“With the ambiguous earthHis dealings have been told us; these abide:The signal to a maid, the human birth,The lesson, and the Young Man crucified.”
“With the ambiguous earthHis dealings have been told us; these abide:The signal to a maid, the human birth,The lesson, and the Young Man crucified.”
“With the ambiguous earth
His dealings have been told us; these abide:
The signal to a maid, the human birth,
The lesson, and the Young Man crucified.”
But do the other planets of our solar system, do the stars, those countless suns controlling countless planets—know aught of God’s way of dealing with our Earth? Or can we even in loftiest flight of thought conceive “in what guise He walked the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear?”
Then the good glad confidence of the soul in touch with God,in tune with the Infinite, inTe Deum ecstasyof exultation, overflows in the concluding lines:
“Oh, be prepared, my soul;To read the unconceivable, to scanThe million forms of God those stars unrollWhen in our turn we show to them—a Man.”
“Oh, be prepared, my soul;To read the unconceivable, to scanThe million forms of God those stars unrollWhen in our turn we show to them—a Man.”
“Oh, be prepared, my soul;
To read the unconceivable, to scan
The million forms of God those stars unroll
When in our turn we show to them—a Man.”
They are indeed blessed in whom dwells this abiding confidence, and for whom at times at least, there is overflow in Te Deum exaltation. The slaughter-fields of history and rivers rolling red; the answerless Whys wailing from out the past forlorn as Pharaoh-ghosts in search of non-existent mummies; the chaos of it all, from Memphis to modern Cairo; the damnable wrongs, the demon cruelties, the awful sufferings, the hellish horrors—all sound sonoral in orchestral harmony when faith and hope and good glad confidence play dominant and the soul is exultant in God.
Charles XII. never rallied from the defeat of Pultowa. He did, indeed, linger for a time in Turkey, striving to enlist the sympathies of the Sultan in his behalf. And history relates that at last the Sultan yielded to the importunities of Charles, and that an army was fitted out for the invasion of Russia: but the command of the forces was entrusted to the Vizier, not to Charles. And the story runs that the Russians were completely trapped by the Turkish troops and Pultowa seemed about to be avenged and the hand of destiny turned backward; when Catherine, later the wife of Peter the Great and first Empress of Russia, seeing the hopelessness of exit from the trap into which the Russians had fallen, went secretly by night into the tent of the Grand Vizier, and by her charms, and by her gifts of gold, diamonds, and pearls bribed the stern old soldier so that he failed to see the following day that the Russians were secretly stealing away from the trap in which he had caught them.
Charles withdrew to Sweden and, a war having broken out between Norway and Sweden, he was killed at the siege of Frederickshall: but just how he met death is not authoritatively known. He was found dead in the trenches the night preceding the battle.
Voltaire has sympathetically told the story of Charles XII. of Sweden. His meteoric career has often been used, as Johnson happily said, “to point a moral or adorn a tale.” He ranks with Alexander and Napoleon in personal magnetism, in phenomenal attainment, and in the ultimate loss and evanishment of all attained. His name and fame are ever subtly suggestive of—
Dread Pultowa’s dayWhen fortune left the royal Swede;Around a slaughtered army layNo more to combat and to bleed;The power and fortune of the warHad passed to the triumphant Czar.—Byron.
Dread Pultowa’s dayWhen fortune left the royal Swede;Around a slaughtered army layNo more to combat and to bleed;The power and fortune of the warHad passed to the triumphant Czar.—Byron.
Dread Pultowa’s day
When fortune left the royal Swede;
Around a slaughtered army lay
No more to combat and to bleed;
The power and fortune of the war
Had passed to the triumphant Czar.
—Byron.
The surrender of General Burgoyne at Saratoga, though not, perhaps, properly classed among battles, is, nevertheless, properly classed among events momentous in their influence upon the destinies of nations. Looking upon the American Revolution as a whole and from a dispassionate distance, Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga is seen to be the fateful turning of the tide which rolled from crest-wave English victory back to slow but sure English discomfiture and ultimate defeat.
As a result ofthe Colonial victory at Saratoga came recognition ofthe Independent United States of America, first from France, later from Spain, and still later from Holland. Confidence was established; untried troops had stood breast to breast against veterans of the British army, against skilled Grenadiers, and these untried troops had won; they had caused the proud British general to retreat from place to place, they had surrounded him at last on Saratoga Heights and forced him to capitulate. The independence of the thirteen original states and all evolutionary Republican America lay potential in the victory of Generals Gates and Arnold over Burgoyne and his veterans at Saratoga.
“The best laid plans of mice and menGang aft agley.”—Burns.
“The best laid plans of mice and menGang aft agley.”—Burns.
“The best laid plans of mice and men
Gang aft agley.”—Burns.
Burgoyne’s plan was good; and had not General St. Leger failed to capture Fort Stanwix and then to proceed along the Mohawk to its confluence with the Hudson and there join hisforce to that of Burgoyne; and had not General Baum failed to win the battle of Bennington and so secure the magazines of provisions so sorely needed by the British army; and had not Lord Howe considered it more advantageous to cross over to the Delaware and attack Philadelphia, rather than remain at New York ready for emergency; and had not General Clinton been retarded in his victorious advance up from Albany; if all, or perhaps any one of these conditions had been the reverse of what they were, why, history might be the reverse of what it is.
