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 Bülow, 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. Blücher ordered extermination. Roguet had set
the lugubrious example of threatening with death any French grenadier
who should bring him a Prussian prisoner. Blücher 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 Blücher 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.