The reward of his daring was decisive. The Imperial Guard, taken by surprise, halted and poured a volley into the 52nd which brought down a hundred and forty of its men. But the British reply of this grave Roman battalion was decisive. It seemed as though every bullet found its mark. So heavy were the casualties in the dense, astonished column that the Imperial Guard did not wait for the 52nd to charge. It broke and fled. As it did so, the 52nd resumed its advance eastwards across, and at right angles to, the British front, with the two other battalions of Adam's brigade—the 95th and 71st —moving up on Wellington's instructions on either flank. A few hundred yards on they encountered another French column reforming—the first that had attacked—and dealt it the same treatment and with the same results. Gradually, as the recoiling units of the French army streamed back across their path from the impregnable plateau, the British Light Infantry inclined to the right towards La Belle Alliance. Round them, out of swirling smoke, scattered units of British and French cavalry appeared in charge and countercharge.
For from the ridge above them, starting from the right, the whole British line had begun to advance as Wellington, hat raised high in air, galloped westwards from one tattered, enduring regiment to another. The time for which he and they had waited had come.
"Who commands here?" he shouted to Harry Smith, Lambert's brigade major. "Generals Kempt and Lambert, my Lord." "Desire them to form column of companies and move on immediately." "In what direction, my Lord?" "Right ahead, to be sure."1
It was now nearly dusk. But, as the French cannonade ceased and the smoke began to drift from the ridge, the setting sun cast a ray of light along the glinting British line, now motionless no more, and on the accoutrements of the defeated columns in the plain. The whole French army was suddenly dissolving with the landscape: entire regiments leaving their arms piled and taking to their heels. From the east the Prussians were pouring in a great flood across the battlefield, and to the south-west, where the Old and Young Guard were still fighting fiercely to keep Napoleon's life-line open, Billow's men had swept through Plancenoit and were approaching the chaussee. "I have seen nothing like that moment," wrote Frazer of the Artillery, "the sky literally darkened with smoke, the sun just going down and which till then had not for some hours broken through the gloom of a dull day, the indescribable shouts of thousands where it was impossible to distinguish between friends and foe."
In that final advance, with little groups of French gunners and horsemen and the last unbroken squares of the Old Guard fighting gloriously to give their Emperor time to escape, a few score more fell, among them Lord Uxbridge, who, riding forward by the Duke's side, had his leg shattered by a shell. Most of the British regiments were so exhausted that they halted in the plain between the ridges. Only the cavalry and Adam's brigade, following the retreating squares of the Imperial Guard, proceeded through the heart of what had been the French position.
As Ziethen's Prussian cavalry from the east and Vivian's and Vandeleur's British from the north met at La Belle Alliance, the union of the armies, fought for so fiercely during three days and nights, was consummated. Shortly after nine o'clock the two men whose good faith, constancy and resolution had made it possible, met on the spot where Napoleon had launched his attack. They were both on horseback, but the old Prussian embraced and kissed his English friend, exclaiming, "Mew lieber Kamerad" and then, "Quelle
1 "I never saw his Grace so animated," Smith added. Smith, I, 272-3. See Becke, 222-30; Cotton, 125-35, 305-6; Ellesmere, 183-4; Fortescue, X, 391-2; Gomm, 361-2, 367-73: Gronow, I. 73» 89-90; Houssaye, 221-32; Jackson, 69-70; Kennedy, 140-50; Leeke, I, passim; Moorsom, 256-65;Robinson, 611-14; Siborne, passim; Tomkinson, 311-15; Chesney, 210-13.
affaire!" which, as Wellington observed, was about all the French he knew.
Then, in weariness and darkness, Wellington turned his tired horse towards Waterloo and the ridge he had defended. He rode in silence across a battlefield in which 15,000 men of his own army, including a third of the British troops engaged, and more than 30,000 Frenchmen lay dead, dying or wounded. The sound of gunfire had ceased, but, to the south, trumpets could be faintly heard as the tireless Prussian cavalry took up the pursuit of their inexorable enemies. As their infantry, many of whom had marched fifty miles in the past two days, debouched from Plancenoit into the Charleroi highway, where the 52nd, with its tattered colours, was halted by the roadside, they broke into slow time and their bands played "God save the King."1
1 Leeke, 67; Moorsom, 267; Jackson, 57-9; Tomkinson, 315; Gronow, I, 200; Simpson, 129; Stanhope, 245; Picton, 98; Gomm, 370-1, 375-6.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Portrait of the Victors
"Great Britain... in peace as in war, still watches for that liberty in which alone the genius of our isles lives, moves and has its being; and which, being lost, all our commercial and naval greatness would instantly languish like a flower, the root of which had been eaten by a worm; and without which, in any country, the public festivals and pompous merriments of a nation present no other spectacle to the eye of reason than a mob of maniacs dancing in their fetters."
