CHAPTER XV

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.