Momentous little things—so seeming trifling, inconsequential,negligible—and yetpotential of cataclysmic calamity! An insect bores into the heart of an oak, and the forest monarch falls: a tiny trickling rill freezes in the rock and the mountain is rent asunder; a pine twig breaks under its weight of snow and the awful avalanche comes crashing down. In the moral world, too, the results seem altogether out of proportion to the cause: a glance of suspicion and the bloom of perfect trust is gone from the heart forever; an unkind word and love withers, a deed—it dies; one lie, one little wormy lie, and the fair integrity of character has in it the boring insect with which it may, indeed, flourish full foliage for a season, but by which, in the end, it must, being hollow hearted, succumb to the storm and fall and die.
Perhaps when Burgoyne sent for the Indians and made them part of his fighting force, he then admitted into his moral makeup, as well as his military, the mightylittle thingwhich should silently yet forcefully work disaster. For many men who were irresolute as to which side to join, being indeed loyal at heart to the mother country and hesitating to strike against her, boldly threw in their fortunes with the Colonists when they heard that the Red Man formed part of the force of the advancing army. They knew what savage warfare meant even better than Burgoyne knew. Many are inclined to excuse Burgoyne on the pleathat he knew nothing of the horrible atrocities of the Indians when intoxicated with the blood of battle: but fate did not excuse him. His Indians never knew the intoxication of victorious battle—thanks to the stern resolution of men who fought in defence of mothers, sisters, wives, and children shuddering in nearby homes: and as defeat came and ignominious retreat from post to post before the enraged advance of a conquering foe, the Indians deserted the army and slunk away through the western wilds back to their native tribes.
Strange that history remembers only Arnold the Traitor and not Arnold the hero of Ticonderoga, Quebec, and Saratoga. Too bad he didn’t die in that brilliant charge upon Burgoyne’s intrenchments, where after overcoming all obstacles and apparently just on the point of victory he was wounded in the same leg that had been painfully injured in the assault on Quebec—and carried fainting and profusely bleeding from the field. To be twice wounded for a cause and then to betray it—perverse human heart, who shall know its depths of perversity!
And yet the events since that time, which Arnold could not foresee or foreknow, rather than the concomitant circumstances of that time, which Arnold saw and knew, have proclaimed him Traitor. And had the results been otherwise, had not his own mad efforts helped turn the tide at Saratoga, Arnold might now be known as a shrewdly diplomatic young officer who, influenced by a beautiful Tory wife and seeing the cause of the Colonists desperate, had timely transferred his allegiance to the British army and bravely helped along the conquering cause of the mother country.
And Major Andre sleeps in honored rest in old Westminster Abbey; while the man twice wounded in battle, the hero of Ticonderoga, Quebec, and Saratoga sleeps in an unhonored grave havingas epitaph indelibly traced upon surrounding air and earth and water and sky—Arnold the Traitor.
General Frazer was mortally wounded in the engagement which took place October 7th. He died in camp the following day. The Italian historian Botta gives the following account of his burial. “Toward midnight, the body of General Frazer was buried in the British camp. His brother officers assembled sadly around while the funeral service was read over the remains of their brave comrade, and his body was committed to the hostile earth. The ceremony, always mournful and solemn of itself, was rendered even terrible by the sense of recent losses, of present and future dangers, and of regret for the deceased. Meanwhile, the blaze and roar of the American artillery amid the natural darkness and stillness of the night came on the senses with startling awe. The grave had been dug within range of the enemy’s batteries; and while the service was proceeding, a cannon ball struck the ground close to the coffin, and spattered earth over the face of the officiating chaplain.”
There is something painfully pathetic in the scene thus presented to the imagination. War has no respect for the rights of the living or the dying or the dead.
On the 13th of October, 1777, General Burgoyne, besieged by overpowering numbers on the heights of Saratoga and seeing that his army was facing disease and famine, and being unable to establish communication either with Lord Howe or with General Clinton—opened negotiations with General Gates as to conditions of surrender.
At first General Gates demanded that the royal army should surrender themselves prisoners of war. Burgoyne refused.
It was later agreed upon that “the troops under General Burgoyne were to march out of their camp with the honors of war, and the artillery—of the entrenchments, to the verge of the river, where the arms and the artillery were to be left. The arms to be piled by word of command from their own officers. A free passage was to be granted to the army under Lieutenant General Burgoyne to Great Britain upon condition of not serving again in North America during the present contest.”
These conditions having been formally accepted, an army of weak and wounded men laboriously descended the heights and marched out to the place appointed for the laying down of arms. General Gates was on this occasion extremely courteous, and the Colonial troops were soon fraternizing with the English soldiers and striving in every way to supply their many needs and wants.
General Clinton, who was but fifty miles down the river with supplies and men, heard with dismay of Burgoyne’s surrender. Lord Howe’s plans were all broken up by this sudden change of fortune. And the far away, sleepily stubborn British Parliament felt the first cold intimation that it might possibly bewrongand Burke might possibly berightin their respective estimates of the rebel children in the wide awake, wonderful New World.
And so the failure of the New York plans, culminating in Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga, proved to be one of the mightylittle thingspotential of results that change the destinies of nations.
“Bury my heart in Valmy,” said Kellerman, soldier of the Seven Years’ War, victor of Valmy, Marshal of France under the first Napoleon, and court favorite of the Bourbons—as the shadows of old-age death deepened into darkness. And they buried his heart in Valmy.