T
HREE weeks after the battle, while Brussels stank with gangrene and the trampled Waterloo cornfields were heavy with death, a British army entered Paris for the first time since Agincourt. Groups of Guardsmen and Highlanders squatted under the trees or gaped at the boulevard puppet-shows, scarlet sentries paraded before sunlit facades, the Bois de Boulogne with its bivouacs looked like a fair. The Emperor had fled into the south-west to seek a boat, it was said, for America, and the exiled Bourbon—Louis le Desire no more but Louis Inevitable—returned with his baggage-train to the Tuileries. So did his patrons, the rulers of Russia, Austria and Prussia, and their paymasters, the robust aristocracy of Britain, from stout Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, who crashed catastrophically through the flimsy chairs of France, to little Lady Caroline Lamb in a purple riding habit primed for an attack on the victor of Waterloo. Even Dr, Keate, the flogging Headmaster of Eton, was seen eating ices on the boulevards and dining with his former pupils, the young officers of the Guards.
During those rejoicing weeks while dukes, statesmen, bankers, fashionable litterateurs and society hostesses rattled over the pavie in their carriages and packed the hot, grubby theatres and gambling saloons,1 the victors showed their strength. At one review a hundred and sixty thousand Russians, superbly caparisoned, paraded before
1 Croker, I, 63-4; Gronow, II, 15; Lady Shelley, I, 94-5, 107; Brownlow, 124-5, 129-33; D'Arblay, III, 381-2; Broughton, I, 305; Stanley, 197; Harriet Granville, I, 57,66,74; Williams, 258.
the Emperor of the North. A millennium of drill sergeants and Christian warriors under God's hereditary vicegerents was now, it seemed, to banish for ever the era of atheist mobs and revolutionary levies. The Russians kicked out their toes like rampant bears, the Prussians goose-stepped by like turkeys, the white-coated Austrians like supers at a German opera, the French royal guards pirouetted with the little steps of turnspits in the performance of their duty. All moved stiffly, with high, rigid collars and limbs that seemed mechanically jointed.1 Only the British, taught in the school of John Moore, used the free and natural gait of man. As, with stained, shabby uniforms and bullet-ridden banners, they marched down the Champs-filysees past their chief—motionless on his horse like a Roman Emperor in all save pomp—they so impressed the Czar that he ordered the adoption of their system of drill by his Army.
Yet the British puzzled foreigners even more than they impressed them. While others meticulously rehearsed their reviews, they staged theirs without any preparation at all. The Czar having asked to see a representation of Salamanca, the Duke gave a few orders to the Deputy Quartermaster-General who, after a cursory look at the ground, passed them on without comment to the General Officers. The troops marched on to the field without even a plan of operations. The English seemed only interested in problems as they arose. They would not be troubled with theories, even those of their own vict
ories.2
They had another peculiarity. They did not apparently think of themselves as conquerors. Wherever they moved, the Prussians, and to a lesser extent the Russians and Austrians, left a trail of shattered homes and trampled corn. They lived at free quarters on their enemies,3 helping themselves to their best; at Epernay the Prussians watered their very horses on champagne. The Cossacks kept French crowds in order at a review by charging with drawn swords; a Prussian regiment, held up by traffic, knocked the coachmen off their boxes with their musket-butts. Blucher's officers entering a coffee-house would order out the natives with oaths of "Faites place aux Vainqueurs;" their commander levied a contribution of a hundred million francs on Paris and, when it was not paid, arrested
Blakeney, 304-7. See also Lady Shelley, I, 116-17, 158-9; Croker, I, 64, 72-3; Broughton, I, 318; Brownlow, 126-8, 149-58; Gronow, I, 97-8; Bessborough, 252-4. a Lynedoch, 765; Brownlow, 161-2; Smith, I, 294.
