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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.[7]
[7] Walter Scott, Lamartine, Vaulabelle, Charras, Quinet,
Thiers.
As for us, we leave the historians at loggerheads; we are
but a distant witness, 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 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.
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