Editing Volume 2/Book 1/Chapter 7

Les Mis&eacute;rables, Volume 2: Cosette, Book First: Waterloo, Chapter 7: Napoleon in a Good Humor<br />
(Tome 2: Cosette, Livre premier: Waterloo, Chapitre 7: Napol&eacute;on de belle humeur)

==General notes on this chapter==

==French text==

 
L'empereur, quoique malade et g&ecirc;n&eacute; &agrave; cheval par une souffrance locale,
n'avait jamais &eacute;t&eacute; de si bonne humeur que ce jour-l&agrave;. Depuis le matin,
son imp&eacute;n&eacute;trabilit&eacute; souriait. Le 18 juin 1815, cette &acirc;me profonde,
masqu&eacute;e de marbre, rayonnait aveugl&eacute;ment. L'homme qui avait &eacute;t&eacute; sombre &agrave;
Austerlitz fut gai &agrave; Waterloo. Les plus grands pr&eacute;destin&eacute;s font de ces
contre-sens. Nos joies sont de l'ombre. Le supr&ecirc;me sourire est &agrave; Dieu.

 
''Ridet Caesar, Pompeius flebit'', disaient les l&eacute;gionnaires de la l&eacute;gion
Fulminatrix. Pomp&eacute;e cette fois ne devait pas pleurer, mais il est
certain que C&eacute;sar riait.

 
D&egrave;s la veille, la nuit, &agrave; une heure, explorant &agrave; cheval, sous l'orage et
sous la pluie, avec Bertrand, les collines qui avoisinent Rossomme,
satisfait de voir la longue ligne des feux anglais illuminant tout
l'horizon de Frischemont &agrave; Braine-l'Alleud, il lui avait sembl&eacute; que le
destin, assign&eacute; par lui &agrave; jour fixe sur ce champ de Waterloo, &eacute;tait
exact; il avait arr&ecirc;t&eacute; son cheval, et &eacute;tait demeur&eacute; quelque temps
immobile, regardant les &eacute;clairs, &eacute;coutant le tonnerre, et on avait
entendu ce fataliste jeter dans l'ombre cette parole myst&eacute;rieuse: &laquo;Nous
sommes d'accord.&raquo; Napol&eacute;on se trompait. Ils n'&eacute;taient plus d'accord.

 
Il n'avait pas pris une minute de sommeil, tous les instants de cette
nuit-l&agrave; avaient &eacute;t&eacute; marqu&eacute;s pour lui par une joie. Il avait parcouru
toute la ligne des grand'gardes, en s'arr&ecirc;tent &ccedil;&agrave; et l&agrave; pour parler aux
vedettes. &Agrave; deux heures et demie, pr&egrave;s du bois d'Hougomont, il avait
entendu le pas d'une colonne en marche; il avait cru un moment &agrave; la
reculade de Wellington. Il avait dit &agrave; Bertrand: ''C'est l'arri&egrave;re-garde
anglaise qui s'&eacute;branle pour d&eacute;camper. Je ferai prisonniers les six mille
Anglais qui viennent d'arriver &agrave; Ostende''. Il causait avec expansion; il
avait retrouv&eacute; cette verve du d&eacute;barquement du 1er mars, quand il
montrait au grand-mar&eacute;chal le paysan enthousiaste du golfe Juan, en
s'&eacute;criant:&mdash;''Eh bien, Bertrand, voil&agrave; d&eacute;j&agrave; du renfort!'' La nuit du 17
au 18 juin, il raillait Wellington.&mdash;''Ce petit Anglais a besoin d'une
le&ccedil;on'', disait Napol&eacute;on. La pluie redoublait, il tonnait pendant que
l'empereur parlait.

