There exists a very respectable liberal school which does not hate
Waterloo. We do not belong to it. To us, Waterloo is but the stupefied
date of liberty. That such an eagle should emerge from such an egg is
certainly unexpected.
If one places one’s self at the culminating point of view of the
question, Waterloo is intentionally a counter-revolutionary victory. It
is Europe against France; it is Petersburg, Berlin, and Vienna against
Paris; it is the _statu quo_ against the initiative; it is the 14th of
July, 1789, attacked through the 20th of March, 1815; it is the
monarchies clearing the decks in opposition to the indomitable French
rioting. The final extinction of that vast people which had been in
eruption for twenty-six years—such was the dream. The solidarity of the
Brunswicks, the Nassaus, the Romanoffs, the Hohenzollerns, the
Hapsburgs with the Bourbons. Waterloo bears divine right on its
crupper. It is true, that the Empire having been despotic, the kingdom
by the natural reaction of things, was forced to be liberal, and that a
constitutional order was the unwilling result of Waterloo, to the great
regret of the conquerors. It is because revolution cannot be really
conquered, and that being providential and absolutely fatal, it is
always cropping up afresh: before Waterloo, in Bonaparte overthrowing
the old thrones; after Waterloo, in Louis XVIII. granting and
conforming to the charter. Bonaparte places a postilion on the throne
of Naples, and a sergeant on the throne of Sweden, employing inequality
to demonstrate equality; Louis XVIII. at Saint-Ouen countersigns the
declaration of the rights of man. If you wish to gain an idea of what
revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to acquire an idea of
the nature of progress, call it To-morrow. To-morrow fulfils its work
irresistibly, and it is already fulfilling it to-day. It always reaches
its goal strangely. It employs Wellington to make of Foy, who was only
a soldier, an orator. Foy falls at Hougomont and rises again in the
tribune. Thus does progress proceed. There is no such thing as a bad
tool for that workman. It does not become disconcerted, but adjusts to
its divine work the man who has bestridden the Alps, and the good old
tottering invalid of Father Élysée. It makes use of the gouty man as
well as of the conqueror; of the conqueror without, of the gouty man
within. Waterloo, by cutting short the demolition of European thrones
by the sword, had no other effect than to cause the revolutionary work
to be continued in another direction. The slashers have finished; it
was the turn of the thinkers. The century that Waterloo was intended to
arrest has pursued its march. That sinister victory was vanquished by
liberty.
In short, and incontestably, that which triumphed at Waterloo; that
which smiled in Wellington’s rear; that which brought him all the
marshals’ staffs of Europe, including, it is said, the staff of a
marshal of France; that which joyously trundled the barrows full of
bones to erect the knoll of the lion; that which triumphantly inscribed
on that pedestal the date “_June_ 18, 1815”; that which encouraged
Blücher, as he put the flying army to the sword; that which, from the
heights of the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean, hovered over France as over
its prey, was the counter-revolution. It was the counter-revolution
which murmured that infamous word “dismemberment.” On arriving in
Paris, it beheld the crater close at hand; it felt those ashes which
scorched its feet, and it changed its mind; it returned to the stammer
of a charter.
Let us behold in Waterloo only that which is in Waterloo. Of
intentional liberty there is none. The counter-revolution was
involuntarily liberal, in the same manner as, by a corresponding
phenomenon, Napoleon was involuntarily revolutionary. On the 18th of
June, 1815, the mounted Robespierre was hurled from his saddle.