2 Blücher quartered himself in Napoleon's bedroom at St. Cloud where he encouraged his dog to "bivouac" in and soil a magnificent sofa. Simpson, 141.
the bankers and shut up the Bourse. The beautiful Bridge of Jena was only saved from his engineers by a platoon of Coldstream Guards.1
Having suffered no depredations in their own country, the British behaved as they were used at home. When they came to a field of wheat, to the amazement of the natives, they broke rank and carefully followed the footpath in Indian file; when they had to requisition a house, they helped the inhabitants to remove their furniture. They quartered themselves in uncomfortable barracks or tents, paid on the nail, and often through the nose, for what they consumed, and, after the first few days, only entered Paris on passes. The least injury to civilian property was mercilessly punished.
For, though snobbish about many things, the islanders did not seem so about winning battles. Soldiers had a very modest place in their scale of values. Their rich milords and ladies behaved as though they had bought the earth, but their troops walked about the conquered capital as if they were in London, where soldiers were subordinated to the civil law. When French veterans muttered sacre boeftake under their breath, or trod on their toes, they looked the other way and even sometimes apologised. As to lampoons of themselves, these peaceable warriors seemed to enjoy them as much as the French. A ranting attack on foreign tyrants in the theatre only elicited from Wellington an expression of regret at his inability to understand French political allusions.2
"Douces comme demoiselles!1 was the general verdict. It was hard to believe that these were the fellows who had chased the first troops in Europe from Spain and had now defeated the Emperor himself. There was quite a competition among French housewives to invite them to their homes. The Highlanders were particular favourites, though their kilts at first caused some consternation and even scandal among the ladies.3 They helped with the household chores, played with the children and rocked the cradles. A soldier returning to his
1 Thereafter, to his Allies' fury, Wellington kept a British sentry posted on it. See Stanhope, 119; H. M. C. Bland Burges, 345; Festing, 197-8; Creevey, Life and Times, 93-5; Croker, I, 62-4; Lady Shelley, I, 99, 104, 107, no, 160; Colchester, II, 554; Brownlow, 172-5; Costello, 198-9; D'Arblay, III, 379, 384; Gronow, I, 93-4, 98-9, 130-1, 206-7; II, 39-40; Broughton, I, 309-11, 316; Williams, 314-16.
2 Stanhope, 217-18; Kincaid, Random Shots, 240; Tomkinson, 323* Broughton, I, 302-3, 316; Creevey, Life and Times, 93; Colchester, II, 551; Gronow, I, 92-3; II, 15-16; Brownlow, 129; Smithy I, 294; Harriet Granville, I, 62-4.
3 "C'est vrai! actuellement rien qu'un petit jupon—mais comment!'* remarked one excited Frenchwoman, lifting her hands and eyes, "petit jupon—et comment!" Stanley, 197. See Simpson, 11-12; Brownlow, 129; Gronow, I, 80-1; Bury, II, 15; Gomm, 376; Broughton, I, 312.
billet would often be escorted by the entire household, jubilant at having regained its "own Scotsman."
Cohesion without coercion, wealth without slavery, empire without militarism, such was the spectacle Britain presented. "I begin to be afraid, like the frog in the fable," wrote an Englishwoman that summer, "we shall all burst with national pride, for never, to be sure, did we stand half so high before." Now that the revolutionary dream had flickered out in ruin, Britain's strength and prosperity was the wonder of mankind. She had annihilated the fleets of an enemy who when the war began had nearly three times her population, defeated all attempts to keep her troops from the Continent, and, forcing Napoleon to expend half a million men in Spain, had roused and united Europe against him. In the closing months of the war she had subsidised the entire Grand Alliance.
Yet, while withstanding tyranny abroad, she had preserved liberty at home. It was this that made her the object of such universal interest. The dreams of a new birth of freedom founded on resounding phrases had proved in the past generation a bloody and destructive delusion. The French had shown themselves incapable of liberty. The authoritarianism of Prussia had broken, Austria had become a byword for defeat, the antique chivalry of Spain had dissolved under the hammer-blows of the Revolution. The smaller states of Germany and Italy had thrown in their lot with the conqueror. Even the Russians had proved barbarians in the grain. Only one kingdom had emerged victorious while assuring her people social order and freedom of choice. Britain might not be the Utopia of the philosophers, but she was nearer it than anything mankind had yet achieved.
