishing touch to the disaster.
The desperate route traversed Genappe, traversed Quatre-Bras,
traversed Gosselies, traversed Frasnes, traversed Charleroi,
traversed Thuin, and only halted at the frontier. Alas! and
who, then, was fleeing in that manner? The Grand Army.
This vertigo, this terror, this downfall into ruin of the
loftiest bravery which ever astounded history,— is that causeless?
No. The shadow of an enormous right is projected
athwart Waterloo. It is the day of destiny. The force which
is mightier than man produced that day. Hence the terrified
wrinkle of those brows; hence all those great souls surrendering
their swords. Those who had conquered Europe have
fallen prone on the earth, with nothing left to say nor to do,
feeling the present shadow of a terrible presence.
Hoc erat in
fatis. That day the perspective of the human race underwent
a change. Waterloo is the hinge of the nineteenth century.
The disappearance of the great man was necessary to the
advent of the great century. Some one, a person to whom one
replies not, took the responsibility on himself. The panic of
heroes can be explained. In the battle of Waterloo there is
something more than a cloud, there is something of the meteor.
God has passed by.
At nightfall, in a meadow near Genappe, Bernard and
Bertrand seized by the skirt of his coat and detained a man,
haggard, pensive, sinister, gloomy, who, dragged to that point
by the current of the rout, had just dismounted, had passed
the bridle of his horse over his arm, and with wild eye was
returning alone to Waterloo. It was Napoleon, the immense
somnambulist of this dream which had crumbled, essaying
once more to advance.