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 Blücher, 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 Blücher’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
Cæsars 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 Æschylus!
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
Blücher, he was lost. Was it Blücher? No! If Wellington had not begun,
Blücher 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:
_“Excrément!”_ 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! Kléber 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.