CHAPTER XIII

THE CATASTROPHE

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