 
&Agrave; trois heures et demie du matin, il avait perdu une illusion; des
officiers envoy&eacute;s en reconnaissance lui avaient annonc&eacute; que l'ennemi ne
faisait aucun mouvement. Rien ne bougeait; pas un feu de bivouac n'&eacute;tait
&eacute;teint. L'arm&eacute;e anglaise dormait. Le silence &eacute;tait profond sur la terre;
il n'y avait de bruit que dans le ciel. &Agrave; quatre heures, un paysan lui
avait &eacute;t&eacute; amen&eacute; par les coureurs; ce paysan avait servi de guide &agrave; une
brigade de cavalerie anglaise, probablement la brigade Vivian, qui
allait prendre position au village d'Ohain, &agrave; l'extr&ecirc;me gauche. &Agrave; cinq
heures, deux d&eacute;serteurs belges lui avaient rapport&eacute; qu'ils venaient de
quitter leur r&eacute;giment, et que l'arm&eacute;e anglaise attendait la bataille.
''Tant mieux!'' s'&eacute;tait &eacute;cri&eacute; Napol&eacute;on. ''J'aime encore mieux les culbuter
que les refouler''.

 
Le matin, sur la berge qui fait l'angle du chemin de Plancenoit, il
avait mis pied &agrave; terre dans la boue, s'&eacute;tait fait apporter de la ferme
de Rossomme une table de cuisine et une chaise de paysan, s'&eacute;tait assis,
avec une botte de paille pour tapis, et avait d&eacute;ploy&eacute; sur la table la
carte du champ de bataille, en disant &agrave; Soult: ''Joli &eacute;chiquier''!

 
Par suite des pluies de la nuit, les convois de vivres, emp&ecirc;tr&eacute;s dans
des routes d&eacute;fonc&eacute;es, n'avaient pu arriver le matin, le soldat n'avait
pas dormi, &eacute;tait mouill&eacute;, et &eacute;tait &agrave; jeun; cela n'avait pas emp&ecirc;ch&eacute;
Napol&eacute;on de crier all&eacute;grement &agrave; Ney: ''Nous avons quatre-vingt-dix
chances sur cent''. &Agrave; huit heures, on avait apport&eacute; le d&eacute;jeuner de
l'empereur. Il y avait invit&eacute; plusieurs g&eacute;n&eacute;raux. Tout en d&eacute;jeunant, on
avait racont&eacute; que Wellington &eacute;tait l'avant-veille au bal &agrave; Bruxelles,
chez la duchesse de Richmond, et Soult, rude homme de guerre avec une
figure d'archev&ecirc;que, avait dit: ''Le bal, c'est aujourd'hui''. L'empereur
avait plaisant&eacute; Ney qui disait: ''Wellington ne sera pas assez simple
pour attendre Votre Majest&eacute;''. C'&eacute;tait l&agrave; d'ailleurs sa mani&egrave;re. Il
badinait volontiers, dit Fleury de Chaboulon. ''Le fond de son caract&egrave;re
&eacute;tait une humeur enjou&eacute;e'', dit Gourgaud. ''Il abondait en plaisanteries,
plut&ocirc;t bizarres que spirituelles'', dit Benjamin Constant. Ces ga&icirc;t&eacute;s de
g&eacute;ant valent la peine qu'on y insiste. C'est lui qui avait appel&eacute; ses
grenadiers &laquo;les grognards&raquo;; il leur pin&ccedil;ait l'oreille, il leur tirait la
moustache. ''L'empereur ne faisait que nous faire des niches;'' ceci est
un mot de l'un d'eux. Pendant le myst&eacute;rieux trajet de l'&icirc;le d'Elbe en
France, le 27 f&eacute;vrier, en pleine mer, le brick de guerre fran&ccedil;ais le
''Z&eacute;phir'' ayant rencontr&eacute; le brick l'''Inconstant'' o&ugrave; Napol&eacute;on &eacute;tait cach&eacute;
et ayant demand&eacute; &agrave; l'''Inconstant'' des nouvelles de Napol&eacute;on, l'empereur,
qui avait encore en ce moment-l&agrave; &agrave; son chapeau la cocarde blanche et
amarante sem&eacute;e d'abeilles, adopt&eacute;e par lui &agrave; l'&icirc;le d'Elbe, avait pris en
riant le porte-voix et avait r&eacute;pondu lui-m&ecirc;me: ''L'empereur se porte
bien''. Qui rit de la sorte est en familiarit&eacute; avec les &eacute;v&eacute;nements.
Napol&eacute;on avait eu plusieurs acc&egrave;s de ce rire pendant le d&eacute;jeuner de
Waterloo. Apr&egrave;s le d&eacute;jeuner il s'&eacute;tait recueilli un quart d'heure, puis
deux g&eacute;n&eacute;raux s'&eacute;taient assis sur la botte de paille, une plume &agrave; la
main, une feuille de papier sur le genou, et l'empereur leur avait dict&eacute;
l'ordre de bataille.

