rom France in 1851, living first in
Belgium, then in Jersey and Guernsey; returned to France
after the fall of the Empire in 1870; elected a life member
of the Senate in 1876.

THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO[57]

The battle of Waterloo is an enigma as obscure for those who gained it
as for him who lost it. To Napoleon it is a panic; Blucher sees
nothing in it but fire; Wellington does not understand it at all. Look
at the reports: the bulletins are confused; the commentaries are
entangled; the latter stammer, the former stutter. Jomini divides the
battle of Waterloo into four moments; Muffling cuts it into three
acts; Charras, altho we do not entirely agree with him in all his
appreciations, has alone caught with his haughty eye the
characteristic lineaments of this catastrophe of human genius
contending with divine chance. All the other historians suffer from a
certain bedazzlement in which they grope about. It was a flashing day,
in truth the overthrow of the military monarchy which, to the great
stupor of the kings, has dragged down all kingdoms, the downfall of
strength and the rout of war.

[Footnote 57: Chapter XV of "Cosette," in "Les Miserables."
Translation of Lascelles Wraxall.]

In this event, which bears the stamp of superhuman necessity, men play
but a small part; but if we take Waterloo from Wellington and Blucher,
does that deprive England and Germany of anything? No. Neither
illustrious England nor august Germany is in question in the problem
of Waterloo, for, thank heaven! nations are great without the mournful
achievements of the sword. Neither Germany, nor England, nor France is
held in a scabbard; at this day when Waterloo is only a clash of
sabers, Germany has Goethe above Blucher, and England Byron above
Wellington. A mighty dawn of ideas is peculiar to our age; and in this
dawn England and Germany have their own magnificent flash. They are
majestic because they think; the high level they bring to civilization
is intrinsic to them; it comes from themselves, and not from an
accident. Any aggrandizement the nineteenth century may have can not
boast of Waterloo as its fountainhead; for only barbarous nations grow
suddenly after a victory--it is the transient vanity of torrents
swollen by a storm. Civilized nations, especially at the present day,
are not elevated or debased by the good or evil fortune of a captain,
and their specific weight in the human family results from something