CHAPTER IX
THE TARPEIAN ROCK
I
Rain, rain! all the morning! God's little tool—innocent-looking little tool enough—for the remodelling of the destinies of this world.
God chose to soak the earth on that day—and the formidable artillery that had swept the plateau of Austerlitz, the vales of Marengo, the cemetery of Eylau, was rendered useless for the time being because up in the inscrutable kingdom of the sky a cloud had chosen to burst—or had burst by the will of God—and water soaked the soft, spongy soil of Belgium and the wheels of artillery wagons sank axle-deep in the mud.
If only the ground had been dry! if only the great gambler—the genius, the hero, call him what you will, but the gambler for all that—if only he had staked his crown, his honour and that of Imperial France on some other stake than his artillery! If only . . . ! But who shall tell?
Is it indeed a cloud-burst that changed the whole destinies of Europe? Ye materialists, ye philosophers! answer that.
Is it to the rain that fell in such torrents until close on midday of that stupendous 18th of June, that must be ascribed this wonderful and all-embracing change that came over the destinies of myriads of people, of entire nations, kingdoms and empires? Rather is it not because God just on that day of all days chose to show this world of pigmies—great men, valiant heroes, controlling genius and all-powerful conquerors—the entire extent of His might—so far and no further—and in order to show it, He selected that simple, seemingly futile means . . . just a heavy shower of rain.
At half-past eleven the cannon began to roar on the plains of Mont Saint Jean,2 but not before. Before that it had rained: rained heavily, and the ground was soaked through, and the all-powerful artillery of the most powerful military genius of all times was momentarily powerless.
Had it not rained so persistently and so long that same compelling artillery would have begun its devastating work earlier in the day—at six mayhap, or mayhap at dawn, another five, six, seven hours to add to the length of that awful day: another five, six, seven hours wherein to tax the tenacity, the heroic persistence of the British troops: another five, six, seven hours of dogged resistance on the one side, of impetuous charges on the other, before the arrival of Blücher and his Prussians and the turning of the scales of blind Justice against the daring gambler who had staked his all.
But it was only at half-past eleven that the cannon began to roar, and the undulating plain carried the echo like a thunder-roll from heaving billow to heaving billow till it broke against the silent majesty of the forest of Soigne.
Here with the forest as a background is the highest point of Mont Saint Jean: and here beneath an overhanging elm—all day on horseback—anxious, frigid and heroic, is Wellington—with a rain of bullets all round him, watching, ceaselessly watching that horizon far away, wrapped now in fog, anon in smoke and soon in gathering darkness: watching for the promised Prussian army that was to ease the terrible burden of that desperate stand which the British troops were bearing and had borne all day with such unflinching courage and dogged tenacity.
It is in vain that his aides-de-camp beg him to move away from that perilous position.
"My lord," cries Lord Hill at last in desperation, "if you are killed, what are we to do?"
"The same as I do now," replies Wellington unmoved, "hold this place to the last man."
Then with a sudden outburst of vehemence, that seems to pierce almost involuntarily the rigid armour of British phlegm and British self-control, he calls to his old comrades of Salamanca and Vittoria:
"Boys, which of us now can think of retreating? What would England think of us, if we do?"
Heroic, unflinching and cool the British army has held its ground against the overwhelming power of Napoleon's magnificent cavalry. Raw recruits some of them, against the veterans of Jena and of Wagram! But they have been ordered to hold the place to the last man, and in close and serried squares they have held their ground ever since half-past eleven this morning, while one after another the flower of Napoleon's world-famed cavalry had been hurled against them.
Cuirassiers, chasseurs, lancers, up they come to the charge, like whirlwinds up the declivities of the plateau. Like a whirlwind they rush upon those stolid, immovable, impenetrable squares, attacking from every side, making violent, obstinate, desperate onsets upon the stubborn angles, the straight, unshakable walls of red coats; slashing at the bayonets with their swords, at crimson breasts with their lances, firing their pistols right between those glowing eyes, right into those firm jaws and set teeth.
The sound of bullets on breastplates and helmets and epaulettes is like a shower of hailstones upon a sheet of metal.
Twice, thrice, nay more—a dozen times—they return to the charge, and the plateau gleams with brandished steel like a thousand flashes of simultaneous fork-lightning on the vast canopy of a stormy sky.
From midday till after four, a kind of mysterious haze covers this field of noble deeds. Fog after the rain wraps the gently-billowing Flemish ground in a white semi-transparent veil—covers with impartial coolness all the mighty actions, the heroic charges and still more heroic stands, all the silent uncomplaining sufferings, the glorious deaths, all the courage and all the endurance.
