1.C.1.17. IS WATERLOO TO BE CONSIDERED GOOD?
THERE exists a very respectable liberal school which does not
hate Waterloo. We do not belong to it. To us, Waterloo is
but the stupefied date of liberty. That such an eagle should
emerge from such an egg is certainly unexpected.
If one places one's self at the culminating point of view of
the question, Waterloo is intentionally a counter-revolutionary
victory. lt is Europe against France; it is Petersburg, Berlin,
and Vienna against Paris; it is the statu quo against the initiative;
it is the 14th of July, 1789, attacked through the
20th of March, 1815; it is the monarchies clearing the decks
in opposition to the indomitable French rioting. The final
extinction of that vast people which had been in eruption for
twenty-six years— such was the dream. The solidarity of the
Brunswicks, the Nassaus, the Romanoffs, the Hohenzollerns,
the Hapsburgs with the Bourbons. Waterloo bears divine
right on its crupper. It is true, that the Empire having been
despotic, the kingdom by the natural reaction of things, was
forced to be liberal, and that a constitutional order was the
unwilling result of Waterloo, to the great regret of the conquerors.
It is because revolution cannot be really conquered,
and that being providential and absolutely fatal, it is always
cropping up afresh: before Waterloo, in Bonaparte overthrowing
the old thrones; after Waterloo, in Louis XVIII. granting
and conforming to the charter. Bonaparte places a postilion
on the throne of Naples, and a sergeant on the throne of
Sweden, employing inequality to demonstrate equality; Louis
XVIII. at Saint-Ouen countersigns the declaration of the
rights of man. If you wish to gain an idea of what revolution
is, call it Progress; and if you wish to acquire an idea of the
nature of progress, call it To-morrow. To-morrow fulfils its
work irresistibly, and it is already fulfilling it to-day. It always
reaches its goal strangely. It employs Wellington to
make of Foy, who was only a soldier, an orator. Foy falls
at Hougomont and rises again in the tribune. Thus does progress
proceed. There is no such thing as a bad tool for that
workman. It does not become disconcerted, but adjusts to its
divine work the man who has bestridden the Alps, and the
good old tottering invalid of Father Elysee. It makes use of
the gouty man as well as of the conqueror; of the conqueror
without, of the gouty man within. Waterloo, by cutting short
the demolition of European thrones by the sword, had no other
effect than to cause the revolutionary work to be continued in
another direction. The slashers have finished; it was the turn
of the thinkers. The century that Waterloo was intended to
arrest has pursued its march. That sinister victory was vanquished
by liberty.
In short, and incontestably, that which triumphed at Waterloo;
that which smiled in Wellington's rear; that which
brought him all the marshals' staffs of Europe, including, it is
said, the staff of a marshal of France; that which joyously
trundled the barrows full of bones to erect the knoll of the
lion; that which triumphantly inscribed on that pedestal the
date "June 18, 1815"; that which encouraged Blucher, as he
put the flying army to the sword; that which, from the heights
of the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean, hovered over France as
over its prey, was the counter-revolution. It was the counter-revolution
which murmured that infamous word "dismemberment."
On arriving in Paris, it beheld the crater close at
hand; it felt those ashes which scorched its feet, and it changed
its mind; it returned to the stammer of a charter.
Let us behold in Waterloo only that which is in Waterloo.
Of intentional liberty there is none. The counter-revolution
was involuntarily liberal, in the same manner as, by a corresponding
phenomenon, Napoleon was involuntarily revolutionary.
On the 18th of June, 1815, the mounted Robespierre
was hurled from his saddle.