 
&Agrave; neuf heures, &agrave; l'instant o&ugrave; l'arm&eacute;e fran&ccedil;aise, &eacute;chelonn&eacute;e et mise en
mouvement sur cinq colonnes, s'&eacute;tait d&eacute;ploy&eacute;e, les divisions sur deux
lignes, l'artillerie entre les brigades, musique en t&ecirc;te, battant aux
champs, avec les roulements des tambours et les sonneries des
trompettes, puissante, vaste, joyeuse, mer de casques, de sabres et de
bayonnettes sur l'ho-rizon, l'empereur, &eacute;mu, s'&eacute;tait &eacute;cri&eacute; &agrave; deux
reprises: ''Magnifique! magnifique!''

 
De neuf heures &agrave; dix heures et demie, toute l'arm&eacute;e, ce qui semble
incroyable, avait pris position et s'&eacute;tait rang&eacute;e sur six lignes,
formant, pour r&eacute;p&eacute;ter l'expression de l'empereur, &laquo;la figure de six V&raquo;.
Quelques instants apr&egrave;s la formation du front de bataille, au milieu de
ce profond silence de commencement d'orage qui pr&eacute;c&egrave;de les m&ecirc;l&eacute;es,
voyant d&eacute;filer les trois batteries de douze, d&eacute;tach&eacute;es sur son ordre des
trois corps de d'Erlon, de Reille et de Lobau, et destin&eacute;es &agrave; commencer
l'action en battant Mont-Saint-Jean o&ugrave; est l'intersection des routes de
Nivelles et de Genappe, l'empereur avait frapp&eacute; sur l'&eacute;paule de Haxo en
lui disant: ''Voil&agrave; vingt-quatre belles filles, g&eacute;n&eacute;ral''.

 
S&ucirc;r de l'issue, il avait encourag&eacute; d'un sourire, &agrave; son passage devant
lui, la compagnie de sapeurs du premier corps, d&eacute;sign&eacute;e par lui pour se
barricader dans Mont-Saint-Jean, sit&ocirc;t le village enlev&eacute;. Toute cette
s&eacute;r&eacute;nit&eacute; n'avait &eacute;t&eacute; travers&eacute;e que par un mot de piti&eacute; hautaine; en
voyant &agrave; sa gauche, &agrave; un endroit o&ugrave; il y a aujourd'hui une grande tombe,
se masser avec leurs chevaux superbes ces admirables &Eacute;cossais gris, il
avait dit: ''C'est dommage''.

 
Puis il &eacute;tait mont&eacute; &agrave; cheval, s'&eacute;tait port&eacute; en avant de Rossomme, et
avait choisi pour observatoire une &eacute;troite croupe de gazon &agrave; droite de
la route de Genappe &agrave; Bruxelles, qui fut sa seconde station pendant la
bataille. La troisi&egrave;me station, celle de sept heures du soir, entre la
Belle-Alliance et la Haie-Sainte, est redoutable; c'est un tertre assez
&eacute;lev&eacute; qui existe encore et derri&egrave;re lequel la garde &eacute;tait mass&eacute;e dans
une d&eacute;clivit&eacute; de la plaine. Autour de ce tertre, les boulets ricochaient
sur le pav&eacute; de la chauss&eacute;e jusqu'&agrave; Napol&eacute;on. Comme &agrave; Brienne, il avait
sur sa t&ecirc;te le sifflement des balles et des biscayens. On a ramass&eacute;,
presque &agrave; l'endroit o&ugrave; &eacute;taient les pieds de son cheval, des boulets
vermoulus, de vieilles lames de sabre et des projectiles informes,
mang&eacute;s de rouille. ''Scabra rubigine''. Il y a quelques ann&eacute;es, on y a
d&eacute;terr&eacute; un obus de soixante, encore charg&eacute;, dont la fus&eacute;e s'&eacute;tait bris&eacute;e
au ras de la bombe. C'est &agrave; cette derni&egrave;re station que l'empereur disait
&agrave; son guide Lacoste, paysan hostile, effar&eacute;, attach&eacute; &agrave; la selle d'un
hussard, se retournant &agrave; chaque paquet de mitraille, et t&acirc;chant de se
cacher derri&egrave;re lui:&mdash;''Imb&eacute;cile! c'est honteux, tu vas te faire tuer
dans le dos''. Celui qui &eacute;crit ces lignes, a trouv&eacute; lui-m&ecirc;me dans le
talus friable de ce tertre, en creusant le sable, les restes du col
d'une bombe d&eacute;sagr&eacute;g&eacute;s par l'oxyde de quarante-six ann&eacute;es, et de vieux
tron&ccedil;ons de fer qui cassaient comme des b&acirc;tons de sureau entre ses
doigts.

