by Victor Hugo
To sum up, it is beyond question that the victor at Waterloo, the power behind Wellington which brought to his aid every field-marshal's baton in Europe (including, it is said, that of the Marechal de France), which inspired the building of that mound of earth and bones on which was set the lion triumphant, which urged Blucher on to sabre the fleeing army, and which from the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean hung over France like a bird of prey, this power was the counter-revolution. This was the power that murmured the infamous word 'dismemberment': but then, arrived at Paris, seeing the crater at its feet and realizing its peril, counter-revolution hastily revised its views and fell back upon babble about a charter.
We must read into Waterloo no more than it truly represented. There was no intention of liberty. The counter-revolution involuntarily turned liberal just as Napoleon, by a parallel phenomenon, involuntarily turned revolutionary. On 18 June 1815, that Robespierre-on-horseback was unseated.
Revival of divine right
Dictatorship was ended, and with it a European system collapsed.
The Napoleonic empire dissolved in a darkness resembling the last days of Rome, and chaos loomed as in the time of the barbarians. But the barbarism of 1815, which must be called by its proper name of counter-revolution, was short-winded and soon stopped for lack of breath. The Empire, be it said, was mourned; tears were shed for it by heroic eyes. If glory be the sword turned sceptre, then the Empire was the embodiment of glory. It had diffused all the light that tyranny can shed, a sombre light, and worse, an obscure light which, compared with the true light of day, is darkness; and the ending of this darkness was like the ending of an eclipse.
Louis XVIII returned to Paris, and the dancing in the streets on 8 July effaced the enthusiasm of 20 March. The exile was back on the throne, a white banner flew from the Tuileries and the pinewood table from Hartwell was placed in front of the fleur-de-lis-embroidered chair of Louis XIV. Bouvines and Fontenoy were the happenings of yesterday, while Austerlitz had faded from sight. Altar and throne majestically clasped hands, and one of the least contested forms of nineteenth-century social health became established in France and throughout the Continent. Europe adopted the white cockade. The device non pluribus impar, 'not least among the many', reappeared in the stone sunburst decorating the barracks on the Quai d'Orsay. The Arc du Carrousel, with its tale of ill-famed victories, uncomfortable amid so much novelty and perhaps a little ashamed of Marengo and Arcola, saved its face with a statue of the Duc d'Angouleme. The cemetery of the Madeleine, the public graveyard in 1793, was covered over with marble and jasper, since within its dust lay the bones of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. A funeral monument rose amid the ramparts of Vincennes to commemorate the fact that the Duc d'Enghien had died in the month in which Napoleon had been crowned. Pope Pius VII, who had performed the ceremony, blessed the downfall as serenely as he had blessed the coronation. In the Palace of Schonbrunn, outside Vienna, there lingered the shadowy figure of a four-year-old boy whom it was seditious to refer to as the King of Rome. And all this happened - the kings returned to their thrones, the master of Europe was caged, the ancien regime became the new regime, and all the darkness and light in the world changed places - because on a summer afternoon a shepherd had said to a Prussian general in a wood, 'Go this way and not that way.'
That autumn of 1815 was like a melancholy spring. Old, poisonous realities changed their outward appearance, lies were wedded to the year 1789, divine right hid behind a charter, fictions became legal truths, prejudice, superstition, and moral dishonesty, taking Article 14 to heart, acquired the gloss of liberalism, all snakes sloughed their skins.
The stature of mankind had been at once heightened and diminished by Napoleon. The ideal, in that reign of splendid materialism, was given the strange name of ideology, a grave miscalculation on the part of the great man, making a mock of the future. But the people, that cannon-fodder that so loved the gunner, sought him everywhere. Where was he and what was he doing? 'Napoleon is dead,' a man shouted to a crippled survivor of Marengo and Waterloo ... 'Him dead!' the soldier shouted back. 'That's how well you know him!' Imagination deified the fallen despot and for a long time after Waterloo the heart of Europe was overcast in the enormous emptiness left by his passing.
The kings took it upon themselves to fill this vacuum, and Europe used it for its own re-shaping. The Belle Alliance before Waterloo became the Holy Alliance.
Confronted by this reorganization of ancient Europe, the outlines of a new France began to emerge. The future which the Emperor had mocked made its appearance, bearing on its forehead the star of Liberty. Young eyes looked ardently towards it, but, a strange paradox, they were in love both with the future, which was Liberty, and with the past, which was Napoleon. The defeated gained stature in defeat and Bonaparte fallen appeared greater than Napoleon erect. England placed him in the charge of Hudston Lowe and France appointed Montchenu to keep an eye on him. His folded arms were the terror of thrones, and Alexander called him, 'My sleepless nights.' This fear was due to the force of revolution that was in him, and it explains and justifies Bonapartist liberalism. The exiled spirit still shook the old world and the kings reigned uneasily, seeing the rock of St Helena on the skyline.
That was Waterloo.