Through the grey mists we see a medley of moving colours—blue and grey and scarlet and black—of shakos and sabretaches, of English and French and Hanoverian and Scotch, of epaulettes and bare knees; we hear the sound of carbine and artillery fire, the clank of swords and bayonets, the call of bugle and trumpet and the wail of the melancholy pibroch: tunics and gold tassels and kilts—a medley of sounds and of visions!
We see the attack on Hougoumont—the appearance of Bülow on the heights of Saint Lambert—the charge of the Inniskillings and the Scots Greys—the death of valiant Ponsonby. We see Marshal Ney Prince of Moskowa—the bravest soldier in France—we see him everywhere where the mêlée is thickest, everywhere where danger is most nigh. His magnificent uniform torn to shreds, his gold lace tarnished, his hair and whiskers singed, his face blackened by powder, indomitable, unconquered, superb, we hear him cry: "Where are those British bullets? Is there not one left for me?"
He knows—none better!—that the plains of Mont Saint Jean are the great gambling tables on which the supreme gambler—Napoleon, once Emperor of the French and master of half the world—had staked his all. "If we come out of this alive and conquered," he cries to Heymès, his aide-de-camp, "there will only be the hangman's rope left for us all."
And we see the gambler himself—Napoleon, Emperor still and still certain of victory—on horseback all day, riding from end to end of his lines; he is gayer than he has ever been before. At Marengo he was despondent, at Austerlitz he was troubled: but at Waterloo he has no doubts. The star of his destiny has risen more brilliant than ever before.
"The day of France's glory has only just dawned," he calls, and his mind is full of projects—the triumphant march back into Paris—the Germans driven back to the Rhine—the English to the sea.
His only anxiety—and it is a slight one still—is that Grouchy with his fresh troops is so late in arriving.
Still, the Prussians are late too, and the British cannot hold the place for ever.
II
At three o'clock the fog lifts—the veil that has wrapped so many sounds, such awful and wonderful visions, in a kind of mystery, is lifted now, and it reveals . . . what? Hougoumont invested—Brave Baring there with a handful of men—English, German, Brunswickians—making a last stand with ten rounds of ammunition left to them per man, and the French engineers already battering in the gates of the enclosing wall that surrounds the château and chapel of Goumont: the farm of La Haye Sainte taken—Ney there with his regiment of cuirassiers and five battalions of the Old Guard: and the English lines on the heights of Mont Saint Jean apparently giving way.
We see too a vast hecatomb: glory and might must claim their many thousand victims: the dead and dying lie scattered like pawns upon an abandoned chessboard, the humble pawns in this huge and final gamble for supremacy and power, for national existence and for liberty. Hougoumont, La Haye Sainte, Papelotte are sown with illustrious dead—but on the plateau of Mont Saint Jean the British still hold their ground.
Wellington is still there on the heights, with the majestic trees of Soigne behind him, the stately canopy of the elm above his head—more frigid than before, more heroic, but also more desperately anxious.
"Blücher or nightfall," he sighs as a fresh cavalry charge is hurled against those indomitable British squares. The thirteenth assault, and still they stand or kneel on one knee, those gallant British boys; bayonet in hand or carbine, they fire, fall out and re-form again: shaken, hustled, encroached on they may be, but still they stand and fire with coolness and precision . . . the ranks are not broken yet.
Officers ride up to the field-marshal to tell him that the situation has become desperate, their regiments decimated, their men exhausted. They ask for fresh orders: but he has only one answer for them:
"There are no fresh orders, save to hold out to the last man."
And down in the valley at La Belle Alliance is the great gambler—the man who to-day will either be Emperor again—a greater, mightier monarch than even he has ever been—or who will sink to a status which perhaps the meanest of his erstwhile subjects would never envy.
But just now—at four o'clock—when the fog has lifted—he is flushed with excitement, exultant in the belief in victory.
The English centre on Mont Saint Jean is giving way at last, he is told.
"The beginning of retreat!" he cries.
And he, who had been anxious at Austerlitz, despondent at Marengo, is gay and happy and brimming full of hope.
"De Marmont," he calls to his faithful friend, "De Marmont, go ride to Paris now; tell them that victory is ours! No, no," he adds excitedly, "don't go all the way—ride to Genappe and send a messenger to Paris from there—then come back to be with us in the hour of victory."
And Victor de Marmont rides off in order to proclaim to the world at large the great victory which the Emperor has won this day over all the armies of Europe banded and coalesced against him.
From far away on the road of Ohain has come the first rumour that Blücher and his body of Prussians are nigh—still several hours' march from Waterloo but advancing—advancing. For hours Wellington has been watching for them, until wearily he has sighed: "Blücher or nightfall alone can save us from annihilation now."
The rumour—oh! it was merely the whispering of the wind, but still a rumour nevertheless—means fresh courage to tired, half-spent troops. Even deeds of unparalleled heroism need the stimulus of renewed hope sometimes.