A simple monument on the crest of the hill, the bloodiest spot of the one-time battle ground, tells to the thoughtful stranger the story of a restless heart o’er whom as o’er Madame de Stael and many another heir of a checkered heritage might be engraved as epitaph, “Here rests one who never rested.”
The era ushered in by the battle of Valmy was especially prolific of men whose political principles changed violently from one extreme to the other; only to rebound again and again, until, at length, weariness and cynic scorn of good in anything caused them to drift in perplexed acquiescence wherever the tide rolled longest and strongest. Talleyrand, Dumouriez, Marquis de la Rouarie, Kellerman, La Fayette, Mirabeau, Duc de Chartres, and even Napoleon Bonaparte were, in great measure, moulded into their respective historic moulds by the lurid lightning play of antithetic forces ever fatefully flashing and slashing and crashing around them.
Yet in August, 1792, when sixty thousand Prussians, and forty thousand Austrians and fifteen thousand of the old Frenchnoblessestarted out upon that “military promenade to Paris”: or on the morning of September 20th, when that victoriously advancing column prepared gaily for its first skirmish with the raw revolutionary levies who filled the passes of the Argonne wooded heights and threatened to impede that “promenade”—who could see, or who could dare to dream what the issue of that encounter would be; what results would follow; what rivers of blood would flow; what lordly heads would roll from under the guillotine; what national madness would break out barking at the peace of Europe; what mighty Madman would arise urging on that national madness even to Wagram, Austerlitz, Moscow, Leipsic, Waterloo!
Had Kellerman failed to come up just in time to join forces with Dumouriez: had the Prussian advance been just an hour or two earlier: had the heavy mists lifted from the Valmy hill and Argonne wood revealing the relative positions of Kellerman and Dumouriez: had the forcing of the defile by Clairfayt and his Austrian corps proved fatally successful: had the Duke of Brunswick resolutely charged a second time up that hill of bristling bayonets: had the King ofPrussia, urgedon by a vision of the future, authoritatively commanded that the hill be taken and himself led the charge: ah! so we learnedly say from the calm eminence far away, but history is made in the low blind fury of the fray. Perhaps, too, there were potently at work upon that fated battlefield, forces that elude the gaze of the dreamer on the height far away:—a determining animus, moral and spiritual potencies formed by the slow centuries and long controlled, but now liberated and wildly free. Ghosts of ten thousand wrongs may have arisen between the gilded ranks of the Frenchnoblesseand the ragged rows of the Carmagnoles: and, as the spirits that arose over the tent of Richard the Third,the night before the battle of Bosworth Field, cursed Richard and blessed Richmond; threatened Richard with defeat and death on the morrow and cheered Richmond with hopes and promises of victory; fought intangibly, invisibly, yet potently present amid the awful carnage of Bosworth field even until death trampled down Richard: so, in like manner, may the ghosts of ten thousand wrongs have arisen between the men of the oldregimeand of the rebellious new—fighting for their fellow-wrongs still writhing in the flesh, fighting the old, old fight of retaliation, compensation, stern adjudication, infinite justice. As the sun’s rays that reach earth are but one-millionth of the rays emitted by the sun, so for every thing known, bright shining on the historic page, there are a million things unknown.
About seven o’clock on that battle morn as the mists were dissipating, the successfully united French forces saw with dismay the slowly advancing army of the allies; long lines of Prussian cavalry, Austrian light troops, solid columns of infantry, batteries of artillery filled the valley and moved slowly, sinuously toward the Valmy height.
Dumouriez anxiously scanned the white strained faces of his untried troops. Would they fail him in the crucial hour? Would they break away in panic rout when the death-play began? It was their custom.
“He who fights and runs awayMay live to fight another day.”
“He who fights and runs awayMay live to fight another day.”
“He who fights and runs away
May live to fight another day.”
At Tournay, at Lille, and in general throughout the opening campaign this uncertain “heap of shriekers” had fled away as satyrs pursued by Pan when the death-play began. Would the Carmagnoles of today, and, at deepest heart, theJacquerieof many a yesterday, dare to fight face to face and hand to handagainst the augustseigneursof the old regime—late their dread lords and masters? Three hundred years of culture lay between them.
Of all who took part in the battle that day, either among the allies or the revolutionary forces, perhaps not one realized the full importance of what had taken place as did Johan Wolfgang von Goethe—then a young man and comparatively unknown; he had followed the allies as a spectator, a curious seeker of strange scenes, a bold hot-blood eager as his own Wilhelm Meister to taste adventure at its source and to know the ways of the world in love and in war. Goethe, with the unerring insight of genius, perceived that victory to the Carmagnoles marked a new era. In his own words to comrades in camp on the night following the battle; “From this place and from this day forth commences a new era in the world’s history, and you can all say you were present at its birth.”
Simultaneously with victory at Valmy, France broke from the cocoon of monarchical forms and proclaimed herself a Republic. Even while the battle was raging, the National Convention in Paris were engaged in this deliberation, this liberation. The Republic of France dates from September 20th, 1792. And under the regrettable excesses of the Revolution, the reactionary repression of the First Empire, of the Bourbon restoration, the revolt of 1830, of 1848, even to Sedan and the hour—the spirit of democracy, of liberty and independence born Sept. 20th, 1792, has flourished and flourishes indestructibly, imperishably.
