owlers with the fur bonnets--Napoleon's
invincible Old Guard! With Ney himself to lead you! a hero among heroes!
the bravest where all are brave!

Have you ever seen a tidal wave of steel rising and surging under the
lash of the gale? So they come now, those cuirassiers and lancers and
chasseurs, their helmets, their swords, their lances gleaming in the
golden light of the sinking sun; in closed ranks, stirrup to stirrup
they swoop down into the valley, and rise again scaling the muddy
heights. Superb as on parade, with their finest generals at their head:
Milhaud, Hanrion, Michel, Mallet! and Ney between them all.

Splendid they are and certain of victory: they gallop past as if at a
revue on the Place du Carrousel opposite the windows of the Tuileries;
all to the repeated cry of "Vive l'Empereur!"

And as they gallop past the wounded and the dying lift themselves up
from the blood-stained earth, and raise their feeble voices to join in
that triumphant call: "Vive l'Empereur!" There's an old veteran there,
who fought at Austerlitz and at Jena; he has three stripes upon his
sleeve, but both his legs are shattered and he lies on the roadside
propped up against a hedge, and as the superb cavalry ride proudly by he
shouts lustily: "Forward, comrades! a last victorious charge! Long live
the Emperor!"

After that who was to blame? Was human agency to blame? Did Ney--the
finest cavalry leader in Napoleon's magnificent army, the veteran of an
hundred glorious victories--did he make the one blunder of his military
career by dividing his troops into too many separate columns rather than
concentrating them for the one all-powerful attack upon the British
centres? Did he indeed mistake the way and lead his splendid cavalry by
round-about crossways to the plateau instead of by the straight Brussels
road?

Or did the obscure traitor--over whom history has thrown a veil of
mystery--betray this fresh advance against the British centre to
Wellington?

Was any man to blame? Was it not rather the hand of God that had already
fallen with almighty and divine weight upon the ambitious and reckless
adventurer?--was it not the voice of God that spoke to him through the
cannon's roar of Waterloo: "So far but no farther shalt thou go! Enough
of thy will and thy power and thy ambition!--Enough of this scourge of
bloodshed and of misery which I have allowed thee to wield for so
long!--Enough of devastated homes, of starvation and of pove