Very often a battle lost is progress
gained, and less of glory, more of liberty. The drummer is silent and
reason speaks; it is the game of who loses wins. Let us, then, speak
of Waterloo coldly from both sides, and render to chance the things
that belong to chance, and to God what is God's. What is Waterloo--a
victory? No; a prize in the lottery, won by Europe, and paid by
France; it was hardly worth while erecting a lion for it.
Waterloo is the strangest encounter recorded in history; Napoleon
and Wellington are not enemies, but contraries. Never did God, who
delights in antitheses, produce a more striking contrast, or a more
extraordinary confrontation. On one side precision, foresight,
geometry, prudence, a retreat assured, reserves prepared, an obstinate
coolness, an imperturbable method, strategy profiting by the ground,
tactics balancing battalions, carnage measured by a plumb-line, war
regulated watch in hand, nothing left voluntarily to accident, old
classic courage and absolute correctness.
On the other side we have intuition, divination, military strangeness,
superhuman instinct, a flashing glance; something that gazes like the
eagle and strikes like lightning, all the mysteries of a profound
mind, associated with destiny; the river, the plain, the forest, and
the hill summoned, and, to some extent, compelled to obey; the despot
going so far as even to tyrannize over the battlefield; faith in a
star, blended with a strategic science, heightening, but troubling it.
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