And yet as Dumouriez said, “France (revolutionary) was within a hair’s breadth of destruction.” And had victory gone that day to the allies, the throne of Louis XVI. would have been reinstated on foundations so firm that centuries would not shakeit. For in La Vendee and throughoutBrittany there wasat that time a strong uprising in favor of the throne: men such as the admirable old Marquis de la Rouarie were abandoning the Revolutionary cause and turning decisively back to monarchical principles; moreover the recent atrocious September massacres had alienated the more conservative and thoughtful men throughout France. Never was the time more propitious for the return of the mild and humane Louis XVI., the re-establishment of the monarchy, the substitution of Reform for Revolution, and of concessive peace for fratricidal war. But by that hair’s breadth republican France won; and that winning mustered out the gentlemanly old regime and ushered in the arrogant awful new.
The spirit of Valmy flies eagle-free over the world today. It is the spirit making possible the face to face and hand to hand fight between the laborer and the capitalist, the soldier and the king, woman and man: and that Spirit tells strange and terrible tales of victory.
Waterloo stands for the sudden darkening of the blazing comet, Napoleon; and for the return of France to the realm of the real after twenty-five years of hysterical unreality. Consequentially, too, Waterloo meant the relaxation of the terrible war-tension which had held rigid both Europe and the civilized world. The victor-trampling of Napoleon’s troops was heard on this side of the Atlantic; and our second war with England (1812-1814) was, in great measure, both in origin and in purposeless conclusion, the result of that victor-trampling.
After Waterloo (June 18, 1815) the war-weary world snapped tension and sank to rest; tho’ perhaps the secret terror tremor was not utterly stilled until six years later (May 5, 1821) when Napoleon, Man of Destiny, lay dead at St. Helena.
Youth may idolize Napoleon, age may condemn: but so long as human nature is what it is, we ordinary mortals—knowing the difficulties that attend success, eminence, excellence; knowing the almost insuperable obstacles that bar the way to supremacy, be it cosmopolitan, national, provincial, municipal, or parochial—will ever regard with loving wonder the man who won excellence and world-wide supremacy.
It has been said that a base man or a thoroughly selfish man cannot truly love or inspire love. Whom did Napoleon love? History answersNapoleon. Yet Napoleon certainly inspired love. Josephine, the army, the Old Guard devotedly loved Napoleon. In the song from the French “To Napoleon” beginning with theline, “Must thou go, my glorious Chief”, some ardent admirer lamenting Napoleon’s downfall and doom cries out:
“My chief, my king, my friend, adieu!Never did I droop before;Never to my sovereign sue,As his foes I now implore:All I ask is to divideEvery peril he must brave;Sharing by my hero’s sideHis fall, his exile, and his grave.”
“My chief, my king, my friend, adieu!Never did I droop before;Never to my sovereign sue,As his foes I now implore:All I ask is to divideEvery peril he must brave;Sharing by my hero’s sideHis fall, his exile, and his grave.”
“My chief, my king, my friend, adieu!
Never did I droop before;
Never to my sovereign sue,
As his foes I now implore:
All I ask is to divide
Every peril he must brave;
Sharing by my hero’s side
His fall, his exile, and his grave.”
And elsewhere we read that at Napoleon’s farewell “all wept, but particularly Savary, and a Polish officer, who had been exalted from the ranks by Bonaparte. He clung to his master’s knees; wrote a letter to Lord Keith, entreating permission to accompany him, even in the most menial capacity, which could not be admitted.”
Too bad Nap didn’t die with the Old Guard. AtLa Belle Alliancein the midst of that last square of his death-devoted friends and lovers Napoleon should have died. “The Guard dies, it does not surrender” replied that gallant band as they awaited the last terrible onslaughts of the victor-breathing troops and thus were they hewn down even to a man. And while this slaughter of his Guard was going on, Napoleon, urged and aided by Marshal Soult, was galloping away from the field. Too bad Napoleon didn’t die at Waterloo.
Hoping to strike a decisive blow at the Prussian forces under Blücher before they could effect a junction with Wellington’s advancing army, Napoleon marched upon Ligny (June 16, 1815). He left Marshal Ney atQuatre-Braswith instructions to oppose the advance of the English army towards Ligny, and to fight if necessary. Ney, taking advantage of Wellington’s temporary absence, (he had ridden across to confer withBlücher and was then hastening back) resolved to attack the Anglo-Netherland forces under the Prince of Orange. He was repulsed; nevertheless he succeeded in checking the advance of the army towards Ligny.
In the meantime Napoleon had gained a victory over eighty thousand Prussian troops under Blücher, and they were even then in ignominious retreat towards Wavre. Napoleon ordered Marshall Grouchy to follow up the Prussians and to prevent them, at any cost, from joining forces with Wellington. Blücher had been wounded at Ligny and his army thoroughly demoralized: Grouchy, with an army of thirty thousand men, seemed more than a match for such an opponent; and doubtless, Napoleon, when hastening away from Ligny to oppose his more formidable foe, felt sure that the Prussians and Blücher were happily eliminated from the conflict confronting him.
But in that conference between Wellington and Blücher, it had been agreed upon that in case of defeat at Ligny, Blücher should retreat towards Wavre, and Wellington would withdraw towards Waterloo; so that they would still be in line of direct communication, and a union of forces might be effected. Wellington and Blücher trusted each other implicitly. “Whether after victory or defeat, come to me at Waterloo,” said Wellington. “I will come,” answered Blücher grimly and—he came.