But in the eye of eternity what did it amount to? Tempest and thunder-cloud, the war and then the peace, not all that turmoil could for an instant trouble the gaze of the immense all-seeing eye wherein a grasshopper jumping from one blade of grass to the next equals the flight of an eagle between the towers of Notre-Dame.
The battlefield at night
Our story requires us to return to the battlefield.
The 18th of June 1815 was a night of full moon. The light favoured Blucher's savage pursuit of the routed army, disclosing the paths of its flight, putting the demoralized troops at the mercy of the ferocious Prussian cavalry and assisting the massacre; thus does night sometimes lend its countenance to disaster.
With the firing of the last shot the plain of Mont-Saint-Jean became deserted. The English moved into the French encampments, it being by custom an assertion of victory to sleep in the bed of the defeated. They set up their bivouacs beyond Rossomme. The Prussians careered onward on the heels of the retreat. Wellington sat down in the village of Waterloo to write his report to Lord Bathurst.
Never has the Virgilian sic vos non vobis* been more applicable than it is to that village of Waterloo, which was a couple of miles distant from the scene of operations. Mont-Saint-Jean was bombarded; Hougomont, Papelotte, and Planchenoit were set afire; La-Haie-Sainte was carried by assault and La-Belle-Alliance was the meeting place of the victorious armies. Those names are scarcely remembered, whereas Waterloo, which played no part in the battle, has reaped all the glory.
We are not among those who sing the praises of war; we tell the truth about it when the need arises. War has tragic splendours which we have not sought to conceal, but it also has its especial squalors, among which is the prompt stripping of the bodies of the dead. The day following a battle always dawns on naked corpses.
Who are the despoilers, the tarnishers of victory, the furtive hands ransacking the pockets of glory? Certain philosophers, Voltaire among them, maintain that they are precisely the men who created the glory. The same men. The living rob the fallen; the hero of the day becomes the scavenger of the night; and surely he is entitled to do so, since he is responsible for the corpse he robs.
For our part, we do not believe it. We find it inconceivable that the same hands can gather laurels and drag the boots off the feet of the dead. True though it is that the victor is normally followed by the ghoul, we acquit the soldier, and especially the present-day, soldier, of this charge.
Every army has its camp-followers and it is to these that we must look, to the bat-like creatures, half-ruffian, half-servant, engendered by the twilight of war, wearers of uniform who do no fighting, malingerers, venomous cripples, sutlers riding in small carts, sometimes with their women, who s
teal what later they sell, beggars offering their services as guides, rogues and vagabonds of all kinds. These were what every army in the past - we do not speak of the present day - dragged in its train. No army and no country owned them; they spoke Italian and followed the Germans, or French and followed the English. Looting was born of looting. The abominable maxim 'live on the enemy' fostered the disease, which only strict discipline could quell. Certain military reputations are misleading; there are generals, even great ones, whose popularity it is not easy to account for. Turenne was adored by his men because he tolerated looting; evil condoned wears the mask of benevolence. The number of pillagers following in the wake of an army varied according to the severity of the commander. Hoche and Marceau had none; Wellington - we gladly do him that justice - had very few.
Nevertheless, the bodies of the dead were robbed during that night of 18-19 June. Wellington was uncompromising: any person caught in the act was to be shot forthwith. The looters preyed on one end of the battlefield while they were being executed at the other.
The moon shed a sinister light over the plain.
BOCCACCIO * Mrs Rosie and the Priest
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS * As kingfishers catch fire
The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue
THOMAS DE QUINCEY * On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE * Aphorisms on Love and Hate
JOHN RUSKIN * Traffic
PU SONGLING * Wailing Ghosts
JONATHAN SWIFT * A Modest Proposal
Three Tang Dynasty Poets
WALT WHITMAN * On the Beach at Night Alone
KENKO * A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees
BALTASAR GRACIAN * How to Use Your Enemies
JOHN KEATS * The Eve of St Agnes
THOMAS HARDY * Woman much missed
GUY DE MAUPASSANT * Femme Fatale
MARCO POLO * Travels in the Land of Serpents and Pearls
SUETONIUS * Caligula
APOLLONIUS OF RHODES * Jason and Medea
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON * Olalla
KARL MARX AND FRIEDRICH ENGELS * The Communist Manifesto
PETRONIUS * Trimalchio's Feast
JOHANN PETER HEBEL * How a Ghastly Story Was Brought to Light by a Common or Garden Butcher's Dog
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN * The Tinder Box
RUDYARD KIPLING * The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows
DANTE * Circles of Hell
HENRY MAYHEW * Of Street Piemen
HAFEZ * The nightingales are drunk
GEOFFREY CHAUCER * The Wife of Bath
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE * How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing
THOMAS NASHE * The Terrors of the Night
EDGAR ALLAN POE * The Tell-Tale Heart
MARY KINGSLEY * A Hippo Banquet
JANE AUSTEN * The Beautifull Cassandra
ANTON CHEKHOV * Gooseberries
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE * Well, they are gone, and here must I remain
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE * Sketchy, Doubtful, Incomplete Jottings