The rumour has also come to the ears of the Emperor, of Ney and of all the officers of the staff. They all know that those magnificent British troops whom they have fought all day must be nigh to their final desperate effort at last—with naught left to them but their stubborn courage and that tenacity which has been ever since the wonder of the world.
They know, these brave soldiers of Napoleon—who have fought and admired the brave foe—that the 1st and 2nd Life Guards are decimated by now; that entire British and German regiments are cut up; that Picton is dead, the Scots Greys almost annihilated. They know what havoc their huge cavalry charges have made in the magnificent squares of British infantry; they know that heroism and tenacity and determination must give way at last before superior numbers, before fresh troops, before persistent, ever-renewed attacks.
Only a few fresh troops and Ney declares that he can conquer the final dogged endurance of the British troops, before they in their turn receive the support of Blücher and his Prussians, or before nightfall gives them a chance of rest.
So he sends Colonel Heymès to his Emperor with the urgent message: "More troops, I entreat, more troops and I can break the English centre before the Prussians come!"
None knew better than he that this was the great hazard on which the life and honour of his Emperor had been staked, that Imperial France was fighting hand to hand with Great Britain, each for her national existence, each for supremacy and might and the honour of her flag.
Imperial France—bold, daring, impetuous!
Great Britain—tenacious, firm and impassive!
Wellington under the elm-tree, calmly scanning the horizon while bullets whiz past around his head, and ordering his troops to hold on to the last man!
The Emperor on horseback under a hailstorm of shot and shell and bullets riding from end to end of his lines!
Ney and his division of cuirassiers and grenadiers of the Old Guard had just obeyed the Emperor's last orders which had been to take La Haye Sainte at all costs: and the intrepid Maréchal now, flushed with victory, had sent his urgent message to Napoleon:
"More troops! and I can yet break through the English centre before the arrival of the Prussians."
"More troops?" cried the Emperor in despair, "where am I to get them from? Am I a creator of men?"
And from far away the rumour: "Blücher and the Prussians are nigh!"
"Stop that rumour from spreading to the ears of our men! In God's name don't let them know it," adjures Napoleon in a message to Ney.
And he himself sends his own staff officers to every point of the field of battle to shout and proclaim the news that it is Grouchy who is nigh, Grouchy with reinforcements, Grouchy with the victorious troops from Ligny, fresh from conquered laurels!
And the news gives fresh heart to the Imperial troops:
"Vive l'Empereur!" they shout, more certain than ever of victory.
III
The grey day has yielded at last to the kiss of the sun. Far away at Braine l'Alleud a vivid streak of gold has rent the bank of heavy clouds. It is now close on seven o'clock—there are two more hours to nightfall and Blücher is not yet here.
Some of the Prussians have certainly debouched on Plancenoit, but Napoleon's Old Guard have turned them out again, and from Limale now comes the sound of heavy cannonade as if Grouchy had come upon Blücher after all and all hopes of reinforcements for the British troops were finally at an end.
Napoleon—Emperor still and still flushed with victory—looks through his glasses on the British lines: to him it seems that these are shaken, that Wellington is fighting with the last of his men. This is the hour then when victory waits—attentive, ready to bestow her crown on him who can hold out and fight the longest—on him who at the last can deliver the irresistible attack.
And Napoleon gives the order for the final attack, which must be more formidable, more overpowering than any that have gone before. The plateau of Mont Saint Jean, he commands, must be carried at all costs!
Cuirassiers, lancers and grenadiers, then, once more to the charge! strew once more the plains of Waterloo with your dying and your dead! Up, Milhaud, with your guards! Poret with your grenadiers! Michel with your chasseurs! Up, ye heroes of a dozen campaigns, of a hundred victories! Up, ye old growlers with the fur bonnets—Napoleon's invincible Old Guard! With Ney himself to lead you! a hero among heroes! the bravest where all are brave!
Have you ever seen a tidal wave of steel rising and surging under the lash of the gale? So they come now, those cuirassiers and lancers and chasseurs, their helmets, their swords, their lances gleaming in the golden light of the sinking sun; in closed ranks, stirrup to stirrup they swoop down into the valley, and rise again scaling the muddy heights. Superb as on parade, with their finest generals at their head: Milhaud, Hanrion, Michel, Mallet! and Ney between them all.
Splendid they are and certain of victory: they gallop past as if at a revue on the Place du Carrousel opposite the windows of the Tuileries; all to the repeated cry of "Vive l'Empereur!"
And as they gallop past the wounded and the dying lift themselves up from the blood-stained earth, and raise their feeble voices to join in that triumphant call: "Vive l'Empereur!" There's an old veteran there, who fought at Austerlitz and at Jena; he has three stripes upon his sleeve, but both his legs are shattered and he lies on the roadside propped up against a hedge, and as the superb cavalry ride proudly by he shouts lustily: "Forward, comrades! a last victorious charge! Long live the Emperor!"