The following day (June 17) a reinforcement under Bülow reached Blücher at Wavre; thus the loss sustained at Ligny was made good. At Grouchy’s approach the following morning (June 18) Blücher resolved to sacrifice deliberately a regiment of seventeen thousand men in order to detain Grouchy and keep him from returning to Napoleon, while he (Blücher) and Bülow with the bulk of the Prussian army should hasten to the aid of Wellington at Waterloo.
Not at Wavre but at Waterloo was destiny at work; this Blücher knew and he acted accordingly: this Grouchy did notknow; and after completely routing with great slaughter the Prussians under Thielman, he kept up a meaningless pursuit following a will-o-the-wisp, whilst Napoleon, after sending to him messenger after messenger urging his aid, stood still at last and deadly pale under the gorgeous June sunset, and saw all his hopes and dreams go down in darkness as the ominous moving cloud emerging from the direction of Wavre and advancing, glitteringly advancing, proved to be Blücher—not Grouchy.
That deliberate leaving of seventeen thousand men as a bait in a trap for the victorious French forces thundering onward from Ligny is typical of the demon ingenuity of war. I have read somewhere that in darkest Africa the lure to the tiger trap is a kid securely fastened. Its fearful bleatings attract the night prowling brute: there is a spring: then awful shrieks arise growing shriller and shriller as the pangs of being devoured alive grow tenser and more terrible: by this time the cannibals are upon the scene and the trap is sprung.
Seventeen thousand soldiers as kid to the tiger lure—and men call themselves civilized! Could a woman do that? No; woman is higher in the moral scale than man. And the higher, thank God, is the kinder, tenderer, the more compassionate. Wars and all hellish machinations of cruelty must cease as the race, as a whole, advances into that higher. And advancement, even tho’ zigzag, shall ultimately attain to the higher and even to the highest. We dream so.
Perhaps no other battlefield of the historic past has been more frequently described or rendered more vivid to mental vision than the field of Waterloo. Victor Hugo’s masterly portrayal inLes Miserablesis doubtless the best; but Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Captain Siborne, and Napoleonic writersad infinitumhave added richness of tonal qualities to the monochrome.
Those two long lines of undulating hills running nearly parallel, with a valley half a mile in width between; the allied army under Wellington on the northern ridge, the devoted French forces on the southern; the artillery of each army firing incessantly upon the other over the heads of the combatants in the valley and on the lower slope; the forest of Soignies darkly waving in the rear of Wellington’s forces; the village and ravine at the right warding off a possible flank movement; the two hamlets La Haye and Papillote at the left, strongly garrisoned of course and then, too, expectant of Blücher’s approach from Wavre; Hougoumont, an old stone chateau surrounded by a copse of beech trees, half way down the slope nearly in front of the British right center—strongly fortified, most important, strategic; Hougoumont—to be taken and retaken seven times during that day of destiny and held at last in flaming ruins by the British; the farm house La Haie Sainte somewhat down from the British left center, heavily garrisoned, expectant of what came; the French forces in superb battle array on the Charleroi crest of the hill, with an open way to France behind them and the hamlet La Belle Alliance, Napoleon’s headquarters, and their idol Napoleon—before: why every school-boy knows the plan of this most famous battlefield!
Had Napoleon’s star not been fatally descendant he must have won at Waterloo. His forces, seventy-two thousand, were numerically stronger than the opposing forces seventy-one thousand eight hundred and five, under Wellington; then, too, his army was a unit and unanimously devoted to him, whereas Wellington’s army was a mixup of Belgians, Dutch, Nassauers, Brunswickers, Hanoverians, with only twenty-four thousand English troops upon whom he could implicitly rely. Wellington knew and Napoleon knew that the Belgian and Netherland forceswould far rather be fighting under the French eagles than against them. And in truth these regiments did disgracefully run away from before the advancing French columns in the crisis of the strife, and the demoralizing effect of their flight was counteracted only by the superhuman efforts and life-sacrificing devotedness of England’s two brave heroes Picton and Ponsonby.
It is true that Wellington confidently awaited a strong Prussian reinforcement, eighty thousand—and Blücher. It is equally true that owing to heavy rainfall and consequently almost impassable roads between Wavre and Waterloo, Blücher who was eagerly looked for at 3 p. m. did not reach the field until 7 p. m. and at that time the battle was practically won by the British.
Had Napoleon’s pristine favor been accorded him—the magic favor of fate that had made possible Areola, Rivoli, Jena, Ulmn, Wagram, Austerlitz—he would have defeated Wellington at Waterloo, advanced upon the advancing Prussians and completely routed them; and then he would have hastened to crush separately and before a junction could be effected the various contingencies ofthe Coalition eventhen converging upon him by way of the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees. But fate forsook her favorite at Waterloo. Olympian Zeus, jealous of Promethean man, has decreed that if once, then certainly nottwice, shall a mortal transcend the lot of mortals.
It rained all night long that memorable seventeenth of June, the night before the battle. Of those forces that thus drearily bivouacked upon the opposing hills, some fifty thousand men thus passed their last night upon earth. Nature wept for them. The skies dissolved in tears at the mad folly of mortals. Rain, inconsolable rain, fell from the early afternoon of the seventeenth, thro’ all the night, and sobbingly drizzled late on the morning of the eighteenth as the armies went out to battle.