 
Les ondulations des plaines diversement inclin&eacute;es o&ugrave; eut lieu la
rencontre de Napol&eacute;on et de Wellington ne sont plus, personne ne
l'ignore, ce qu'elles &eacute;taient le 18 juin 1815. En prenant &agrave; ce champ
fun&egrave;bre de quoi lui faire un monument, on lui a &ocirc;t&eacute; son relief r&eacute;el, et
l'histoire, d&eacute;concert&eacute;e, ne s'y reconna&icirc;t plus. Pour le glorifier, on
l'a d&eacute;figur&eacute;. Wellington, deux ans apr&egrave;s, revoyant Waterloo, s'est
&eacute;cri&eacute;: ''On m'a chang&eacute; mon champ de bataille''. L&agrave; o&ugrave; est aujourd'hui la
grosse pyramide de terre surmont&eacute;e du lion, il y avait une cr&ecirc;te qui,
vers la route de Nivelles, s'abaissait en rampe praticable, mais qui, du
c&ocirc;t&eacute; de la chauss&eacute;e de Genappe, &eacute;tait presque un escarpement.
L'&eacute;l&eacute;vation de cet escarpement peut encore &ecirc;tre mesur&eacute;e aujourd'hui par
la hauteur des deux tertres des deux grandes s&eacute;pultures qui encaissent
la route de Genappe &agrave; Bruxelles; l'une, le tombeau anglais, &agrave; gauche;
l'autre, le tombeau allemand, &agrave; droite. Il n'y a point de tombeau
fran&ccedil;ais. Pour la France, toute cette plaine est s&eacute;pulcre. Gr&acirc;ce aux
mille et mille charret&eacute;es de terre employ&eacute;es &agrave; la butte de cent
cinquante pieds de haut et d'un demi-mille de circuit, le plateau de
Mont-Saint-Jean est aujourd'hui accessible en pente douce; le jour de la
bataille, surtout du c&ocirc;t&eacute; de la Haie-Sainte, il &eacute;tait d'un abord &acirc;pre et
abrupt. Le versant l&agrave; &eacute;tait si inclin&eacute; que les canons anglais ne
voyaient pas au-dessous d'eux la ferme situ&eacute;e au fond du vallon, centre
du combat. Le 18 juin 1815, les pluies avaient encore ravin&eacute; cette
roideur, la fange compliquait la mont&eacute;e, et non seulement on gravissait,
mais on s'embourbait. Le long de la cr&ecirc;te du plateau courait une sorte
de foss&eacute; impossible &agrave; deviner pour un observateur lointain.

