The Desperate Charges of the French
This first attack was directed against Hougoumont, around which there was a desperate contest. At this point the affray went on, in successive waves of attack and repulse, all day long; yet still the British held the buildings, and all the fierce valor of the French failed to gain them a foothold within.
About two o’clock came a second attack, preceded by a frightful cannonade upon the British left and centre. Four massive columns, led by Ney, poured steadily forward straight for the ridge, sweeping upon and around the farm-stead of La Haye Sainte, but met at every point by the sabres and bayonets of the British lines. Nearly 24,000 men took part in this great movement, the struggle lasting more than an hour before the French staggered back in repulse. Then from the French lines came a stupendous cavalry charge, the massive columns composed of no less than forty squadrons of cuirassiers and dragoons, filling almost all the space between Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte as they poured like a torrent upon the British lines. Torn by artillery, rent by musketry; checked, reformed; charging again, and again driven back; they expended their strength and their lives on the infantry squares that held their ground with the grimmest obstinacy. Once more, now strengthened by the cavalry of the Imperial Guard, they came on to carnage and death, shattering themselves against those unyielding squares, and in the end repulsed with frightful loss.
Blücher’s Prussians and the Charge of Napoleon’s Old Guard
The day was now well advanced, it being half-past four in the afternoon; the British had been fearfully shaken by the furious efforts of the French; when, emerging from the woods at St. Lambert, appeared the head of a column of fresh troops. Who were they? Blücher’s Prussians, or Grouchy’s pursuing French? On the answer to this question depended the issue of that terrible day. The question was soon decided; they were the Prussians; no sign appeared of the French; the hearts of the British beat high with hope and those of the French sank low in despair, for these fresh troops could not fail to decide the fate of that mighty field of battle. Soon the final struggle came. Napoleon, driven to desperation, launched his grand reserve corps, the far-famed Imperial Guard, upon his enemies. On they come, with Ney at their head; on them pours a terrible torrent of flame; from a distance the front ranks appear stationary, but only because they meet a death-line as they come, and fall in bleeding rows. Then on them, in a wild charge, rush the British Foot Guards, take them in flank, and soon all is over. “The Guard dies, but never surrenders,” says their commander. Die they do, few of them surviving to take part in that mad flight which swept Napoleon from the field and closed the fatal day of Waterloo. England has won the great struggle, now twenty years old, and Wellington from that day of victory takes rank with the greatest of British heroes.
CHAPTER VI.
From the Napoleonic Wars to the Revolution of 1830.
A Quarter Century of Revolution
The terrific struggle of the “Hundred Days,” which followed Napoleon’s return from Elba and preceded his exile to St. Helena, made a serious break in the deliberations of the Congress of Vienna, convened for the purpose of recasting the map of Europe, which Napoleon had so sadly transformed, of setting aside the radical work of the French Revolution, and, in a word, of turning back the hands of the clock of time. Twenty-five years of such turmoil and volcanic disturbance as Europe had rarely known were at an end; the ruling powers were secure of their own again; the people, worn-out with the long and bitter struggle, welcomed eagerly the return of rest and peace; and the emperors and kings deemed it a suitable time to throw overboard the load of new ideas under which the European “ship of state” seemed to them likely to founder.
The Congress of Vienna
The Congress of Vienna was, in its way, a brilliant gathering. It included, mainly as handsome ornaments, the emperors of Russia and Austria, the kings of Prussia, Denmark, Bavaria and Wurtemberg; and, as its working element, the leading statesmen of Europe, including the English Castlereagh and Wellington, the French Talleyrand, the Prussian Hardenberg, and the Austrian Metternich. Checked in its deliberations for a time by Napoleon’s fierce hundred days’ death struggle, it quickly settled down to work again, having before it the vast task of undoing the mighty results of a quarter of a century of revolution. For the French Revolution had broadened into an European revolution, with Napoleon and his armies as its great instruments. The whole continent had been sown thickly during the long era of war with the Napoleonic ideas, and a crop of new demands and conditions had grown up not easily to be uprooted.
Europe After Napoleon’s Fall
Reaction was the order of the day in the Vienna Congress. The shaken power of the monarchs was to be restored, the map of Europe to be readjusted, the people to be put back into the submissive condition which they occupied before that eventful 1789, when the States-General of France began its momentous work of overturning the equilibrium of the world. As for the people, deeply infected as they were with the new ideas of liberty and the rights of man, which had made their way far beyond the borders of France, they were for the time worn-out with strife and turmoil, and settled back supinely to enjoy the welcome era of rest, leaving their fate in the hands of the astute plenipotentiaries who were gathered in their wisdom at Vienna.
The Work of the Congress
These worthy tools of the monarchs had an immense task before them—too large a one, as it proved. It was easy to talk about restoring to the nations the territory they had possessed before Napoleon began his career as a map-maker; but it was not easy to do so except at the cost of new wars. The territories of many of the powers had been added to by the French emperor, and they were not likely to give up their new possessions without a vigorous protest. In Germany the changes had been enormous. Napoleon had found there more than three hundred separate states, some no larger than a small American county, yet each possessed of the paraphernalia of a court and sovereign, a capital, an army and a public debt. And these were feebly combined into the phantasm known as the Holy Roman Empire. When Napoleon had finished his work this empire had ceased to exist, except as a tradition, and the great galaxy of sovereign states was reduced to thirty-nine. These included the great dominions of Austria and Prussia; the smaller states of Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover and Wurtemberg, which Napoleon had raised into kingdoms; and a vastly reduced group of minor states. The work done here it was somewhat dangerous to meddle with. The small potentates of Germany were like so many bull-dogs, glaring jealously across their new borders, and ready to fly at one another’s throats at any suggestion of a change. The utmost they would yield was to be united into a confederacy called the Bund, with a Diet meeting at Frankfurt. But as the delegates to the Diet were given no law-making power, the Bund became an empty farce.
The great powers took care to regain their lost possessions, or to replace them with an equal amount of territory. Prussia and Austria spread out again to their old size, though they did not cover quite the old ground. Most of their domains in Poland were given up, Prussia getting new territory in West Germany and Austria in Italy. Their provinces in Poland were ceded to Alexander of Russia, who added to them some of his own Polish dominions, and formed a new kingdom of Poland, he being its king. So in a shadowy way Poland was brought to life again. England got for her share in the spoils a number of French and Dutch colonies, including Malta and the Cape Colony in Africa. Thus each of the great powers repaid itself for its losses.
Italy, France, and Spain
In Italy a variety of changes were made. The Pope got back the States of the Church; Tuscany was restored to its king; the same was the case with Naples, King Murat being driven from his throne and put to death. Piedmont, increased by the Republic of Genoa, was restored to the king of Sardinia. Some smaller states were formed, as Parma, Modena, and Lucca. Finally, Lombardy and Venice, much the richest regions of Italy, were given to Austria, which country was made the dominant power in the Italian peninsula.
Louis XVIII., the Bourbon king, brother of Louis XVI., who had reigned while Napoleon was at Elba, came back to the throne of France. The title of