What does the gloomy pile of bones buried in the trenches of Waterloo think of this?  England has been too modest to herself in her treatment of Wellington, for making him so great is making herself small.  Wellington is merely a hero, like any other man.  The Scots Grays, the Life Guards, Maitland’s and Mitchell’s regiments, Pack’s and Kempt’s infantry, Ponsonby’s and Somerset’s cavalry, the Highlanders playing the bagpipes under the shower of canister, Ryland’s battalions, the fresh recruits who could hardly manage a musket, and yet held their ground against the old bands of Essling and Rivoli—­all this is grand.

Wellington was tenacious; that was his merit, and we do not deny it to him, but the lowest of his privates and his troopers was quite as solid as he, and the iron soldier is as good as the iron duke.  For our part, all our glorification is offered to the English soldier, the English army, the English nation; and if there must be a trophy, it is to England that this trophy is owing.  The Waterloo column would be more just, if, instead of the figure of a man, it raised to the clouds the statue of a people....

But this great England will be irritated by what we are writing here; for she still has feudal illusions, after her 1688 and the French 1789.  This people believes in inheritance and hierarchy, and while no other excels it in power and glory, it esteems itself as a nation and not as a people.  As a people, it readily subordinates itself, and takes a lord as its head; the workman lets himself be despised; the soldier puts up with flogging.  It will be remembered that, at the battle of Inkerman, a sergeant who, as it appears, saved the British army, could not be mentioned by Lord Raglan, because the military hierarchy does not allow any hero below the rank of officer to be mentioned in dispatches.  What we admire before all, in an encounter like Waterloo, is the prodigious skill of chance.  The night raid, the wall of Hougoumont, the hollow way of Ohain, Grouchy deaf to the cannon, Napoleon’s guide deceiving him, Bulow’s guide enlightening him—­all this cataclysm is marvelously managed.

There is more of a massacre than of a battle in Waterloo.  Waterloo, of all pitched battles, is the one which had the smallest front for such a number of combatants.  Napoleon’s three-quarters of a league.  Wellington’s half a league, and seventy-two thousand combatants on either side.  From this density came the carnage.  The following calculation has been made and proportion established:  loss of men, at Austerlitz, French, fourteen per cent.; Russian, thirty per cent.; Austrian, forty-four per cent.; at Wagram, French, thirteen per cent.; Austrian, fourteen per cent.; at Moscow, French, thirty-seven per cent.; Russian, forty-four per cent.; at Bautzen, French, thirteen cent.; Russian and Prussian, fourteen per cent.; at Waterloo, French, fifty-six per cent.; allies, thirty-one per cent.—­total for Waterloo, forty-one per cent., or out of one hundred and forty-four thousand fighting men, sixty thousand killed.