The Bronze Eagle (37 page)

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
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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
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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
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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.

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!
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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?

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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, ex
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tending 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.
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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."

"Up, guards, and at them!"

Maitland's brigade of guards had been crouching in the
corn—crouching—waiting for the order to charge—red-coated lions in
the ripening corn—ready to spring at the word.

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And Death the harvester in chief stands by with his scythe ready for the
mowing.

"Up, guards, and at them!"

It is Maitland and his gallant brigade of guards—out of the corn they
rise and front the three battalions of Michel's chasseurs who were the
first to reach the highest point of the hill. They fire and Death with
his scythe has laid three hundred low. The tricolour flag is riddled
with grapeshot and Général Michel has fallen.