against the sunset sky, then did Napoleon's old growlers
with their fur bonnets and their grizzled moustaches enter the line of
action to face the English guards. They were facing Death and knew it
but still they cried: "Vive l'Empereur!"

Heads down the British charge, whilst from Ohain comes the roar of
Bluecher's guns, and up from the east, Zieten with the Prussians rushes
up to join in the assault.

Then the carnage begins: for the Old Guard is still advancing--in solid
squares--solemn, unmoved, magnificent: the bronze eagles on their
bonnets catch the golden rays of the setting sun. Thus they advance in
face of deadly fire: they fall like corn before the scythe. A sublime
suicide to the cry of "Vive l'Empereur!" and not one of the brigade is
missing except those who are dead.

They know--none better--that this is the beginning of the end. Perhaps
they do not care to live if their Emperor is to be Emperor no longer,
if he is to be sent back to exile--to the prison of Elba or worse: and
so they advance in serried squares, while Maitland's artillery has
attacked them in the rear. Great gaps are made in those ranks, but they
are quickly filled up again: the squares become less solid, smaller, but
they remain compact. Still they advance.

But now close behind them Bluecher's guns begin to thunder and Zieten's
columns are rapidly gaining ground: all round their fur bonnets a
hailstorm of grape-shot is raging whilst Adam's artillery is in action
within fifty paces at their flank. But the old growlers who had suffered
death with silent fortitude in the snows of Russia, who had been as
grand in their defeat at Moscow and at Leipzic as they had been in the
triumphs of Auerstadt or of Friedland--they neither staggered nor paused
in their advance. On they went--carrying their muskets on their
shoulders--a cloud of tirailleurs in front of them, right into the
cross-fire of the British guns: their loud cry of "Vive l'Empereur"
drowning that other awesome, terrible cry which someone had raised a
while ago and which now went from mouth to mouth: "We are betrayed!
_Sauve qui peut!_"

The Prussians were in their rear; the British were charging their front,
and panic had seized the most brilliant cavalry the world had ever seen.

"Sauve qui peut" is echoed now and re-echoed all along the crest of the
plateau. And the echo rolls down the slope into the valley where
Reille's infantry and a regiment of cuirassiers, and three more