by Victor Hugo
CHAPTER XVII.
OUGHT WATERLOO TO BE APPLAUDED?
There exists a highly respectable liberal school, which does notdetest Waterloo, but we do not belong to it. For us Waterloo isonly the stupefied date of liberty; for such an eagle to issuefrom such a shell is assuredly unexpected. Waterloo, if we placeourselves at the culminating point of the question, is intentionallya counter-revolutionary victory,--it is Europe against France; itis Petersburg, Berlin, and Vienna against Paris; it is the _statuquo_ opposed to the initiative; it is the 14th July, 1789, attackedthrough March 20, 1815; it is all the monarchies clearing the decksto conquer the indomitable French spirit of revolt. The dream was toextinguish this vast people which had been in a state of eruptionfor six-and-twenty years; and for this purpose, Brunswick, Nassau,the Romanoffs, Hohenzollern, and the Hapsburger coalesced with theBourbons, and Waterloo carries divine right on its pillion. It is truethat as the Empire was despotic, Royalty, by the natural reactionof things, was compelled to be liberal, and a constitutional orderissued from Waterloo, much to the regret of the conquerors. The factis, that the Revolution can never be really conquered, and beingprovidential and absolutely fatal, it constantly reappears,--beforeWaterloo in Napoleon overthrowing the old thrones; after Waterloo inLouis XVIII. granting and enduring the charter. Bonaparte places apostilion on the throne of Naples, and a sergeant on the throne ofSweden, employing inequality to demonstrate equality; Louis XVIII. atSt. Ouen countersigns the declaration of the rights of man. If youwish to understand what revolution is, call it progress; and if youwish to understand what progress is, call it to-morrow. To-morrow everdoes its work irresistibly and does it to-day, and it ever strangelyattains its object. It employs Wellington to make an orator of Foy whowas only a soldier. Foy falls at Hougomont and raises himself in thetribune. Such is the process of progress, and that workman has no badtools: it fits to its divine work the man who bestrode the Alps and theold tottering patient of Père Élysée, and it employs both the gouty manand the conqueror,--the conqueror externally, the gouty man at home.Waterloo, by cutting short the demolition of thrones by the sword, hadno other effect than to continue the revolutionary work on anotherside. The sabres have finished, and the turn of the thinkers arrives;the age which Waterloo wished to arrest marched over it, and continuedits route, and this sinister victory was gained by liberty.
Still it is incontestable that what triumphed at Waterloo; what smiledbehind Wellington; what procured him all the marshals' staffs ofEurope, including, by the way, that of Marshal of France; what rolledalong joyously the wheelbarrows of earth mingled with bones to erectthe foundation for the lion, on whose pedestal is inscribed the dateJune 18, 1815; what encouraged Blücher in cutting down the routed army;and what from the plateau of Mont St. Jean hovered over France like aprey,--was the counter-revolution. It is the counter-revolution thatmuttered the hideous word "Dismemberment"; but on reaching Paris it hada close view of the crater, it felt that the ashes burned its feet, andit reflected. It went back to the job of stammering a charter.
Let us only see in Waterloo what there really is in it. There is nointentional liberty, for the counter-revolution was involuntarilyliberal in the same way as Napoleon, through a correspondingphenomenon, was involuntarily a Revolutionist. On June 18, 1815,Robespierre on horseback was thrown.
