Les Misérables, v. 2/5: Cosette

  CHAPTER IX.

  A SURPRISE.

  They were three thousand five hundred in number, and formed a fronta quarter of a league in length; they were gigantic men mounted oncolossal horses. They formed twenty-six squadrons, and had behind them,as a support, Lefebvre Desnouette's division, composed of one hundredand six picked gendarmes, the chasseurs of the Guard, eleven hundredand ninety-seven sabres, and the lancers of the Guard, eight hundredand eighty lances. They wore a helmet without a plume, and a cuirassof wrought steel, and were armed with pistols and a straight sabre. Inthe morning the whole army had admired them when they came up, at nineo'clock, with bugles sounding, while all the bands played, "Veillons ausalut de l'Empire," in close column with one battery on their flank,the others in their centre, and deployed in two ranks, and took theirplace in that powerful second line, so skilfully formed by Napoleon,which having at its extreme left Kellermann's cuirassiers, and on itsextreme right Milhaud's cuirassiers, seemed to be endowed with twowings of steel.

  The aide-de-camp Bernard carried to them the Emperor's order: Ney drewhis sabre and placed himself at their head, and the mighty squadronsstarted. Then a formidable spectacle was seen: the whole of thiscavalry, with raised sabres, with standards flying, and formed incolumns of division, descended, with one movement and as one man, withthe precision of a bronze battering-ram opening a breach, the hill ofthe Belle Alliance. They entered the formidable valley in which so manymen had already fallen, disappeared in the smoke, and then, emergingfrom the gloom, reappeared on the other side of the valley, still in aclose compact column, mounting at a trot, under a tremendous canisterfire, the frightful muddy incline of the plateau of Mont St. Jean. Theyascended it, stern, threatening, and imperturbable; between the breaksin the artillery and musketry fire the colossal tramp could be heard.As they formed two divisions, they were in two columns: Wathier'sdivision was on the right, Delord's on the left. At a distance itappeared as if two immense steel snakes were crawling toward the crestof the plateau; they traversed the battle-field like a flash.

  Nothing like it had been seen since the capture of the great redoubtof the Moskova by the heavy cavalry: Murat was missing, but Ney wasthere. It seemed as if this mass had become a monster, and had but onesoul; each squadron undulated, and swelled like the rings of a polype.This could be seen through a vast smoke which was rent asunder atintervals; it was a pell-mell of helmets, shouts, and sabres, a stormybounding of horses among cannon, and a disciplined and terrible array;while above it all flashed the cuirasses like the scales of the hydra.Such narratives seemed to belong to another age; something like thisvision was doubtless traceable in the old Orphean epics describingthe men-horses, the ancient hippanthropists, those Titans with humanfaces and equestrian chest whose gallop escaladed Olympus,--horrible,invulnerable, sublime; gods and brutes. It was a curious numericalcoincidence that twenty-six battalions were preparing to receive thecharge of these twenty-six squadrons. Behind the crest of the plateau,in the shadow of the masked battery, thirteen English squares, each oftwo battalions and formed two deep, with seven men in the first linesand six in the second, were waiting, calm, dumb, and motionless, withtheir muskets, for what was coming. They did not see the cuirassiers,and the cuirassiers did not see them: they merely heard this tideof men ascending. They heard the swelling sound of three thousandhorses, the alternating and symmetrical sound of the hoof, the clangof the cuirasses, the clash of the sabres, and a species of greatand formidable breathing. There was a long and terrible silence, andthen a long file of raised arms, brandishing sabres, and helmets, andbugles, and standards, and three thousand heads with great moustaches,shouting, "Long live the Emperor!" appeared above the crest. Thewhole of this cavalry debouched on the plateau, and it was like thecommencement of an earthquake.

  All at once, terrible to relate, the head of the column of cuirassiersfacing the English left reared with a fearful clamor. On reachingthe culminating point of the crest, furious and eager to make theirexterminating dash on the English squares and guns, the cuirassiersnoticed between them and the English a trench, a grave. It was thesunken road of Ohain. It was a frightful moment,--the ravine was there,unexpected, yawning, almost precipitous, beneath the horses' feet,and with a depth of twelve feet between its two sides. The secondrank thrust the first into the abyss; the horses reared, fell back,slipped with all four feet in the air, crushing and throwing theirriders. There was no means of escaping; the entire column was onehuge projectile. The force acquired to crush the English, crushed theFrench, and the inexorable ravine would not yield till it was filledup. Men and horses rolled into it pell-mell, crushing each other, andmaking one large charnel-house of the gulf, and when this grave wasfull of living men the rest passed over them. Nearly one-third ofDubois' brigade rolled into this abyss. This commenced the loss ofthe battle. A local tradition, which evidently exaggerates, says thattwo thousand horses and fifteen hundred men were buried in the sunkenroad of Ohain. These figures probably comprise the other corpses castinto the ravine on the day after the battle. It was this brigade ofDubois, so fatally tried, which an hour before, charging unsupported,had captured the flag of the Luxembourg battalion. Napoleon, beforeordering this charge, had surveyed the ground, but had been unable tosee this hollow way, which did not form even a ripple on the crest ofthe plateau. Warned, however, by the little white chapel which marksits juncture with the Nivelles road, he had asked Lacoste a question,probably as to whether there was any obstacle. The guide answered No,and we might almost say that Napoleon's catastrophe was brought aboutby a peasant's shake of the head.

  Other fatalities were yet to arise. Was it possible for Napoleon to winthe battle? We answer in the negative. Why? On account of Wellington,on account of Blücher? No; on account of God. Buonaparte, victor atWaterloo, did not harmonize with the law of the 19th century. Anotherseries of facts was preparing, in which Napoleon had no longer a place:the ill will of events had been displayed long previously. It wastime for this vast man to fall; his excessive weight in human destinydisturbed the balance. This individual alone was of more account thanthe universal group: such plethoras of human vitality concentratedin a single head--the world, mounting to one man's brain--would bemortal to civilization if they endured. The moment had arrived for theincorruptible supreme equity to reflect, and it is probable that theprinciples and elements on which the regular gravitations of the moralorder as of the material order depend, complained. Streaming blood,over-crowded grave-yards, mothers in tears, are formidable pleaders.When the earth is suffering from an excessive burden, there aremysterious groans from the shadow, which the abyss hears. Napoleon hadbeen denounced in infinitude, and his fall was decided. He had angeredGod. Waterloo is not a battle, but a transformation of the Universe.