Les Misérables, v. 2/5: Cosette

  CHAPTER X.

  THE PLATEAU OF MONT ST. JEAN.

  The battery was unmasked simultaneously with the ravine,--sixty gunsand the thirteen squares thundered at the cuirassiers at point-blankrange. The intrepid General Delort gave a military salute to theEnglish battery. The whole of the English field artillery had enteredthe squares at a gallop; the cuirassiers had not even a moment forreflection. The disaster of the hollow way had decimated but notdiscouraged them; they were of that nature of men whose heartsgrow large when their number is diminished. Wathier's column alonesuffered in the disaster: but Delort's column, which he had orderedto wheel to the left, as if he suspected the trap, arrived entire.The cuirassiers rushed at the English squares at full gallop, withhanging bridles, sabres in their mouths, and pistols in their hands.There are moments in a battle when the soul hardens a man, so thatit changes the soldier into a statue, and all flesh becomes granite.The English battalions, though fiercely assailed, did not move. Thenthere was a frightful scene. All the faces of the English squares wereattacked simultaneously, and a frenzied whirl surrounded them. Butthe cold infantry remained impassive; the front rank kneeling receivedthe cuirassiers on their bayonets, while the second fired at them;behind the second rank the artillery-men loaded their guns, the frontof the square opened to let an eruption of canister pass, and thenclosed again. The cuirassiers responded by attempts to crush their foe;their great horses reared, leaped over the bayonets, and landed in thecentre of the four living walls. The cannon-balls made gaps in thecuirassiers, and the cuirassiers made breaches in the squares. Files ofmen disappeared, trampled down by the horses, and bayonets were buriedin the entrails of these centaurs. Hence arose horrible wounds, suchas were probably never seen elsewhere. The squares, where broken bythe impetuous cavalry, contracted without yielding an inch of ground;inexhaustible in canister they produced an explosion in the midst ofthe assailants. The aspect of this combat was monstrous: these squareswere no longer battalions, but craters; these cuirassiers were nolonger cavalry, but a tempest,--each square was a volcano attacked by astorm; the lava combated the lightning.

  The extreme right square, the most exposed of all, as it was in theair, was nearly annihilated in the first attack. It was formed of the75th Highlanders; the piper in the centre, while his comrades werebeing exterminated around him, was seated on a drum, with his bagpipeunder his arm, and playing mountain airs. These Scotchmen died thinkingof Ben Lothian, as the Greeks did remembering Argos. A cuirassier'ssabre, by cutting through the pibroch and the arm that held it, stoppedthe tune by killing the player.

  The cuirassiers, relatively few in number, and reduced by thecatastrophe of the ravine, had against them nearly the whole Englisharmy; but they multiplied themselves, and each man was worth ten. SomeHanoverian battalions, however, gave way: Wellington saw it and thoughtof his cavalry. Had Napoleon at this moment thought of his infantry,the battle would have been won, and this forgetfulness was his greatand fatal fault. All at once the assailers found themselves assailed;the English cavalry were on their backs, before them the squares,behind them Somerset with the one thousand four hundred Dragoon Guards.Somerset had on his right Dornberg with the German chevau-legers, andon his left Trip with the Belgian carbineers; the cuirassiers, attackedon the flank and in front, before and behind, by infantry and cavalry,were compelled to make a front on all sides. But what did they care?They were a whirlwind; their bravery became indescribable.

  In addition, they had behind them the still thundering battery, and itwas only in such a way that these men could be wounded in the back.One of these cuirasses with a hole through the left scapula is inthe Waterloo Museum. For such Frenchmen, nothing less was requiredthan such Englishmen. It was no longer a _mêlée_; it was a headlongfury, a hurricane of flashing swords. In an instant the one thousandfour hundred Dragoons were only eight hundred; and Fuller, theirlieutenant-colonel, was dead. Ney dashed up with Lefebvre Desnouette'slancers and chasseurs; the plateau of Mont St. Jean was taken andretaken, and taken again. The cuirassiers left the cavalry to attackthe infantry, or, to speak more correctly, all these men collared oneanother and did not loose their hold. The squares still held out aftertwelve assaults. Ney had four horses killed under him, and one halfof the cuirassiers remained on the plateau. This struggle lasted twohours. The English army was profoundly shaken; and there is no doubtthat, had not the cuirassiers been weakened in their attack by thedisaster of the sunken road, they would have broken through the centreand decided the victory. This extraordinary cavalry petrified Clinton,who had seen Talavera and Badajoz. Wellington, three parts vanquished,admired heroically; he said in a low voice, "Splendid!" The cuirassiersannihilated seven squares out of thirteen, captured or spiked sixtyguns, and took six English regimental flags, which three cuirassiersand three chasseurs of the Guard carried to the Emperor before the farmof La Belle Alliance.