 
Qu'&eacute;tait-ce que ce foss&eacute;? Disons-le. Braine-l'Alleud est un village de
Belgique, Ohain en est un autre. Ces villages, cach&eacute;s tous les deux dans
des courbes de terrain, sont joints par un chemin d'une lieue et demie
environ qui traverse une plaine &agrave; niveau ondulant, et souvent entre et
s'enfonce dans des collines comme un sillon, ce qui fait que sur divers
points cette route est un ravin. En 1815, comme aujourd'hui, cette route
coupait la cr&ecirc;te du plateau de Mont-Saint-Jean entre les deux chauss&eacute;es
de Genappe et de Nivelles; seulement, elle est aujourd'hui de plain-pied
avec la plaine; elle &eacute;tait alors chemin creux. On lui a pris ses deux
talus pour la butte-monument. Cette route &eacute;tait et est encore une
tranch&eacute;e dans la plus grande partie de son parcours; tranch&eacute;e creuse
quelquefois d'une douzaine de pieds et dont les talus trop escarp&eacute;s
s'&eacute;croulaient &ccedil;&agrave; et l&agrave;, surtout en hiver, sous les averses. Des
accidents y arrivaient. La route &eacute;tait si &eacute;troite &agrave; l'entr&eacute;e de
Braine-l'Alleud qu'un passant y avait &eacute;t&eacute; broy&eacute; par un chariot, comme le
constate une croix de pierre debout pr&egrave;s du cimeti&egrave;re qui donne le nom
du mort, ''Monsieur Bernard Debrye, marchand &agrave; Bruxelles'', et la date de
l'accident, ''f&eacute;vrier 1637 ''. Elle &eacute;tait si profonde sur le plateau du
Mont-Saint-Jean qu'un paysan, Mathieu Nicaise, y avait &eacute;t&eacute; &eacute;cras&eacute; en
1783 par un &eacute;boulement du talus, comme le constatait une autre croix de
pierre dont le fa&icirc;te a disparu dans les d&eacute;frichements, mais dont le
pi&eacute;destal renvers&eacute; est encore visible aujourd'hui sur la pente du gazon
&agrave; gauche de la chauss&eacute;e entre la Haie-Sainte et la ferme de
Mont-Saint-Jean.

 
Un jour de bataille, ce chemin creux dont rien n'avertissait, bordant la
cr&ecirc;te de Mont-Saint-Jean, foss&eacute; au sommet de l'es-carpement, orni&egrave;re
cach&eacute;e dans les terres, &eacute;tait invisible, c'est-&agrave;-dire terrible.

 

==English text==

 
The Emperor, though ill and discommoded on horseback by a local trouble,
had never been in a better humor than on that day. His impenetrability had
been smiling ever since the morning. On the 18th of June, that profound
soul masked by marble beamed blindly. The man who had been gloomy at
Austerlitz was gay at Waterloo. The greatest favorites of destiny make
mistakes. Our joys are composed of shadow. The supreme smile is God's
alone.

 
Ridet Caesar, Pompeius flebit, said the legionaries of the Fulminatrix
Legion. Pompey was not destined to weep on that occasion, but it is
certain that Caesar laughed. While exploring on horseback at one o'clock
on the preceding night, in storm and rain, in company with Bertrand, the
communes in the neighborhood of Rossomme, satisfied at the sight of the
long line of the English camp-fires illuminating the whole horizon from
Frischemont to Braine-l'Alleud, it had seemed to him that fate, to whom he
had assigned a day on the field of Waterloo, was exact to the appointment;
he stopped his horse, and remained for some time motionless, gazing at the
lightning and listening to the thunder; and this fatalist was heard to
cast into the darkness this mysterious saying, "We are in accord."
Napoleon was mistaken. They were no longer in accord.

 
He took not a moment for sleep; every instant of that night was marked by
a joy for him. He traversed the line of the principal outposts, halting
here and there to talk to the sentinels. At half-past two, near the wood
of Hougomont, he heard the tread of a column on the march; he thought at
the moment that it was a retreat on the part of Wellington. He said: "It
is the rear-guard of the English getting under way for the purpose of
decamping. I will take prisoners the six thousand English who have just
arrived at Ostend." He conversed expansively; he regained the animation
which he had shown at his landing on the first of March, when he pointed
out to the Grand-Marshal the enthusiastic peasant of the Gulf Juan, and
cried, "Well, Bertrand, here is a reinforcement already!" On the night of
the 17th to the 18th of June he rallied Wellington. "That little
Englishman needs a lesson," said Napoleon. The rain redoubled in violence;
the thunder rolled while the Emperor was speaking.

 
At half-past three o'clock in the morning, he lost one illusion; officers
who had been despatched to reconnoitre announced to him that the enemy was
not making any movement. Nothing was stirring; not a bivouac-fire had been
extinguished; the English army was asleep. The silence on earth was
profound; the only noise was in the heavens. At four o'clock, a peasant
was brought in to him by the scouts; this peasant had served as guide to a
brigade of English cavalry, probably Vivian's brigade, which was on its
way to take up a position in the village of Ohain, at the extreme left. At
five o'clock, two Belgian deserters reported to him that they had just
quitted their regiment, and that the English army was ready for battle.
"So much the better!" exclaimed Napoleon. "I prefer to overthrow them
rather than to drive them back."