That dreary last night of life for fifty thousand men—whatdid it mean to them! Did any flint-glitterings, struck out of sullen gloom, zigzag thro’ the darkness of their minds? Why should they fight? Why should they kill and be killed on the morrow? Wellington, Napoleon—what were they to the common soldier; he would be free, he would go to his home, he would live his life as God gave it to him to live. Desert on the eve of battle! Ah, no! Yet, why not?
“So free we seem, so fettered fast we are.” Honor bound tonight and death bound tomorrow night! Who of those sleeping in yonder tents, under the rain, shall fall tomorrow? Whom shall he kill? Who may kill—him?
“Some one has blundered.”*****“Theirs not to make reply,Theirs not to reason why,Theirs but to do and die.”
“Some one has blundered.”*****“Theirs not to make reply,Theirs not to reason why,Theirs but to do and die.”
“Some one has blundered.”
*****
“Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.”
Again, why? Half a million men must die because Napoleon blundered—Why! And the tears of the rain made answer.
At half past eleven o’clock Sunday morning, June 18, shortly after the village church bells had ceased ringing, the French forces began descending the slope of the southern ridge and were soon dashing across the valley. Their first object was the capture of Hougoumont. In the words of Creasy: “Napoleon began the battle by directing a powerful force from his left wing under his brother, Prince Jerome, to attack Hougoumont. Column after column of the French now descended from the west of the southern heights, and assailed that post with fiery valor, which was encountered with the most determined bravery. The French won the copse round the house, but a party of British Guards held the house itself throughout the day. Amid shell and shot, and the blazing fragments of part of the buildings, this obstinate contest was continued. But still the English held Hougoumont, tho’ the French occasionally moved forward in such numbers as enabled them to surround and maskthis post with part of their troops from their left wing, while others pressed onward up the slope, and assailed the British right.”
The fight then became general all along the line. As the French advanced to the left center the Dutch and Belgians under Blyant threw down their arms and fled from the field, whether as result of fright, disinclination to fight, or treachery will, perhaps, never be known. The second line consisted of two brigades of English infantry and with these the gallant Picton charged the advancing French columns already flushed with victory. Volley after volley thinned the advancing ranks and then, at the opportune moment, the British made a fierce bayonet charge. The French reeled back in confusion, halted, and staggering tried to rally, but just then a brigade of English Cavalry rushed down upon them. Two thousand French soldiers were taken prisoners, the artillery-men of Ney’s seventy-four advanced guns were sabered and the guns rendered useless. The British cut the throats of the horses of the artillery wagons, and severing the traces, left these poor brutes maddened with pain to add to the horror of the slaughter. In this charge Picton fell.
At La Haie Sainte, the fortified farm house that served as protection of the British left wing, the French performed prodigies of valor. At last Donzelot’s infantry gained possession of this long desired point of vantage.
About 4 o’clock a corps of Prussians under Bülow made its appearance at the French right. This disconcerted Napoleon’s plan of general assault on the allied center. He sent ten thousand men under Lobau to hold Bülow in check.
In the meantime, Wellington ordered another assault to be made for the re-capture of La Haie Sainte. Ney repelled this attack, but sent for reinforcements. Napoleon sent him the cuirassiers under Milhaud. By mistake the forces of lightcavalry under Lefebvre-Desnouettesjoined the cuirassiersand hastened to the assistance of La Haie Sainte. Ney finding himself in command of two powerful bodies of horse resolved to take the offensive; he accordingly renewed the attack upon the British center. Wellington had arranged his men in squares; these hedged in with bayonets presented an almost impenetrable front to the enemy. Still they showed signs of wavering; and Ney seeing his advantage sent hurriedly for a reinforcement of infantry; Napoleon could send no more.
Lobau had succeeded in driving Bülow out of the village (Planchenoit) on the French right; La Haie Sainte was still in the possession of the French; and could Ney have obtained the infantry he desired, historians agree that he would have succeeded in forcing the British center. That hour was the pivotal beam of the battle and it seemed about to dip in favor of France.
Nap watched the scene from the opposite hill. How his heart must have thrilled to the air of old time victory; Wagram, Austerlitz,—Waterloo!
It was evening, the western sky was crimson with sunset, night must soon come and end the conflict. Wellington, too, was ardently longing that “the night would come or—Blücher.”
And just then on the ominous French right whence Bülow’s division had been routed an hour ago, another darkly moving mass of men appeared. Was it Grouchy—hope! or Blücher—despair! It was Blücher. Napoleon turned deadly pale; he asked for a glass of water but in his agitation, he spilled more than half the contents ere his trembling hand could lift the glass to his lips. Thus bitterly began Napoleon’s Waterloo.
Napoleon concentrated all his available forces, the reserve troops, and the Old Guard for one more Herculean attack upon the British. Across the plain they dashed, Ney leading the charge, and over their heads played the French artillery in an incessant rain of lead upon the opposing height. Men therewere falling under it like leaves in autumn. Wellington, observing the havoc wrought by the French guns, ordered the British Guards to lie prone upon the earth so as to be out of range of the bullets. As the French approached the foot of the ridge, and even as they advanced up the slope, the fire from Napoleon’s headquarters continued, but when they had fairly gained the height, the French guns ceased firing.
