Just at this juncture, however, an uproar was witnessed far to the right.  The woods seemed to open, and the banners of Bluecher shot up in the horizon.  Grouchy was not on his rear or flank!  Napoleon saw at a glance that it was then or never.  His sun of Austerlitz hung low in the west.  The British centre must be broken, or the empire which he had builded with his genius must pass away like a phantom.  He called out four battalions of the Middle and six of the Old Guard.  In the last fifteen years that Guard had been thrown a hundred times on the enemies of France, and never yet repulsed.  It deemed itself invincible.

At seven o’clock, just as the June sun was sinking to the horizon, the bugles sounded and the finest body of horsemen in Europe started to its doom on the squares of Wellington.  The grim horsemen rode to their fate like heroes.  The charge rolled on like an avalanche.  It plunged into the sunken road of O’Hain.  It seemed to roll over.  It rose from the low grounds and broke on the British squares.  They reeled under the shock, then reformed and stood fast.  Around and around those immovable lines the soldiers of the Empire beat and beat in vain.  It was the war of races at its climax.  It was the final death-grip of the Gaul and the Teuton.  The Old Guard recoiled.  The wild cry of “La Garde recule” was heard above the roar of battle.  The crisis of the Modern Era broke in blood and smoke, and the past was suddenly victorious.  The Guard was broken into flying squadrons.  Ruin came with the counter charge of the British.  Ney, glorious in his despair, sought to stay the tide.  For an hour longer he was a spectacle to gods and men.  Five horses had been killed under him.  He was on foot.  He was hatless.  He clutched the hilt of a broken sword.  He was covered with dust and blood.  But his grim face was set against the victorious enemy in the hopeless and heroic struggle to rally his shattered columns.

Meanwhile the Prussians rushed in from the right.  Wellington’s Guards rose and charged.  Havoc came down with the darkness.  A single regiment of the Old Guard was formed by Napoleon into a last square around which to rally the fugitives.  The Emperor stood in the midst and declared his purpose to die with them.  Marshal Soult forced him out of the melee, and the famous square, commanded by Cambronne—­flinging his profane objurgation into the teeth of the English—­perished with the wild cry of “Vive l’Empereur!”

Hugo says that the panic of the French admits of an explanation; that the disappearance of the great man was necessary for the advent of a great age; that in the battle of Waterloo there was more than a storm, that is, the bursting of a meteor.  “At nightfall,” he continues, “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 dismounted, passed the bridle over his arm, and was now with wandering eye returning alone to Waterloo.  It was Napoleon, the immense somnambulist of a shattered dream!”