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42 - A Brief History of France From Caesars to Waterloo by Agnes Mary Frances Robinson · A Brief History of France From Caesars to Waterloo

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  Speaker 1: Section forty two of a short History of France by
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  Speaker 1: Mary Duclo. This librovox recording is in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: Read by Pamelinagami, Part four, Chapter six, Waterloo, Part two.
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  Speaker 1: At one o'clock, as the Emperor on his mound, swept
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  Speaker 1: the horizon with his field glass in search of Gruci's
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  Speaker 1: missing reserve, he saw a moving shadow. Not French Prussians, yes,
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  Speaker 1: Buloh's corps, who had not served at Lignyi. It was,
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  Speaker 1: he thought, but a single unsupported body, which, if Gruchet
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  Speaker 1: moved rapidly, might be caught between two fires and annihilated.
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  Speaker 1: But Gruchet was not in sight, and these ominous Prussians,
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  Speaker 1: waiting and watching for the advent of Bleucher's more considerable corps,
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  Speaker 1: hovered on the rear of the battle, still waiting like
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  Speaker 1: a flock of vultures. Perhaps at that moment Napoleon ought
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  Speaker 1: to have disengaged his armies retreated, as Bleucher had done
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  Speaker 1: at Linis left the ultimate issue for a happier hour.
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  Speaker 1: But was it possible? What reinforcements had he to hope for?
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  Speaker 1: Delay was all in favor of the Allies. Their reinforcements
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  Speaker 1: were the innumerable hosts of Austria and Russia. Besides, the
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  Speaker 1: struggle was already begun. French and English were at each
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  Speaker 1: other's throats in an inextricable medley. The crashing charge of
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  Speaker 1: Erelon's division at one o'clock left the British infantry unshaken.
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  Speaker 1: Then came the turn of Milo and his cirassiers. Who
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  Speaker 1: does not know the story of their splendid onset as
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  Speaker 1: they stormed the Mont Saint Jean, riding like centaurs, three
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  Speaker 1: thousand centaurs, three thousand grizzled heads, shouting vive l'Empereur, who
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  Speaker 1: has not heard how in the full shock of their
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  Speaker 1: furious charge they came on that sunken lane the River
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  Speaker 1: of Vain, and fell one on top of another in
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  Speaker 1: the horrible trap. But the middle ranks and the last
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  Speaker 1: gained the plateau on the other side, charging like mad,
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  Speaker 1: carrying all before them, the tails of their horses swishing
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  Speaker 1: through the tall wheat. Colonel Seur, with six saber cuts
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  Speaker 1: in his right arm, dismounts, while the army surgeon amputates
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  Speaker 1: it and then leaps on his horse again and leads
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  Speaker 1: his men to the attack. The Duke of Wellington told
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  Speaker 1: me himself Saijomini in his Campaigne de Mine of Sancans.
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  Speaker 1: He told me at Verona that in all his experience
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  Speaker 1: of war, he never saw anything more magnificent than the
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  Speaker 1: charge of the French cuirassier at Waterloo. At that moment
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  Speaker 1: it was to know French confrere that the Duke was
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  Speaker 1: imparting his impressions. But to the incomparable British infantry, who
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  Speaker 1: withstood the wild onslaught steady boys, he says, what will
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  Speaker 1: they say of us at home if we are beaten?
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  Speaker 1: There was no thought of giving way. The English never
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  Speaker 1: knew when they were beaten. The battle was won by
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  Speaker 1: men whose motto has ever been tis dogged as does it.
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  Speaker 1: The French cavalry was as close to us as our
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  Speaker 1: own troops, wrote the Iron Duke a little later to
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  Speaker 1: Lord Beresford. The moment came when the fifth British Division,
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  Speaker 1: reduced from four thousand to four hundred men, could no
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  Speaker 1: longer hold its position, and Wellington, seeing his brave soldiers
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  Speaker 1: hacked in pieces all round him, told them to fall
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  Speaker 1: where they stood, and never thought of yielding an inch
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  Speaker 1: of ground, though as he sighed Knight or Blucher alone
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  Speaker 1: can save us. Meanwhile, Napoleon was in no less terrible straits. Nay,
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  Speaker 1: mad with battle, had led his cavalry charge too soon,
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  Speaker 1: at half past three. The exhaustion of the horses made
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  Speaker 1: a further attack appear as yet impossible, and the English
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  Speaker 1: cannon had found the range. There were now great moth
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  Speaker 1: eaten spaces and holes in the vast furry mass of
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  Speaker 1: the French busbies. But the first British lion is pierced,
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  Speaker 1: the second broken, though the third is intact. Oh for
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  Speaker 1: a good solid regiment of infantry, Nay sends the Napoleon
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  Speaker 1: in utmost haste de la fonterrie. The Emperor answers, cavou
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  Speaker 1: le vous, cajent prenes, voulez vous cojean fas, and just
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  Speaker 1: as Wellington scans the landscape for a sign of Blucher,
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  Speaker 1: he looks anxiously round. Still no trace of Gruche and
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  Speaker 1: his men. They might have disappeared in an earthquake, but
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  Speaker 1: the army does not yet guess at the Emperor's anguish.