On rushed the devoted French columns led by Ney,bravest of the brave, who, covered with blood and dust, hatless, with clothing torn, and on foot—five horses having been shot under him—still dared to dream of victory. As the French reached the top of the hill, for one madly exultant moment they thought that the enemy had fled; but at Wellington’s hissing command, “Up, Guards, and at them!”, they stood aghast as the very earth seemed to open and pour out brigade after brigade of British Red Coats. The onslaught was awful. Over the crest of the hill and far down the slope the French were driven saber-slaughtered and slaughtering.La Garde Reculée(The Guard is repulsed)—this cry with its ominous suggestion sped from blanched lip to lip. And soon the most desperate of all defeat criesSauve qui peut!(All’s lost: save himself who can!) became general among the fleeing French forces.
At La Belle Alliance Napoleon attempted to make a rallying point; he hastily pressed his few devoted followers into a square, declaring it his intention to perish with them. But as it is the surgeon that has most mercilessly used his knife upon others, who shrinks back in awful dread from the knife as used upon himself: so Napoleon who had seen thousands of soldiers die of bloody wounds, could not endure for himself that which he had been willing to witness in others. As the English drew near and, seeing the hopelessness of the French position, called upon them to surrender; and even as General Cambronne gallantly replied, “The Guard dies; it does not surrender”, Napoleonspurred back his horse, turned, and galloped at full speed from the field.
Napoleon a second time signed a treaty of abdication just one hundred days after his flagrant violation of the first treaty of abdication. One hundred days of doubtful triumph and then—Waterloo: was it worth while!
The Machiavellianprinciples—honorable fraud; splendid rascality; a ruler should combine the qualities of the fox and the lion; no matter what the means may be, the vulgar are ever caught by appearances and judge only by the event—which Napoleon had so deeply imbibed from perusal of his favorite bookIl Principe, suffered sudden collapse of inflation and wraith-like glimmered aswill-o-the-wispsin a bog. That stripping away of names and epithets and phrases and opinions and customs and sunlight success from the—Lie: and that Lie in naked hideousness black-branded on the soul for self and all the world to see;—how terrible a triumph of the unseen over the seen, the real over the apparent, the truth over the lie! What Austerlitz concealed Waterloo revealed. Outlaw of Europe, execrable wretch, vile miscreant whom no promises or vows could hold in honor, etc., were among the uncouth Teutonic free translations of Nap’s subtly softIl Principe.
And Josephine was dead; she had died a year ago while Nap was at Elba. Josephine never knew the worst about Napoleon; she never could have known the “execrable wretch” as the Congress of Vienna knew him. Love and hate see differently the same objects. As she would gladly have followed Nap to Elba, so, too, would she have been a pitying angel at his side in the world-execration after Waterloo, and in the bitter loneliness of St. Helena. Was Nap, the real, what he was as knownand loved by Josephine or what he was as seen and hated by the Congress of Vienna; or neither?
That portrait of Napoleon by Delaroche comes to mind. We are sorry for Nap in his hour of ignominy; we forgive him all the sorrows that he caused—to others; we look with him fascinated into the fatal future, we grieve with the stoic grief of the Man of Destiny.
Meissonier’s companion pictures “1807: Friedland” and “1814: Retreat from Moscow” come to mind. Full success-sun convergent from Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram shines in “1807”; penumbral shadows gray-flecked with snows from Borodino, Moscow, Berizina lower in “1814”.
Louis David’s statuesque picture “Napoleon Crossing the Alps” comes to mind. It seems the “French Revolution on horse-back” yet controlled, goaded up the ascent, led out from bleeding France, and destiny-plunging on towards Italy, Prussia, Austria, Russia.
David’s canvas “Coronation of Napoleon and Josephine” comes sadly to mind. From that rhapsody of color-splendor to bleak Helena surf-lashed by the sea; from that act of crowning exaltation to the signing of abdication at Fontainebleau; from that supreme success in life to a failure-grave under the willows: ah! surely there throbs within and between these antithetic scenes all that enigmatic life may hold for us mortals. Nothing exists beyond—in pleasure or in pain, in honor or dishonor, in success or failure, in highest or lowest.
Napoleon spent the last six years of life on the island St. Helena (Oct. 16, 1815—May 5, 1821). There are various stories told as to his bitter loneliness whilst in exile, his ceaseless repining at fate, his chafing chagrin under the cautious coldnessof Sir Hudson Lowe. Nap is most frequently represented walking alone on the shore, his hands locked behind, his head lowered and his “broad brow oppressive with his mind” bent sullenly forward. Again as a caged eagle he stands for hours at a time on the rocky ledge looking out over the gray waste of waters with eyes straining towards France. And old ocean always inimical to Napoleon and coldly conscious of Aboukir and Trafalgar enjoys indifferently its final triumph.True to Britannia, Ruler of the Wave, the gray waters roll impenetrable to bribery or betrayal, impervious to sentiment or sympathy. Napoleon, victor of a hundred fields, king-maker, arbiter of Europe, is caught and caged; his eagle wings all torn and bleeding yet dash against the bars; he is eating his heart, O restless sea, and he gazes on thee: old ocean rolled responseless.
Am I tonight participant in the woe that had its hours of agony one hundred years ago? It seems so.
Balance is hard. And to see clearly all sides of a subject, however conducive to balance, is destructive of enthusiasm. Hero worship is, perhaps, a phase of hysteria, but without it there are no heroes. No name upon the historic page, from Homer’s Achilles down to Carlyle’s Cromwell, but shines with luster luminous from hero worship. Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, Charlemagne, Napoleon—the world will ever love them, not perhaps for what they were, but for the vision splendid with which they are attended, and which was formed and fitted to them by admiring love.
