The Bronze Eagle (38 page)

Then indeed the mighty wave of steel can advance no longer: for it is
confronted with an impenetrable wall—a wall of living, palpitating,
heroic men—men who for hours have stood their ground and fought for the
honour of Britain and of her flag—men who with set teeth and grim
determination were ready to sell their lives dearly if lives were to be
sold—men in fact who have had their orders to hold out to the last man
and who are going to obey those orders now.

"Up, guards, and at them," and surprised, bewildered, staggered, the
chasseurs pause: three hundred of their comrades lie dead or dying on
the ground. They pause: their ranks are broken: with his last dying sigh
brave Général Michel tries to rally them. But he breathes his last ere
he succeeds: his second in command loses his head. He should have
ordered a bayonet charge—sudden, swift and sure—against that red wall
that rushes at them with such staggering power: but he too tries to
rally his men, to reform their ranks—how can they re-form as for parade
under the deadly fire of the British guards?

Confusion begins its deathly sway: the chasseurs—under conflicting
orders—stand for full ten minutes almost motionless under that
devastating fire.

And far away on the heights of Frischemont the first line of Prussian
bayonets are seen silhouetted against the sunset sky.

[Pg 299]
Wellington has seen it. Blücher has come at last! One final effort, one
more mighty gigantic, superhuman struggle and the glorious end would be
in sight. He gives the order for a general charge.

"Forward, boys," cries Colonel Saltoun to his brigade. "Now is the
time!"

Heads down the British charge. The chasseurs are already scattered, but
behind the chasseurs, fronting Maitland's brigade, fronting Adam and his
artillery, fronting Saltoun and Colborne the Fire-Eater, the Old Guard
is seen to advance, the Old Guard who through twelve campaigns and an
hundred victories have shown the world how to conquer and how to die.

When Michel's chasseurs were scattered, when their General fell; when
the English lines, exhausted and shaken for a moment, rallied at
Wellington's call: "Up, guards, and at them!" when from far away on the
heights of Frischemont the first line of Prussian bayonets were
silhouetted against the sunset sky, then did Napoleon's old growlers
with their fur bonnets and their grizzled moustaches enter the line of
action to face the English guards. They were facing Death and knew it
but still they cried: "Vive l'Empereur!"

Heads down the British charge, whilst from Ohain comes the roar of
Blücher's guns, and up from the east, Zieten with the Prussians rushes
up to join in the assault.

Then the carnage begins: for the Old Guard is still advancing—in solid
squares—solemn, unmoved, magnificent: the bronze eagles on their
bonnets catch the golden rays of the setting sun. Thus they advance in
face of deadly fire: they fall like corn before the scythe. A sublime
suicide to the cry of "Vive l'Empereur!" and not one of the brigade is
missing except those who are dead.

They know—none better—that this is the beginning of the end. Perhaps
they do not care to live if their Emperor
[Pg 300]
is to be Emperor no longer,
if he is to be sent back to exile—to the prison of Elba or worse: and
so they advance in serried squares, while Maitland's artillery has
attacked them in the rear. Great gaps are made in those ranks, but they
are quickly filled up again: the squares become less solid, smaller, but
they remain compact. Still they advance.

But now close behind them Blücher's guns begin to thunder and Zieten's
columns are rapidly gaining ground: all round their fur bonnets a
hailstorm of grape-shot is raging whilst Adam's artillery is in action
within fifty paces at their flank. But the old growlers who had suffered
death with silent fortitude in the snows of Russia, who had been as
grand in their defeat at Moscow and at Leipzic as they had been in the
triumphs of Auerstadt or of Friedland—they neither staggered nor paused
in their advance. On they went—carrying their muskets on their
shoulders—a cloud of tirailleurs in front of them, right into the
cross-fire of the British guns: their loud cry of "Vive l'Empereur"
drowning that other awesome, terrible cry which someone had raised a
while ago and which now went from mouth to mouth: "We are betrayed!
Sauve qui peut!
"

The Prussians were in their rear; the British were charging their front,
and panic had seized the most brilliant cavalry the world had ever seen.