CHARLES DICKENS * The Great Winglebury Duel
HERMAN MELVILLE * The Maldive Shark
ELIZABETH GASKELL * The Old Nurse's Story
NIKOLAY LESKOV * The Steel Flea
HONORE DE BALZAC * The Atheist's Mass
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN * The Yellow Wall-Paper
C. P. CAVAFY * Remember, Body ...
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY * The Meek One
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT * A Simple Heart
NIKOLAI GOGOL * The Nose
SAMUEL PEPYS * The Great Fire of London
EDITH WHARTON * The Reckoning
HENRY JAMES * The Figure in the Carpet
WILFRED OWEN * Anthem For Doomed Youth
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART * My Dearest Father
PLATO * Socrates' Defence
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI * Goblin Market
Sindbad the Sailor
SOPHOCLES * Antigone
RYUNOSUKE AKUTAGAWA * The Life of a Stupid Man
LEO TOLSTOY * How Much Land Does A Man Need?
GIORGIO VASARI * Leonardo da Vinci
OSCAR WILDE * Lord Arthur Savile's Crime
SHEN FU * The Old Man of the Moon
AESOP * The Dolphins, the Whales and the Gudgeon
MATSUO BASHO * Lips too Chilled
EMILY BRONTE * The Night is Darkening Round Me
JOSEPH CONRAD * To-morrow
RICHARD HAKLUYT * The Voyage of Sir Francis Drake Around the Whole Globe
KATE CHOPIN * A Pair of Silk Stockings
CHARLES DARWIN * It was snowing butterflies
BROTHERS GRIMM * The Robber Bridegroom
CATULLUS * I Hate and I Love
HOMER * Circe and the Cyclops
D. H. LAWRENCE * Il Duro
KATHERINE MANSFIELD * Miss Brill
OVID * The Fall of Icarus
SAPPHO * Come Close
IVAN TURGENEV * Kasyan from the Beautiful Lands
VIRGIL * O Cruel Alexis
H. G. WELLS * A Slip under the Microscope
HERODOTUS * The Madness of Cambyses
Speaking of Siva
The Dhammapada
JANE AUSTEN * Lady Susan
JEAN-JACQUES ROSSEAU * The Body Politic
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE * The World is Full of Foolish Men
H. G. WELLS * The Sea Raiders
LIVY * Hannibal
CHARLES DICKENS * To Be Read at Dusk
LEO TOLSTOY * The Death of Ivan Ilyich
MARK TWAIN * The Stolen White Elephant
WILLIAM BLAKE * Tyger, Tyger
SHERIDAN LE FANU * Green Tea
The Yellow Book
OLAUDAH EQUIANO * Kidnapped
EDGAR ALLAN POE * A Modern Detective
The Suffragettes
MARGERY KEMPE * How To Be a Medieval Woman
JOSEPH CONRAD * Typhoon
GIACOMO CASANOVA * The Nun of Murano
W. B. YEATS * A terrible beauty is born
THOMAS HARDY * The Withered Arm
EDWARD LEAR * Nonsense
ARISTOPHANES * The Frogs
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE * Why I Am so Clever
RAINER MARIA RILKE * Letters to a Young Poet
LEONID ANDREYEV * Seven Hanged
APHRA BEHN * Oroonoko
LEWIS CARROLL * O frabjous day!
JOHN GAY * Trivia: or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London
E. T. A. HOFFMANN * The Sandman
DANTE * Love that moves the sun and other stars
ALEXANDER PUSHKIN * The Queen of Spades
ANTON CHEKHOV * A Nervous Breakdown
KAKUZO OKAKURA * The Book of Tea
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE * Is this a dagger which I see before me?
EMILY DICKINSON * My life had stood a loaded gun
LONGUS * Daphnis and Chloe
MARY SHELLEY * Matilda
GEORGE ELIOT * The Lifted Veil
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY * White Nights
OSCAR WILDE * Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast
VIRGINIA WOOLF * Flush
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE * Lot No. 249
The Rule of Benedict
WASHINGTON IRVING * Rip Van Winkle
Anecdotes of the Cynics
VICTOR HUGO * Waterloo
CHARLOTTE BRONTE * Stancliffe's Hotel
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THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN CLASSICS
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in Classics is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
This selection first published in Penguin Classics 2016
Translation copyright (c) Norman Denny, 1976
The moral right of the translator has been asserted ISBN: 978-0-241-25184-3
* This has been questioned. It seems that Grouchy may have misread Napoleon's dispatch.
* These words have been authenticated. Ney was executed on 7 October 1815, having been condemned to death by the French Chamber.
* Taken from the tenth Satire of Juvenal, referring specifically to Hannibal. Lit. 'How much does the General weigh?'
* Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes - thus do you make honey, but not for yourselves, O bees.
