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CAMBRONNE
If any French reader object to having his susceptibilities
offended, one would have to refrain from repeating in his presence
what is perhaps the finest reply that a Frenchman ever made.
This would enjoin us from consigning something sublime to
History.
At our own risk and peril, let us violate this injunction.
Now, then, among those giants there was one Titan,--Cambronne.
To make that reply and then perish, what could be grander?
For being willing to die is the same as to die; and it was not
this man's fault if he survived after he was shot.
The winner of the battle of Waterloo was not Napoleon, who
was put to flight; nor Wellington, giving way at four o'clock,
in despair at five; nor Blucher, who took no part in the engagement.
The winner of Waterloo was Cambronne.
To thunder forth such a reply at the lightning-flash that
kills you is to conquer!
Thus to answer the Catastrophe, thus to speak to Fate, to
give this pedestal to the future lion, to hurl such a challenge
to the midnight rainstorm, to the treacherous wall of Hougomont,
to the sunken road of Ohain, to Grouchy's delay, to Blucher's
arrival, to be Irony itself in the tomb, to act so as to stand
upright though fallen, to drown in two syllables the European
coalition, to offer kings privies which the Caesars once knew,
to make the lowest of words the most lofty by entwining with it
the glory of France, insolently to end Waterloo with Mardigras,
to finish Leonidas with Rabellais, to set the crown on this victory
by a word impossible to speak, to lose the field and preserve
history, to have the laugh on your side after such a carnage,--this
is immense!
It was an insult such as a thunder-cloud might hurl!
It reaches the grandeur of AEschylus!
Cambronne's reply produces the effect of a violent break.
'Tis like the breaking of a heart under a weight of scorn. 'Tis
the overflow of agony bursting forth.
Who conquered? Wellington?
No!
Had it not been for Blucher, he was lost. Was it Blucher?
No!
If Wellington had not begun, Blucher could not have finished.
This Cambronne, this man spending his last hour, this unknown
soldier, this infinitesimal of war, realizes that here is a falsehood,
a falsehood in a catastrophe, and so doubly agonizing; and at
the moment when his rage is bursting forth because of it, he is
offered this mockery,--life!
How could he restrain himself? Yonder are all the kings of
Europe, the general's flushed with victory, the Jupiter's darting
thunderbolts; they have a hundred thousand victorious soldiers,
and back of the hundred thousand a million; their cannon stand
with yawning mouths, the match is lighted; they grind down under
their heels the Imperial guards, and the grand army; they have
just crushed Napoleon, and only Cambronne remains,-- only this
earthworm is left to protest.
He will protest.
Then he seeks for the appropriate word as one seeks for a
sword.
His mouth froths, and the froth is the word.
In face of this mean and mighty victory, in face of this victory
which counts none victorious, this desperate soldier stands erect.
He grants its overwhelming immensity, but he establishes its
triviality; and he does more than spit upon it. Borne down by
numbers, by superior force, by brute matter, he finds in his soul
an expression:
"Excrement!"
We repeat it,-- to use that word, to do thus, to invent such
an expression, is to be the conqueror!
The spirit of mighty days at that portentous moment made its
descent on that unknown man.
Cambronne invents the word for Waterloo as Rouget invents
the "Marseillaise," under the visitation of a breath
from on high.
An emanation from the divine whirlwind leaps forth and comes
sweeping over these men, and they shake, and one of them sings
the song supreme, and the other utters the frightful cry.
This challenge of titanic scorn Cambronne hurls not only at
Europe in the name of the Empire,--that would be a trifle:
he hurls it at the past in the name of the Revolution.
It is heard, and Cambronne is recognized as possessed by the
ancient spirit of the Titans. Danton seems to be speaking!
Kleber seems to be bellowing!
At that word from Cambronne, the English voice responded,
"Fire!" The batteries flamed, the hill trembled, from
all those brazen mouths belched a last terrible gush of grape-shot;
a vast volume of smoke, vaguely white in the light of the rising
moon, rolled out, and when the smoke dispersed, there was no longer
anything there. That formidable remnant had been annihilated;
the Guard was dead. The four walls of the living redoubt lay prone,
and hardly was there discernible, here and there, even a quiver
in the bodies; it was thus that the French legions, greater than
the Roman legions, expired on Mont-Saint-Jean, on the soil watered
with rain and blood, amid the gloomy grain, on the spot where
nowadays Joseph, who drives the post-wagon from Nivelles, passes
whistling, and cheerfully whipping up his horse at four o'clock
in the morning.
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