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  Speaker 1: The French soldiers had begun to cry Victoire. A messenger
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  Speaker 1: was riding posthaste to get to Apprize Louis, the eighteenth
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  Speaker 1: of the defeat of the Allies. When that cloud on
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  Speaker 1: the horizon began to move, the men cried gruchey, but
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  Speaker 1: the Emperor knew better it was the Prussian army under Buloh.
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  Speaker 1: In order to win the battle, he must, at whatever
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  Speaker 1: cost crush the British before the arrival of Blucher, who
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  Speaker 1: was probably somewhere in Bulau's rear. The mass of the
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  Speaker 1: French cavalry, twelve thousand strong, flung itself again in charge
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  Speaker 1: after charge on the English front, carrying at last the
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  Speaker 1: English guns and sweeping with desperate bravery round the unbroken squares,
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  Speaker 1: whose fire thinned their ranks. Those indomitable squares remained unshaken.
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  Speaker 1: Never has greater courage been displayed, either in attack or
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  Speaker 1: in endurance. The rivals were equally matched, for if either
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  Speaker 1: was to overcome, some new factor must be added to
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  Speaker 1: his strength. At half past six, again that moving shadow
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  Speaker 1: on the skyline, and again the soldiers of France shouted gruche, gruche,
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  Speaker 1: But it was the bulk of the Prussian army under Bucher.
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  Speaker 1: Then the Imperial Guard, Napoleon's last reserve, which had taken
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  Speaker 1: no part in the battle was drawn up in two
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  Speaker 1: huge columns of attack. Neay himself led the first, and
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  Speaker 1: Ney transfigured, drunk with battle and despair, covered with mud.
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  Speaker 1: He had been thrown from his horse, his coat pierced
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  Speaker 1: with bullets, his sleeve torn from the shoulder, and Nay,
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  Speaker 1: while gesticulating, shouting vive l'Empereur, and the column sweeping all
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  Speaker 1: before it, floundering through heavy fields and pools of water,
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  Speaker 1: mounted the Rise touched the English front and fell back,
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  Speaker 1: torn shattered by the terrible charge of the British musketry.
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  Speaker 1: Then broke the second wave, advancing with the same fury,
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  Speaker 1: rising engulfing, only to be repulsed and scattered in its turn.
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  Speaker 1: By now it was nine in the evening night began
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  Speaker 1: to fall. All these brave men had been fighting for
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  Speaker 1: three days, and at the moment when the Guard fell back, exhausted,
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  Speaker 1: the French beheld. The whole Prussian army massed on Napoleon's right,
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  Speaker 1: their guns sweeping the road to Charlerois. Wellington seized that
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  Speaker 1: moment to make a desperate advance. Those imperturbable shattering squares
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  Speaker 1: began to move forwards all round. The French now saw
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  Speaker 1: themselves hemmed in by those rows on rows of little
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  Speaker 1: red figures no taller than low hedges, which were the
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  Speaker 1: British regiments and divisions, and the troops of the Emperor
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  Speaker 1: saw that they were turned. From that hour all was lost. Terror, panic,
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  Speaker 1: confusion reigned in the ranks of the French. Whole regiments
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  Speaker 1: fled helter skelter in a wild so of quipe, but
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  Speaker 1: the Emperor's old guards still stood firm in the midst
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  Speaker 1: of the increasing darkness. Surrender, cried the British, in a
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  Speaker 1: transport of pity and admiration. Damn screamed the French general Chambren,
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  Speaker 1: for thus i venture to translate the unpronounceable oath, which
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  Speaker 1: Polite historians have paraphrased as the guard dies but does
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  Speaker 1: not surrender, And with a last cry vive l'Empereur, the
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  Speaker 1: heroic grenadiers rushed headlong on their death. Napoleon was looking
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  Speaker 1: on in a sort of stupor. They seemed to have
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  Speaker 1: broken the ranks, he muttered as he saw his squadrons
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  Speaker 1: tumbling head over heels in their mad rout. All was lost,
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  Speaker 1: he was to write on the morrow. By a moment
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  Speaker 1: of panic, terror, and he added, with the indulgence of
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  Speaker 1: a great captain anseis Sir cassell Colapolu bras armey du
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  Speaker 1: mond lors elet milee cuisson augens ascion Nexiste Pleu. The
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  Speaker 1: very soldiers at his side were caught in the warspool
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  Speaker 1: and swept away in that hopeless torrent. Then the Emperor
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  Speaker 1: gathered up his reins, and, turning his horse, made for
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  Speaker 1: the sacrificed phalanx of the guard, and would have entered
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  Speaker 1: their column, But Sult, Duke of Dalmatia, laid his hand
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  Speaker 1: on the bridle stop, Sire, are not our enemies happy
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  Speaker 1: enough already? Napoleon resists and is wise to resist, for
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  Speaker 1: that would have been his fitting end. But Sult and
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  Speaker 1: the generals drag him on the road to Jenappe. There
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  Speaker 1: for a long moment, he sits his horse silent, motionless,
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  Speaker 1: deeply brooding, then orders an artillery man to fire off
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  Speaker 1: his guns, and listens for the last time to that
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  Speaker 1: dull roar which has been the music of his life.