 
In the morning he dismounted in the mud on the slope which forms an angle
with the Plancenoit road, had a kitchen table and a peasant's chair
brought to him from the farm of Rossomme, seated himself, with a truss of
straw for a carpet, and spread out on the table the chart of the
battle-field, saying to Soult as he did so, "A pretty checker-board."

 
In consequence of the rains during the night, the transports of
provisions, embedded in the soft roads, had not been able to arrive by
morning; the soldiers had had no sleep; they were wet and fasting. This
did not prevent Napoleon from exclaiming cheerfully to Ney, "We have
ninety chances out of a hundred." At eight o'clock the Emperor's breakfast
was brought to him. He invited many generals to it. During breakfast, it
was said that Wellington had been to a ball two nights before, in
Brussels, at the Duchess of Richmond's; and Soult, a rough man of war,
with a face of an archbishop, said, "The ball takes place to-day." The
Emperor jested with Ney, who said, "Wellington will not be so simple as to
wait for Your Majesty." That was his way, however. "He was fond of
jesting," says Fleury de Chaboulon. "A merry humor was at the foundation
of his character," says Gourgaud. "He abounded in pleasantries, which were
more peculiar than witty," says Benjamin Constant. These gayeties of a
giant are worthy of insistence. It was he who called his grenadiers "his
grumblers"; he pinched their ears; he pulled their mustaches. "The Emperor
did nothing but play pranks on us," is the remark of one of them. During
the mysterious trip from the island of Elba to France, on the 27th of
February, on the open sea, the French brig of war, Le Zephyr, having
encountered the brig L'Inconstant, on which Napoleon was concealed, and
having asked the news of Napoleon from L'Inconstant, the Emperor, who
still wore in his hat the white and amaranthine cockade sown with bees,
which he had adopted at the isle of Elba, laughingly seized the
speaking-trumpet, and answered for himself, "The Emperor is well." A man
who laughs like that is on familiar terms with events. Napoleon indulged
in many fits of this laughter during the breakfast at Waterloo. After
breakfast he meditated for a quarter of an hour; then two generals seated
themselves on the truss of straw, pen in hand and their paper on their
knees, and the Emperor dictated to them the order of battle.

 
At nine o'clock, at the instant when the French army, ranged in echelons
and set in motion in five columns, had deployed&mdash;the divisions in two
lines, the artillery between the brigades, the music at their head; as
they beat the march, with rolls on the drums and the blasts of trumpets,
mighty, vast, joyous, a sea of casques, of sabres, and of bayonets on the
horizon, the Emperor was touched, and twice exclaimed, "Magnificent!
Magnificent!"

 
Between nine o'clock and half-past ten the whole army, incredible as it
may appear, had taken up its position and ranged itself in six lines,
forming, to repeat the Emperor's expression, "the figure of six V's." A
few moments after the formation of the battle-array, in the midst of that
profound silence, like that which heralds the beginning of a storm, which
precedes engagements, the Emperor tapped Haxo on the shoulder, as he
beheld the three batteries of twelve-pounders, detached by his orders from
the corps of Erlon, Reille, and Lobau, and destined to begin the action by
taking Mont-Saint-Jean, which was situated at the intersection of the
Nivelles and the Genappe roads, and said to him, "There are four and
twenty handsome maids, General."

 
Sure of the issue, he encouraged with a smile, as they passed before him,
the company of sappers of the first corps, which he had appointed to
barricade Mont-Saint-Jean as soon as the village should be carried. All
this serenity had been traversed by but a single word of haughty pity;
perceiving on his left, at a spot where there now stands a large tomb,
those admirable Scotch Grays, with their superb horses, massing
themselves, he said, "It is a pity."