After that who was to blame? Was human agency to blame? Did Ney—the finest cavalry leader in Napoleon's magnificent army, the veteran of an hundred glorious victories—did he make the one blunder of his military career by dividing his troops into too many separate columns rather than concentrating them for the one all-powerful attack upon the British centres? Did he indeed mistake the way and lead his splendid cavalry by round-about crossways to the plateau instead of by the straight Brussels road?
Or did the obscure traitor—over whom history has thrown a veil of mystery—betray this fresh advance against the British centre to Wellington?
Was any man to blame? Was it not rather the hand of God that had already fallen with almighty and divine weight upon the ambitious and reckless adventurer?—was it not the voice of God that spoke to him through the cannon's roar of Waterloo: "So far but no farther shalt thou go! Enough of thy will and thy power and thy ambition!—Enough of this scourge of bloodshed and of misery which I have allowed thee to wield for so long!—Enough of devastated homes, of starvation and of poverty! enough of the fatherless and of the widow!"
And up above on the plateau the British troops hear the thunder of thousands of horses' hoofs, galloping—galloping to this last charge which must be irresistible. And sturdy, wearied hands, black with powder and stained with blood, grasp more firmly still the bayonet, the rifle or the carbine, and they wait—those exhausted, intrepid, valiant men! they wait for that thundering charge, with wide-open eyes fixed upon the crest of the hill—they wait for the charge—they are ready for death—but they are not prepared to yield.
Along the edge of the plateau in a huge semicircle that extends from Hougoumont to the Brussels road the British gunners wait for the order to fire.
Behind them Wellington—eagle-eyed and calm, warned by God—or by a traitor but still by God—of the coming assault on his positions—scours the British lines from end to end: valiant Maitland is there with his brigade of guards, and Adam with his artillery: there are Vandeleur's and Vivian's cavalry and Colin Halkett's guards! heroes all! ready to die and hearing the approach of Death in that distant roar of thunder—the onrush of Napoleon's invincible cavalry.
Here, too, further out toward the east and the west, extending the British lines as far as Nivelles on one side and Brussels on the other, are William Halkett's Hanoverians, Duplat's German brigade, the Dutch and the Belgians, the Brunswickers, and Ompteda's decimated corps. The French royalists are here too, scattered among the foreign troops—brother prepared to fight brother to the death! St. Genis is among the Brunswickers. But Bobby Clyffurde is with Maitland's guards.
And now the wave of steel is surging up the incline: the gleam of shining metal pierces the distant haze, casques and lances glitter in the slowly sinking sun, whilst from billow to billow the echo brings to straining ears the triumphant cry "Vive l'Empereur!"
Five minutes later the British artillery ranged along the crest has made a huge breach in that solid, moving mass of horses and of steel. Quickly the breach is repaired: the ranks close up again! This is a parade! a review! The eyes of France are upon her sons! and "Vive l'Empereur!"
Still they come!
Volley after volley from the British guns makes deadly havoc among those glistering ranks!
But nevertheless they come!
No halt save for the quick closing up into serried, orderly columns. And then on with the advance!—like the surging up of a tidal wave against the cliffs—on with the advance! up the slopes toward the crest where those who are in the front ranks are mowed down by the British guns—their places taken by others from the rear—those others mowed down again, and again replaced—falling in their hundreds as they reach the crest, like the surf that shivers and dies as it strikes against the cliffs.
Ney's horse is killed under him—the fifth to-day—but he quickly extricates himself from saddle and stirrups and continues on his way—on foot, sword in hand—the sword that conquered at Austerlitz, at Eylau and at Moskowa. Round him the grenadiers of the Old Guard—they with the fur bonnets and the grizzled moustaches—tighten up their ranks.
They advance behind the cavalry! and after every volley from the British guns they shout loudly: "Vive l'Empereur!"
And anon the tidal wave—despite the ebb, despite the constant breaking of its surf—has by sheer force of weight hurled itself upon the crest of the plateau.
The Brunswickers on the left are scattered. Cleeves and Lloyd have been forced to abandon their guns: the British artillery is silenced and the chasseurs of Michel hold the extreme edge of the upland, and turn a deadly fusillade upon Colin Halkett's brigade already attacked by Milhaud and his guards and now severely shaken.
"See the English General!" cries Duchaud to his cuirassiers, "he is between two fires. He cannot escape."
No! he cannot but he seizes the colours of the 33rd whose young lieutenant has just fallen, and who threaten to yield under the devastating cross-fire: he brandishes the tattered colours, high up above his head—as high as he can hold them—he calls to his men to rally, and then falls grievously wounded.
But his guards have rallied. They stand firm now, and Duchaud, chewing his grey moustache, murmurs his appreciation of so gallant a foe.
"That side will win," he mutters, "who can best keep on killing."