Napoleon Flees the Battlefield at Waterloo

Today’s installment concludes The Battle of Waterloo,
the name of our combined selection from Wolfgang Menzel, William Siborne, and Victor Hugo. The concluding installment, by Victor Hugo from Les Miserables, was published in 1862.

If you have journeyed through all of the installments of this series, just one more to go and you will have completed selections from the great works of ten thousand words. Congratulations! For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in The Battle of Waterloo.

Time: 1815
Place: Waterloo Crossroads, 9 miles south of Brussels

The red regiment of English guards, which had been lying down behind the hedges, rose; a storm of canister rent the tricolor flag waving above the heads of the French; all rushed forward and the supreme carnage began. The Imperial Guard felt in the darkness the army giving way around them and the vast staggering of the rout: they heard the cry of “Sauve qui peut!” substituted for the “Vive l’Empereur!” and with flight behind them they continued to advance, hundreds falling at every step they took. None hesitated or evinced timidity; the privates were as heroic as the generals and not one attempted to escape suicide.

Ney, wild and grand in the consciousness of accepted death, offered himself to every blow in this combat. He had his fifth horse killed under him here. Bathed in perspiration, with a flame in his eye and foam on his lips, his uniform unbuttoned, one of his epaulettes half cut through by the saber of a horse guard and his decoration of the great eagle dinted by a bullet — bleeding, muddy, magnificent and holding a broken sword in his hand, he shouted, “Come and see how a marshal of France dies on the battlefield!” But it was in vain, he did not die. He was haggard and indignant and hurled at Dronet d’Erlon the question, “Are you not going to get yourself killed?” He yelled amid the roar of all this artillery, crushing a handful of men, “Oh, there is nothing for me! I should like all these English cannon-balls to enter my chest!” You were reserved for French bullets, unfortunate man.

The rout in the rear of the guard was mournful; the army suddenly gave way on all sides simultaneously, at Hougomont, La Haye Sainte, Papelotte and at Planchenoit. The cry of “Treachery!” was followed by that of “Sauve qui peutl” An army that disbands is like a thaw — all gives way, cracks, floats, rolls, falls, comes into collision and dashes forward. Ney borrows a horse, leaps on it and without hat, stock, or sword, dashes across the Brussels road, stopping at once English and French. He tries to hold back the army, he recalls it, he insults it, he clings wildly to the rout to hold it back. The soldiers fly from him, shouting, “Long live Marshal Ney!” Two regiments of Durotte’s move backward and forward in terror and as it were tossed between the sabers of the hussars and the musketry fire of Kemp’s, Best’s and Pack’s brigades. A rout is the highest of all confusions, for friends kill one another in order to escape and squadrons and battalions dash against and destroy each other. Lobau at one extremity and Reille at the other are carried away by the torrent.

In vain does Napoleon build a wall of what is left of the guard; in vain does he expend his own social squadrons in a final effort. Quiot retires before Vivian, Kellermann before Vandeleur, Lobau before Buelow, Moraud before Pirch and Domor and Subervie before Prince William of Prussia. Guyot, who led the Emperor’s squadrons to the charge, falls beneath the horses of English dragoons. Napoleon gallops along the line of fugitives, harangues, urges, threatens and implores them; all the mouths that shouted “Long live the Emperor!” in the morning, remained wide open; they hardly knew him. The Prussian cavalry, who had come up fresh, dash forward, cut down, kill and exterminate. The artillery horses dash forward with the guns; the train soldiers unharness the horses from the caissons and escape on them; wagons overthrown and with their four wheels in the air, block up the road and supply opportunities for massacre. Men crush one another and trample over the dead and over the living. A multitude wild with terror fill the roads, the paths, the bridges, the plains, the hills, the valleys and the woods, which are thronged by this flight of forty thousand men. Cries, desperation; knapsacks and muskets cast into the wheat; passages cut with the edge of the sabers; no comrades, no officers, no generals recognized — an indescribable terror. Zieten sabering France at his ease. The lions become kids. Such was this fight.

At Genappe an effort was made to turn and rally; Lobau collected three hundred men; the entrance of the village was barricaded, but at the first round of Prussian canister all began flying again and Lobau was made prisoner. The Prussians dashed into Genappe, doubtless furious at being such small victors and the pursuit was monstrous, for Blucher commanded extermination. Roguet had given the mournful example of threatening with death any French grenadier who brought in a Prussian prisoner and Blucher surpassed Roguet, Duchcsne, general of the Young Guard, who was pursued into the doorway of an inn in Genappe, surrendered his sword to a hussar of death, who took the sword and killed the prisoner. The victory was completed by the assassination of the vanquished. Let us punish as we are writing history — old Blucher dishonored himself. This ferocity set the seal on the disaster; the desperate rout passed through Genappe, passed through Quatre-Bras, passed through Sombrefle, passed through Frasnes, passed through Thuin, passed through Charleroi and only stopped at the frontier. Alas! and who was it flying in this way? The grand army.

Did this vertigo, this terror, this overthrow of the greatest bravery that ever astonished history, take place without a cause? No. The shadow of a mighty right hand is cast over Waterloo; it is the day of destiny and the force which is above man produced that day. Hence the terror, hence all those great souls laying down their swords. Those who had conquered Europe, fell crushed, having nothing more to say or do and feeling a terrible presence in the shadow.

At nightfall, Bernard and Bertrand seized by the skirt of his coat, in a field near Genappe, a haggard, thoughtful, gloomy man, who, carried so far by the current of the rout, had just dis mounted, passed the bridle over his arm and was now, with wandering eye, returning alone to Waterloo. It was Napoleon, the immense somnambulist of the shattered dream, still striving to advance.

This ends our selections on The Battle of Waterloo by three of the most important authorities on this topic:

• The History of Germany from the Earliest Period to the Present Time by Wolfgang Menzel published in 1852.
• History of the War in France and Belgium in 1815 by William Siborne published in 1844.
• Les Miserables by Victor Hugo published in 1862.

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More information on The Battle of Waterloo here and here and below.

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