"Sauve qui peut" is echoed now and re-echoed all along the crest of the
plateau. And the echo rolls down the slope into the valley where
Reille's infantry and a regiment of cuirassiers, and three more
battalions of chasseurs, are making ready to second the assault on Mont
Saint Jean. Reille and his infantry pause and listen: the cuirassiers
halt in their upward movement, whilst up on the ridge of the plateau
where Donzelot's grenadiers have attacked the brigade of Kempt and
Lambert and Pack, the whisper goes from mouth to mouth:

"We are betrayed!
Sauve qui peut!
"

[Pg 301]
Panic seizes the younger men: they turn their horses' heads back toward
the slopes. The stampede has commenced: very soon it grows. The British
in front, the Prussians in the rear: "Sauve qui peut!"

Ney amongst them is almost unrecognisable. His face is coal-black with
powder: he has no hat, no epaulettes and only half a sword: rage,
anguish, bitterness are in his husky voice as he adjures, entreats,
calls to the demoralised army—and insults it, execrates it in turn. But
nothing but Death will stop that army now in its headlong flight.

"At least stop and see how a Marshal of France dies on the field of
honour," he calls.

But the voice which led these same men to victory at Moskowa has lost
its potency and its magic. The men cry "Vive Ney!" but they do not
stand. The stampede has become general. In the valley below the infantry
has started to run up the slope of La Belle Alliance: after it the
cavalry with reins hanging loose, stirrups lost, casques, sabretaches,
muskets—anything that impedes—thrown into the fields to right and
left. La Haye Sainte is evacuated, Hougoumont is abandoned; Papelotte,
Plancenoit, the woods, the plains are only filled with running men and
the thunder of galloping chargers.

Alone the Old Guard has remained unshaken. Whilst all around them what
was once the Grand Army is shattered, destroyed, melted like ice before
a devastating fire, they have continued to advance, sublime in their
fortitude, in their endurance, their contempt for death. One by one
their columns are shattered and there are none now to replace those that
fall. And as the gloom of night settles on this vast hecatomb on the
plateau of Mont Saint Jean the conquerors of Jena and Austerlitz and
Friedland make their last stand round the bronze eagle—all that is left
to them of the glories of the past.

[Pg 302]
And when from far away the cry of "Sauve qui peut" has become only an
echo, and the bronze eagle shattered by a bullet lies prone upon the
ground shielded against capture in its fall by a circling mountain of
dead, when finally Night wraps all the heroism, the glory, the sorrow
and the horrors of this awful day in the sable folds of her
all-embracing mantle, Napoleon's Old Guard has ceased to be.

And out in the western sky a streak of vivid crimson like human blood
has broken the bosom of the clouds: the glow of the sinking sun rests on
this huge dissolution of what was once so glorious and unconquered and
great. Then it is that Wellington rides to the very edge of the plateau
and fronts the gallant British troops at this supreme hour of oncoming
victory, and lifting his hat high above his head he waves it three times
in the air.

And from right and left they come, British, Hanoverians, Belgians and
Brunswickers to deliver the final blow to this retreating army, wounded
already unto death.

They charge now: they charge all of them, cavalry, infantry, gunners,
forty thousand men who have forgotten exhaustion, forgotten what they
have suffered, forgotten what they had endured. On they come with a rush
like a torrent let loose; the confusion of sounds and sights becomes a
pandemonium of hideousness, bugles and drums and trumpets and bagpipes
all mingle, merge and die away in the fast gathering twilight.

And the tidal wave of steel recedes down the slopes of Mont Saint Jean,
into the valley and thence up again on Belle Alliance, with a mêlée of
sounds like the breaking of a gigantic line of surf against the
irresistible cliffs, or the last drawn-out sigh of agony of dying giants
in primeval times.

[Pg 303]

On the road to Genappe in the mystery of the moonlit night a solitary
rider turned into a field and dismounted.

Carried along for a time by the stream of the panic, he found himself
for a moment comparatively alone—left as it were high and dry by the
same stream which here had divided and flowed on to right and left of
him. He wore a grey redingote and a shabby bicorne hat.