  Wellington's situation had grown worse. This strange battle resembled afight between two savage wounded men, who constantly lose their bloodwhile continuing the struggle. Which would be the first to fall? Thecombat for the plateau continued. How far did the cuirassiers get? Noone could say; but it is certain that on the day after the battle, acuirassier and his horse were found dead on the weighing machine ofMont St. Jean, at the very spot where the Nivelles, Genappe, La Hulpe,and Brussels roads intersect and meet. This horseman had pierced theEnglish lines. One of the men who picked up this corpse still lives atMont St. Jean; his name is Dehaye, and he was eighteen years of ageat the time. Wellington felt himself giving way, and the crisis wasclose at hand. The cuirassiers had not succeeded, in the sense thatthe English centre had not been broken. Everybody held the plateau,and nobody held it; but, in the end, the greater portion remained inthe hands of the English. Wellington had the village and the plain;Ney, only the crest and the slope. Both sides seemed to have takenroot in this mournful soil. But the weakness of the English seemedirremediable, for the hemorrhage of this army was horrible. Kempt onthe left wing asked for reinforcements. "There are none," Wellingtonreplied. Almost at the same moment, by a strange coincidence whichdepicts the exhaustion of both armies, Ney asked Napoleon for infantry,and Napoleon answered, "Infantry? where does he expect me to get them?Does he think I can make them?"

  Still the English army was the worse of the two; the furious attacks ofthese great squadrons with their iron cuirasses and steel chests hadcrushed their infantry. A few men round the colors marked the place ofa regiment, and some battalions were only commanded by a captain or alieutenant. Alten's division, already so maltreated at La Haye Sainte,was nearly destroyed; the intrepid Belgians of Van Kluze's brigadelay among the wheat along the Nivelles road: hardly any were left ofthose Dutch Grenadiers who, in 1811, fought Wellington in Spain,on the French side, and who, in 1815, joined the English and foughtNapoleon. The loss in officers was considerable; Lord Uxbridge, who hadhis leg interred the next day, had a fractured knee. If on the side ofthe French, in this contest of the cuirassiers, Delord, l'Heretier,Colbert, Duof, Travers, and Blancard were _hors de combat_, on the sideof the English, Alten was wounded, Barnes was wounded, Delancey killed,Van Meeren killed, Ompteda killed, Wellington's staff decimated,--andEngland had the heaviest scale in this balance of blood. The 2dregiment of foot-guards had lost five lieutenant-colonels, fourcaptains, and three ensigns; the first battalion of the 30th hadlost twenty-four officers, and one hundred and twelve men; the 79thHighlanders had twenty-four officers wounded, and eighteen officers andfour hundred and fifty men killed. Cumberland's Hanoverian Hussars,an entire regiment, having their Colonel Hacke at their head, whoat a later date was tried and cashiered, turned bridle during theflight and fled into the forest of Soignies, spreading the rout asfar as Brussels. The wagons, ammunition trains, baggage trains, andambulance carts full of wounded, on seeing the French, gave ground,and approaching the forest, rushed into it; the Dutch, sabred by theFrench cavalry, broke in confusion. From Vert Coucou to Groenendæl, adistance of two leagues on the Brussels roads, there was, accor
dingto the testimony of living witnesses, a dense crowd of fugitives,and the panic was so great that it assailed the Prince de Condé atMechlin and Louis XVIII. at Ghent. With the exception of the weakreserve échelonned behind the field hospital established at the farmof Mont St. Jean, and Vivian's and Vandeleur's brigades, which flankedthe left wing, Wellington had no cavalry left, and many of the gunslay dismounted. These facts are confessed by Siborne; and Pringle,exaggerating the danger, goes so far as to state that the Anglo-Dutcharmy was reduced to thirty-four thousand men. The Iron Duke remainedfirm, but his lips blanched. The Austrian commissioner Vincent, and theSpanish commissioner Alava, who were present at the battle, thought theDuke lost; at five o'clock Wellington looked at his watch, and could beheard muttering, "Blücher or night!"

  It was this moment that a distant line of bayonets glistened on theheights on the side of Frischemont. This was the climax of the giganticdrama.