As Nap paced sleeplessly his rock kingdom under the flaky stars, did memory ever conjure up a strange night scene in old Vincennes? Theyoung Duc d’Enghien, last of the race of thegreat Conde, was asleep in bed. Suddenly, by order of the First Consul, the French soldiery aroused the sleeper, dragged him from his luxurious couch, hurried him across the French frontier, tried him by a military commission, and then, in a ditch of the castle grounds, that very night, by order of the First Consul, they shot to death the gay young man. And they tied a lantern to his breast that it might serve as target to his heart. Did Nap see that night scene from under the flaky stars of St. Helena? HisMemoiresdo not so record.
Did the treacherously yielding waves that lapped his island home ever suggest to Nap that horror scene, when after Austerlitz, as the fleeing enemy were escaping over the frozen lake, the French artillery, by order of the Emperor, played heavily upon the ice; it cracked, broke, crashed down, and thousands sank within the treacherous waves. Or did they softly sigh of Berezina, when the heavily laden bridge broke down and his own devoted soldiers and friends—those who had stood by him at Borodino, in Moscow, and in the dread Retreat—struggled in the icy waters? Nap’sMemoiresdo not so record.
And the dark rolling billows surf-capped—did they at times suggest low mounds in churchyards, or ominous ridges on recent battle grounds? Half a million men had died that Nap might rise and—fall. All Europe, from Lisbon to Moscow was dotted with their graves. Surely in the retrospective leisure of exile, however it may have been in the fever of the empire-strife, there was regret for all the young life suddenly darkened into death; there was awakening self-knowledge regretful, remorseful; there was lamentation at the futility of it all, the horror, the agony, the shame; there was prayer, the bitter prayer of Thais of the Desert, “Thou who hast made me have mercy on me!” Maybe: not ours to know the enigmatic heart of man; we only say there is no record of such feelings in Nap’s memoirs.
Did the year 1809 loom sullen in retrospect? That year heldin record the capture of Pope Pius VII. and his confinement at Savona; the ban of excommunication pronounced against Napoleon by his illustrious prisoner; and Nap’s divorce from Josephine.
The Emperor was at this time at the height of his career. He was drunk with power. In his hand as playthings were the kingdoms of Europe, and he awarded them as whim or pleasure urged. To his brother Joseph, too scrupulous to be great, Nap condescendingly gave the throne of Spain; to his brother Louis, Holland; to his brother Jerome, Westphalia; to a favorite general, Bernadotte, Sweden; to Murat, Naples. At his touch, the Holy Roman Empire—no longer, indeed, either holy or Roman or an empire—had crumbled into dust. Germany lay prostrate; Austria humbled; Russia chastened, yet friendly. Only England, secure in her watery kingdom, dared to oppose his plans and resist his power.
And then this madman on the dizzy height dreamed a glorious dream. The Pontiff, Pius VII., prisoner at Savona, would annul the marriage with Josephine; then he would marry the sister of the Tsar of Russia; then with the help of Russia he would conquer India and “so strike England to the heart.” After that “it will be possible to settle everything and have done with this business of Rome and the Pope. The cathedral of Paris will become that of the Catholic world.” And Napoleon shall be all in all. Perhaps, too, this rhapsody ended half audibly with the adulatory words of the prefect of Arras, “God created Napoleon and then rested from His works.”
But as seen from gray Helena, the Pope did not annul the marriage with Josephine, nor did Nap marry the sister of Tsar Alexander or long retain the friendship of Russia; nor did he conquer India and so strike England to the heart; nor did he ever have done with that business of Rome and the Pope.That “business” has seen the rise and fall of many—and yet shall see.
Was Napoleon a Catholic? He died in the bosom of the Catholic church after having devoutly received the sacraments. To General Montholon he said: “I was born in the Catholic religion; I wish to fulfil the duties it imposes and to receive the succors it administers.” On another occasion he said, “It would rest my soul to hear Mass.” These words having been reported to the Pontiff, Pope Pius VII., one time prisoner at Savona, the gentle old man immediately petitioned the English government to send a priest to minister to the spiritual wants of Napoleon. In compliance with the papal request the Abbe Vignali was sent to St. Helena.
Napoleon in hisMemoires, speaking of Pius VII., calls him “an old man full of tolerance and light”; and in euphemistic reference to his troubles with the pontiff he writes, “Fatal circumstances embroiled our cabinets; I regret it exceedingly.”
But whatever Nap may have been in exile at St. Helena, certainly in 1809-10, as arbiter of Europe, he was an arch enemy to the Catholic church, and he acted in flagrant violation of all that the Church stands for. And had his phenomenal success continued to favor him, he would, without doubt, have lived and died an enemy to the Church.
Napoleon never ceased to be a deist. “Who made all that, Gentlemen?” he said one night as he and his friends were gazing at the starry heavens. As a statesman he perceived that religion is an ally to good government, and doubtless he was sincere when he said, “A society without religion is like a ship without a compass; there is no good morality without religion.” Nap’s re-establishment of the Church in France after the Revolution, and the Concordat made in the beginning of his reign; the six years spent at St. Helena and his death there, would seem to testify that Napoleon was at deepest heart a sincere child ofthat Church so tolerant of human frailty and so divinely compassionate towards those who come contritely back from error’s devious ways and would sleep the last sleep in her bosom.