Was the reality behind the splendid facade, the nation behind those proud white cliffs as strong and healthful as it seemed? There could be no doubt of her prosperity and social cohesion. The great mass of her people, Simond reported, appeared happier and more respectable than any other he knew. The good manners of her country folk, their open, friendly faces, the curtseys of the children on the roads and the raised hats of their elders, bespoke a society against which the waves of egalitarian revolution and the new creeds of envy and infidelity had beaten in vain, The English plainly loved their country and found inspiration in serving it. They were free as individuals to rule themselves, which made them self-reliant, resourceful and morally, as well as physically, courageous. They had a religion, deeply personal, which enabled them to set a course by conscience and secure the enduring strength of common standards of thought and behaviour. Together these things gave them an underlying unity which allowed for almost limitless diversity and was therefore far more stable than one enforced by a centralised and brittle authoritarianism.
Their belief in freedom was a passion, almost a religion. " 'Tis liberty alone," proclaimed their favourite poet:
"that gives us the flower
Of fleeting life, its lustre and perfume,
And we are weeds without it.
All constraint Except what wisdom
lays on evil men Is evil."
For the abstract liberty of the mass acclaimed by revolutionary France they had little use. The fabric of their law had been woven in the course of centuries to sustain that of the individual. The legal protection of his person and property against all comers, particularly against the King's officers, was, even more than Parliament, England's distinguishing institution. Parliament itself had been created to ensure it.
For this pragmatic race, hatred of power was an obsession. Even the occasional soldiers posted at street corners to restrain the crowds during the Allied Sovereigns' visit were denounced as intolerable. Keats at Naples felt unable to visit the opera because of the guards on the stage. "The continual visible tyranny of this Government prevents me having any peace of mind," he wrote, "I could not lie quietly here; I will not even leave my bones in the midst of this despotism." An English lady described how she and her husband, travelling through the dragooned French countryside after the war, chafed at the closed gates and the sentries who paraded the towns.1
1 Lady Shelley, I, 215. It struck the Frenchman, Simond—even after his long residence in America—as remarkable that at the height of the War visitors to Portsmouth were allowed tc pass through the walls and fortifications without being
questioned. Simond, II, 247. See also Bury, I, 207; Keats, IV, 112.
Such hatred of constraint arose partly from a belief that power corrupted, and that it could not be safely entrusted, untrammelled, o anyone. For this reason the British Constitution was an intricate balance of rights and functions in which it was impossible to say precisely where power resided. The King having in the past tried to monopolise it, the King's powers had been drastically shorn. Though he still possessed great influence and could be a source of grave embarrassment to the Ministers whom he appointed, he could in major matters act officially only through them. His right even to a private secretary was questioned. Yet the Ministers who exercised his former powers were themselves dependent on the goodwill of Parliament. Without the support of a working majority of its members, they could not carry on the business of the country. And parliament itself was a balance of conflicting powers: of rival parties and often rival Houses.
Nor did power reside in the people—that question - begging abstraction, so dear to the rationalising philosophers of the eighteenth century, in whose name the French had drenched the world in blood. The House of Commons, like the House of Lords, so far as it representcd anything definable, represented the interests and property of the country, though not as they were in 1815 but as they had been centuries before when the parliamentary system began. Little more than 400,000 out of the English and Welsh population of ten and a half millions enjoyed a parliamentary vote, and only 4000 out of two million Scots. And this restricted franchise was exercised on the most illogical variety of grounds. In the counties it was the prerogative of freeholders, in many boroughs of a handful of occupants of particular tenements, in one or two constituencies of everyone who boiled a pot on his own hearth. More than a third of the House of Commons' seats were at the disposal of a couple of hundred land-owners who virtually nominated the electors. Their right to do so was bought and sold, sometimes under the hammer, like any other pieces of property: a practice which, paradoxically, tended to correct the antiquated distribution of the franchise, since it enabled new forms of wealth unrepresented by geography to secure it by purchase —an example both of the conservatism of the English and of their genius for making the illogical work. Nor did the electorate even possess an absolute right to vote. It could be deprived of it by Parliament, which if the Crown consented might, as it had done in the past, prolong its own existence. For the English left every Parliament free to change the laws as it chose. They would not be bound even by a Constitution.
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