Or whispering with white lips, the foe, they come, they come!
Meantime, the emperor, moving rapidly on Brussels, drove in the English at the battle of Quatre Bras, on the 10th, and the Prussians, at Ligny, on the 17th of June. But, on the 18th, he was checked by the memorable hollow squares of Waterloo. On that day was fought one of the most renowned battles of the world—the most decisive of modern times. In antiquity, the battles most resembling it seem to have been Platæa, where Mardonius and the Persians were overthrown, and the fight of Cannæ, in Italy, where the Napoleon of the Punic War prostrated the military strength, but not the republican courage of Rome. For nearly the entire day the British squares withstood the vehement cavalry charges of the French, and so rough-handled and weakened them, that when, toward evening, the Prussians came up in great force, the emperor’s army was wearied, and ready for a repulse. He ordered one more charge in column—that of his Young Guard—(the Old Guard was asleep in Russia)—headed by Ney. But it was broken by the firmness of the English guards. Wellington himself was with these last, and doubtless his presence gave them increased spirit and steadiness. The column—the last forlorn hope of empire—was struck and scattered by the musketry in front, and the flank charges of cavalry; and then the career of Napoleon was at an end. And, for one great tyrant beaten down, a dozen others, great and small, reigned in his stead—their unholy alliance sitting like an incubus on the rights and hopes of exhausted Europe.
After the return of the Bourbons, the Duke of Wellington remained for three years in France, at the head of the Army of Occupation. His residence in Paris was the Elysee Bourbon—that lately occupied by Louis Napoleon. He has been blamed for not saving the life of Marshal Ney, who had in 1814 sworn fidelity to the Bourbons, and, in 1815, gone back to the emperor. Byron, who was always fierce on the duke, says, addressing him,
Glory like yours, should any dare gainsay,
Humanity would rise and thunder, Nay!
Wellington, when speaking to his intimate friends concerning the execution of Marshal Ney—which he undoubtedly could have prevented—merely said, “It was no concern of his.” It never was part of Wellington’s character to give way to any sentimental feeling. In 1818 his army left Paris; which occasion Beranger has signalised in one of the finest of his lyrics: La Sainte Alliance des Peuples:
O peoples! forgetting all by-gone defiance,
Join hands, for yourselves, in a Holy Alliance!
The renown of Wellington was now only inferior to that of the late emperor: He was a prince, a noble, or a knight, in almost all the European codes of honor;
His honorable titles