CHAPTER XIII--THE CATASTROPHE

The rout behind the Guard was melancholy.

The army yielded suddenly on all sides at once,--Hougomont, La
Haie-Sainte, Papelotte, Plancenoit. The cry "Treachery!" was followed by
a cry of "Save yourselves who can!" An army which is disbanding is
like a thaw. All yields, splits, cracks, floats, rolls, falls, jostles,
hastens, is precipitated. The disintegration is unprecedented. Ney
borrows a horse, leaps upon it, and without hat, cravat, or sword,
places himself across the Brussels road, stopping both English and
French. He strives to detain the army, he recalls it to its duty, he
insults it, he clings to the rout. He is overwhelmed. The soldiers fly
from him, shouting, "Long live Marshal Ney!" Two of Durutte's regiments
go and come in affright as though tossed back and forth between the
swords of the Uhlans and the fusillade of the brigades of Kempt, Best,
Pack, and Rylandt; the worst of hand-to-hand conflicts is the defeat;
friends kill each other in order to escape; squadrons and battalions
break and disperse against each other, like the tremendous foam of
battle. Lobau at one extremity, and Reille at the other, are drawn into
the tide. In vain does Napoleon erect walls from what is left to him of
his Guard; in vain does he expend in a last effort his last serviceable
squadrons. Quiot retreats before Vivian, Kellermann before Vandeleur,
Lobau before Bulow, Morand before Pirch, Domon and Subervic before
Prince William of Prussia; Guyot, who led the Emperor's squadrons to the
charge, falls beneath the feet of the English dragoons. Napoleon gallops
past the line of fugitives, harangues, urges, threatens, entreats
them. All the mouths which in the morning had shouted, "Long live
the Emperor!" remain gaping; they hardly recognize him. The Prussian
cavalry, newly arrived, dashes forwards, flies, hews, slashes, kills,
exterminates. Horses lash out, the cannons flee; the soldiers of the
artillery-train unharness the caissons and use the horses to make their
escape; transports overturned, with all four wheels in the air, clog the
road and occasion massacres. Men are crushed, trampled down, others walk
over the dead and the living. Arms are lost. A dizzy multitude fills the
roads, the paths, the bridges, the plains, the hills, the valleys,
the woods, encumbered by this invasion of forty thousand men. Shouts
despair, knapsacks and guns flung among the rye, passages forced at
the point o