CHAPTER XV.
CAMBRONNE.
Out of respect for the French reader, the grandest word that anyFrenchman has ever uttered must not be repeated. Dump no sublimity intothe stream of history.
At our own risk, we shall disregard this notice.
Among these giants, then, there was one Titan, Cambronne.
To speak out this word and then die, what could be more sublime thanthis! For to be ready to die is to die, and it was no fault of his ifamid a storm of grape-shot he still lived.
The man who won the battle of Waterloo was not Napoleon routed; it wasnot Wellington giving ground at four o'clock, driven to despair atfive; it was not Blücher, who had not fought at all: the man who wonthe battle of Waterloo was Cambronne.
To overwhelm with such a word the thunder-bolt which kills you, is towin the victory.
To reply thus to disaster, to say this to fate, to lay such afoundation for the lion which was to mark the spot, to hurl this replyto the night's rain, to the masked wall of Hougomont, to the sunkenroad of Ohain, to the delay of Grouchy, to the arrival of Blücher,to be Irony in the tomb, to struggle to his feet again after havingfallen, to drown in two syllables the European coalition, to offer tokings these latrines already used by the Cæsars, to make the last ofwords the first, lending it the splendor of France, to end Waterloowith the jeers of the Mardi-Gras, to supplement Leonidas with Rabelais,to sum up this victory in one last word impossible to repeat, to loseground and preserve history, after such carnage to have the laugh onhis side, this is grand.
This insult to the lightning reaches the sublimity of Æschylus.
Cambronne's exclamation has the effect of an explosion. It is thebursting of a bosom with disdain; it is the surcharge of agony whichbreaks out. Who did conquer? Was it Wellington? No. Without Blücherhe was lost. Was it Blücher? No. If Wellington had not begun, Blüchercould not have finished. This Cambronne, this new-comer upon the scene,this unknown soldier, this infinitesimal atom of the war, feels thatthere is a lie somewhere in the disaster, which doubles its bitterness;and at the moment when he is bursting with rage, they offer him thismockery, life! How could he help bursting out? They are there,--all thekings of Europe, the conquering generals, the thundering Jupiters; theyhave a hundred thousand victorious soldiers, and behind the hundredthousand, a million; their cannon, the matches lighted, are yawning;they have trampled under foot the Imperial Guard and the Grand Army;they have just crushed Napoleon; only Cambronne is left; only thisearthworm remains to protest. He will protest. Then he looks aboutfor a word, as he would for a sword. Froth rises to his lips, and thisfroth is the word. Before this victory, stupendous but commonplace,before this victory without victors, driven to despair, he stands erectagain. He yields to its weight, but he proves its nothingness; and hedoes more than spit upon it; and weighed down by numbers, by force, bymatter, he finds for his soul one expression, "Merde!" We repeat--tosay this, to do this, to find this, is to win the victory.
The spirit of the great past entered into this unknown man at thisfatal moment. Cambronne finds the word of Waterloo just as Rouget del'Isle finds the Marseillaise--by an inspiration from above. A magneticcurrent from the divine whirlwind passes through these men and theyvibrate, and one sings the grand song, the other utters the terriblecry. This word of superhuman scorn Cambronne hurls not alone at Europein the name of the Empire,--that would be little; he hurls it at thepast in the name of the Revolution. In Cambronne is heard and isrecognized the old soul of the giants. It seems as if it were Dantonspeaking or Kleber roaring.
To this word of Cambronne's, the English voice replied, "Fire!" Thebatteries blazed, the hill trembled, from all these brazen mouthsleaped a last fearful belching of grape, a dense cloud of smokerolled forth silvered in waves by the rising moon, and when the smokecleared away, there was nothing left there. This dreaded remnant wasannihilated. The four walls of the living redoubt lay low, there beinghardly perceptible here and there a quivering among the corpses; andthus the French legions, greater than those of Rome, died at MontSt. Jean, on the earth drenched with rain and blood, in the gloomywheat-fields, at the spot where now there passes at four o'clock in themorning, whistling and gayly flicking his horse with the whip, Joseph,who drives the Nivelles mail-cart.