Having dismounted he slipped the bridle over his arm and started to walk
beside his horse back toward Waterloo.

A sleep-walker in pursuit of his dream!

Heavy banks of grey clouds chased one another with mad fury across the
midsummer sky, now obscuring the cold face of the moon, now allowing her
pale, silvery rays to light up this gigantic panorama of desolation and
terror and misery. To right and left along the roads and lanes, across
grassland and cornfields, canals, ditches and fences the last of the
Grand Army was flying headlong, closely pursued by the Prussians. And at
the farm of La Belle Alliance Wellington and Blücher had met and shaken
hands, and had thanked God for the great and glorious victory.

But the sleep-walker went on in pursuit of his dream—he walked with
measured steps beside his weary horse, his eyes fixed on the horizon far
away, where the dull crimson glow of smouldering fires threw its last
weird light upon this vast abode of the dead and the dying. He walked
on—slowly and mechanically back to the scene of the overwhelming
cataclysm where all his hopes lay irretrievably buried. He walked
on—majestic as he had never been before, in the brilliant throne-room
of the Tuileries or the mystic vastness of Notre Dame when the Imperial
crown sat so ill upon his plebeian head. . . . He walked on—silent,
exalted and great—great through the magnitude of his downfall.

[Pg 304]
And to right and left of him, like the surf that recedes on a pebbly
beach, the last of his once invincible army was flying back to
France—back in the wake of those who had been lucky enough to fly
before—bodies of men who had been the last to realise that an heroic
stand round a fallen eagle could no longer win back that which was lost,
and that if life be precious it could only be had in flight—bits of
human wreckage too, forgotten by the tide—they all rolled and rushed
and swept past the silent wayfarer . . . quite close at times: so close
that every man could see him quite distinctly, could easily distinguish
by the light of the moon the grey redingote and the battered hat which
they all knew so well—which they had been wont to see in the forefront
of an hundred victorious charges.

Now half-blinded by despair and by panic they gazed with uncomprehending
eyes on the man and on the horse and merely shouted to him as they
rushed galloping or running by, "The Prussians are on us!
Sauve qui
peut!
"

And the dreamer still looked on that distant crimson glow and in the
bosom of those wind-swept clouds he saw the pictures of Austerlitz and
Jena and Wagram, pictures of glory and might and victory, and the shouts
which he heard were the ringing cheers round the bivouac fires of long
ago.

[Pg 305]

It was close on half-past nine and the moon full up on the stormy sky
when a couple of riders detached themselves out of the surging mass of
horses and men that were flying pell-mell towards Genappe, and slightly
checking their horses, put them to a slower gallop and finally to a
trot.

On their right a small cottage gleamed snow-white in the cold, searching
light of the moon. A low wall ran to right and left of it and enclosed a
small yard at the back of the cottage; the wall had a gate in it which
gave on the fields beyond. At the moment that the two riders trotting
slowly down the road reached the first angle of the wall, the gate was
open and a man leading a white horse and wearing a grey redingote turned
into the yard.

"My God! the Emperor!" exclaimed one of the riders as he drew rein.

They both turned their horses into the field, skirting the low,
enclosing wall until they reached the gate. The white horse was now
tethered to a post and the man in the grey redingote was standing in the
doorway at the rear of the cottage. The two men dismounted and in their
turn led their horses into the yard: at sight of them the man in the
grey redingote seemed to wake from his sleep.

"Berthier," he said slowly, "is that you?"

"Yes, Sire,—and Colonel Bertrand is here too."

"What do you want?"

[Pg 306]
"We earnestly beg you, Sire, to come with us to Genappe. There is not
the slightest hope of rallying any portion of your army now. The
Prussians are on us. You might fall into their hands."

Berthier—conqueror and Prince of Wagram—spoke very earnestly and with
head uncovered, but more abruptly and harshly than he had been wont to
do of yore in the salons of the Tuileries or on the glory-crowned
battlefields at the close of a victorious day.

"I am coming! I am coming!" said the Emperor with a quick sigh of
impatience. "I only wanted to be alone a moment—to think things out—to
. . ."