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THE GUARD
Every one knows the rest,--the irruption of a third army;
the battle broken to pieces; eighty-six months of fire thundering
simultaneously; Pirch the first coming up with Bulow; Zieten's
cavalry led by Blucher in person, the French driven back; Marcognet
swept from the plateau of Ohain; Durutte dislodged from Papelotte;
Donzelot and Quiot retreating; Lobau caught on the flank; a fresh
battle precipitating itself on our dismantled regiments at nightfall;
the whole English line resuming the offensive and thrust forward;
the gigantic breach made in the French army; the English grape-shot
and the Prussian grape-shot aiding each other; the extermination;
disaster in front; disaster on the flank; the Guard entering the
line in the midst of this terrible crumbling of all things.
Conscious that they were about to die, they shouted, "Vive
l'Empereur!" History records nothing more touching than that
agony bursting forth in acclamations.
The sky had been overcast all day long.
All of a sudden, at that very moment,--it was eight o'clock
in the evening--the clouds on the horizon parted, and allowed
the grand and sinister glow of the setting sun to pass through,
athwart the elms on the Nivelles road. They had seen it rise at
Austerlitz.
Each battalion of the Guard was commanded by a general for
this final catastrophe.
Friant, Michel, Roguet, Harlet, Mallet, Poret de Morvan, were
there.
When the tall caps of the grenadiers of the Guard, with their
large plaques bearing the eagle appeared, symmetrical, in line,
tranquil, in the midst of that combat, the enemy felt a respect
for France; they thought they beheld twenty victories entering
the field of battle, with wings outspread, and those who were
the conquerors, believing themselves to be vanquished, retreated;
but Wellington shouted, "Up, Guards, and aim straight!"
The red regiment of English guards, lying flat behind the hedges,
sprang up, a cloud of grape-shot riddled the tricolored flag and
whistled round our eagles; all hurled themselves forwards, and
the final carnage began.
In the darkness, the Imperial Guard felt the army losing ground
around it, and in the vast shock of the rout it heard the desperate
flight which had taken the place of the "Vive l'Empereur!"
and, with flight behind it, it continued to advance, more crushed,
losing more men at every step that it took. There were none who
hesitated, no timid men in its ranks. The soldier in that troop
was as much of a hero as the general. Not a man was missing in
that suicide.
Ney, bewildered, great with all the grandeur of accepted death,
offered himself to all blows in that tempest.
He had his fifth horse killed under him there.
Perspiring, his eyes aflame, foaming at the mouth, with uniform
unbuttoned, one of his epaulets half cut off by a sword-stroke
from a horseguard, his plaque with the great eagle dented by a
bullet; bleeding, bemired, magnificent, a broken sword in his
hand, he said, "Come and see how a Marshal of France dies
on the field of battle!"
But in vain; he did not die. He was haggard and angry.
At Drouet d'Erlon he hurled this question, "Are you not
going to get yourself killed?"
In the midst of all that artillery engaged in crushing a handful
of men, he shouted: "So there is nothing for me!
Oh!
I should like to have all these English bullets enter my bowels!"
Unhappy man, thou wert reserved for French bullets!
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