 
Then he mounted his horse, advanced beyond Rossomme, and selected for his
post of observation a contracted elevation of turf to the right of the
road from Genappe to Brussels, which was his second station during the
battle. The third station, the one adopted at seven o'clock in the
evening, between La Belle-Alliance and La Haie-Sainte, is formidable; it
is a rather elevated knoll, which still exists, and behind which the guard
was massed on a slope of the plain. Around this knoll the balls rebounded
from the pavements of the road, up to Napoleon himself. As at Brienne, he
had over his head the shriek of the bullets and of the heavy artillery.
Mouldy cannon-balls, old sword-blades, and shapeless projectiles, eaten up
with rust, were picked up at the spot where his horse' feet stood. Scabra
rubigine. A few years ago, a shell of sixty pounds, still charged, and
with its fuse broken off level with the bomb, was unearthed. It was at
this last post that the Emperor said to his guide, Lacoste, a hostile and
terrified peasant, who was attached to the saddle of a hussar, and who
turned round at every discharge of canister and tried to hide behind
Napoleon: "Fool, it is shameful! You'll get yourself killed with a ball in
the back." He who writes these lines has himself found, in the friable
soil of this knoll, on turning over the sand, the remains of the neck of a
bomb, disintegrated, by the oxidization of six and forty years, and old
fragments of iron which parted like elder-twigs between the fingers.

 
Every one is aware that the variously inclined undulations of the plains,
where the engagement between Napoleon and Wellington took place, are no
longer what they were on June 18, 1815. By taking from this mournful field
the wherewithal to make a monument to it, its real relief has been taken
away, and history, disconcerted, no longer finds her bearings there. It
has been disfigured for the sake of glorifying it. Wellington, when he
beheld Waterloo once more, two years later, exclaimed, "They have altered
my field of battle!" Where the great pyramid of earth, surmounted by the
lion, rises to-day, there was a hillock which descended in an easy slope
towards the Nivelles road, but which was almost an escarpment on the side
of the highway to Genappe. The elevation of this escarpment can still be
measured by the height of the two knolls of the two great sepulchres which
enclose the road from Genappe to Brussels: one, the English tomb, is on
the left; the other, the German tomb, is on the right. There is no French
tomb. The whole of that plain is a sepulchre for France. Thanks to the
thousands upon thousands of cartloads of earth employed in the hillock one
hundred and fifty feet in height and half a mile in circumference, the
plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean is now accessible by an easy slope. On the day
of battle, particularly on the side of La Haie-Sainte, it was abrupt and
difficult of approach. The slope there is so steep that the English cannon
could not see the farm, situated in the bottom of the valley, which was
the centre of the combat. On the 18th of June, 1815, the rains had still
farther increased this acclivity, the mud complicated the problem of the
ascent, and the men not only slipped back, but stuck fast in the mire.
Along the crest of the plateau ran a sort of trench whose presence it was
impossible for the distant observer to divine.

 
What was this trench? Let us explain. Braine-l'Alleud is a Belgian
village; Ohain is another. These villages, both of them concealed in
curves of the landscape, are connected by a road about a league and a half
in length, which traverses the plain along its undulating level, and often
enters and buries itself in the hills like a furrow, which makes a ravine
of this road in some places. In 1815, as at the present day, this road cut
the crest of the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean between the two highways from
Genappe and Nivelles; only, it is now on a level with the plain; it was
then a hollow way. Its two slopes have been appropriated for the
monumental hillock. This road was, and still is, a trench throughout the
greater portion of its course; a hollow trench, sometimes a dozen feet in
depth, and whose banks, being too steep, crumbled away here and there,
particularly in winter, under driving rains. Accidents happened here. The
road was so narrow at the Braine-l'Alleud entrance that a passer-by was
crushed by a cart, as is proved by a stone cross which stands near the
cemetery, and which gives the name of the dead, Monsieur Bernard Debrye,
Merchant of Brussels, and the date of the accident, February, 1637.[[8]] It was so
deep on the table-land of Mont-Saint-Jean that a peasant, Mathieu Nicaise,
was crushed there, in 1783, by a slide from the slope, as is stated on
another stone cross, the top of which has disappeared in the process of
clearing the ground, but whose overturned pedestal is still visible on the
grassy slope to the left of the highway between La Haie-Sainte and the
farm of Mont-Saint-Jean.

 
On the day of battle, this hollow road whose existence was in no way
indicated, bordering the crest of Mont-Saint-Jean, a trench at the summit
of the escarpment, a rut concealed in the soil, was invisible; that is to
say, terrible.



==Translation notes==

==Textual notes==

==Citations==
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