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  Speaker 1: At last, he gives his bridle rein a shake and
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  Speaker 1: sets off alone at full canter for Charlehrois. On the
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  Speaker 1: twenty first of June, he was in Paris. He had
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  Speaker 1: been three days without eating. He was worn out. He
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  Speaker 1: had no longer the courage to daunt and dominate the
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  Speaker 1: chambers ah mon cher GeTe de Biu. He was no
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  Speaker 1: longer the man of Brumaire, and when both houses demanded
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  Speaker 1: his abdication, he was too broken to resist. Lavalette, his
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  Speaker 1: postmaster general, has left a record of the fearful, epileptic
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  Speaker 1: laugh with which Napoleon greeted him. On the twenty first
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  Speaker 1: of June, the Emperor saw the game was up. Outside
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  Speaker 1: in the streets, the people and the soldiers, two regiments
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  Speaker 1: and a mob from the Faubourg Saint Antoine were shrieking,
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  Speaker 1: adjuring him not to desert them, beseeching him to lead
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  Speaker 1: them against the enemy. Napoleon remained passive, inert. If there
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  Speaker 1: was one thing he adored even more than power, it
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  Speaker 1: was order. He was afraid of civil war of revolution.
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  Speaker 1: On the twenty second, he signed his abdication in favor
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  Speaker 1: of his son, the King of Rome. He offered the
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  Speaker 1: provisional government to serve France as a simple general under
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  Speaker 1: their command. The government refused. Finally, as Lucius Prussians were
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  Speaker 1: reported in the neighborhood, He left Paris and made his
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  Speaker 1: way to the sea. His first idea had been to
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  Speaker 1: take refuge in those United States of America, which were
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  Speaker 1: a second fatherland to the children of the Revolution. But
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  Speaker 1: the British cruisers scoured the Atlantic, so making a virtue
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  Speaker 1: of necessity, the tracked and hounded autocrat of yesterday wrote
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  Speaker 1: to the Prince Regent announcing that he came, like the Mysticles,
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  Speaker 1: to seat himself at the hearth of the British people. Ah,
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  Speaker 1: why did not the English state, in a mood of
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  Speaker 1: generous and judicious irony, offer him that vacant hall of Heartwell,
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  Speaker 1: where Louis the eighteenth had passed his term of exile. Instead,
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  Speaker 1: as we know, to our grief and shame, we stranded
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  Speaker 1: him on a sun base, Devil's Island in mid Ocean,
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  Speaker 1: on desolate, dreary Saint Helena. That and the flaming stake
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  Speaker 1: at Rule our two crimes in history. We have had
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  Speaker 1: our own way of dealing with the heroes and heroines
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  Speaker 1: of France, and I think it took the blood we
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  Speaker 1: shed of late in Flanders to wipe out the memory
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  Speaker 1: of that offense. Not like the Mysticles, received with magnificence
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  Speaker 1: in Persia by the nobler adversaries of the elder age,
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  Speaker 1: like Philoctates, rather left to perish on his lonely rock.
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  Speaker 1: In the twenty year long contest between the Revolution and Europe,
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  Speaker 1: the Dynasts score the final triumph in France, in Spain,
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  Speaker 1: in Naples, the Bubon reascend their thrones. Louis the eighteenth
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  Speaker 1: comes limping home to France, crutched on the armies of
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  Speaker 1: the coalition. Twelve hundred thousand foreign troops, again overrun. The
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  Speaker 1: departments leave behind them when they retire, as a flood
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  Speaker 1: tide leaves its fringe of mud and weed. An army
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  Speaker 1: of occupation one hundred and fifty thousand foreigners as a
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  Speaker 1: sort of royal guard, destined to secure the king against
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  Speaker 1: a renewal of revolution. The cost of their maintenance was
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  Speaker 1: added to the war tax of seven hundred millions of
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  Speaker 1: francs contributed by France to the expenses of the campaign.
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  Speaker 1: The insolent, irrepressible country appeared ruined at least, if not reconciled.
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  Speaker 1: But military force has never yet been able to long
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  Speaker 1: prevent the expansion of a great political ideal, and the
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  Speaker 1: task of the nineteenth century in France was to be
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  Speaker 1: the gradual and surer development of the notion of democracy.
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  Speaker 1: End of Section forty two.