WATERLOO[A]

[Footnote A:  From “Les Miserables.”  Translated by Lascelles Wraxall.]

BY VICTOR HUGO

The battle of Waterloo is an enigma as obscure for those who gained it as for him who lost it.  To Napoleon it is a panic; Bluecher sees nothing in it but fire; Wellington does not understand it at all.  Look at the reports; the bulletins are confused; the commentaries are entangled; the latter stammer, the former stutter.

Jomini divides the battle of Waterloo into four moments; Muffing cuts it into three acts; Charras, altho we do not entirely agree with him in all his appreciations, has alone caught with his haughty eye the characteristic lineaments of this catastrophe of human genius contending with divine chance.  All the other historians suffer from a certain bedazzlement in which they grope about.  It was a flashing day, in truth the overthrow of the military monarchy which, to the great stupor of the kings, has dragged down all kingdoms, the downfall of strength and the rout of war....

In this event, which bears the stamp of superhuman necessity, men play but a small part; but if we take Waterloo from Wellington and Bluecher, does that deprive England and Germany of anything?  No.  Neither illustrious England nor august Germany is in question in the problem of Waterloo, for, thank heaven! nations are great without the mournful achievements of the sword.  Neither Germany, nor England, nor France is held in a scabbard; at this day when Waterloo is only a clash of sabers, Germany has Goethe above Bluecher, and England has Byron above Wellington.  A mighty dawn of ideas is peculiar to our age; and in this dawn England and Germany have their own magnificent flash.  They are majestic because they think; the high level they bring to civilization is intrinsic to them; it comes from themselves, and not from an accident.  Any aggrandizement the nineteenth century may have can not boast of Waterloo as its fountainhead; for only barbarous nations grow suddenly after a victory—­it is the transient vanity of torrents swollen by a storm.  Civilized nations, especially at the present day, are not elevated or debased by the good or evil fortune of a captain, and their specific weight in the human family results from something more than a battle.  Their honor, dignity, enlightenment, and genius are not numbers which those gamblers, heroes and conquerors, can stake in the lottery of battles.  Very often a battle lost is progress gained, and less of glory, more of liberty.  The drummer is silent and reason speaks; it is the game of who loses wins.  Let us, then, speak of Waterloo coldly from both sides, and render to chance the things that belong to chance, and to God what is God’s.  What is Waterloo—­a victory?  No; a prize in the lottery, won by Europe, and paid by France; it was hardly worth while erecting a lion for it.