This challenge of titanic scorn Cambronne hurls not only at Europe in the name of the Empire,--that would be a trifle:
he hurls it at the past in the name of the Revolution.
It is heard, and Cambronne is recognized as possessed by the ancient spirit of the Titans. Danton seems to be speaking!
Kleber seems to be bellowing!
At that word from Cambronne, the English voice responded, "Fire!" The batteries flamed, the hill trembled, from all those brazen mouths belched a last terrible gush of grape-shot; a vast volume of smoke, vaguely white in the light of the rising moon, rolled out, and when the smoke dispersed, there was no longer anything there. That formidable remnant had been annihilated; the Guard was dead. The four walls of the living redoubt lay prone, and hardly was there discernible, here and there, even a quiver in the bodies; it was thus that the French legions, greater than the Roman legions, expired on Mont-Saint-Jean, on the soil watered with rain and blood, amid the gloomy grain, on the spot where nowadays Joseph, who drives the post-wagon from Nivelles, passes whistling, and cheerfully whipping up his horse at four o'clock in the morning.
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BOOK FIRST.-WATERLOO
CHAPTER XVI
QUOT LIBRAS IN DUCE?
The battle of Waterloo is an enigma.
It is as obscure to those who won it as to those who lost it.
For Napoleon it was a panic;[10] Blucher sees nothing in it but fire; Wellington understands nothing in regard to it.
Look at the reports.
The bulletins are confused, the commentaries involved.