rear, by infantry and cavalry, were compelled to face in all directions. What was that to them? They were a whirlwind. Their valor became unspeakable. The cuirassiers annihilated seven squares out of thir5 teen, took or spiked sixty pieces of cannon, and took from the English regiments six colors, which three cuirassiers and three chasseurs of the guard carried to the Emperor before the farm of La Belle Alliance. The situation of Wellington was growing worse. This strange battle was 10 like a duel between two wounded infuriates, who, while yet fighting and resisting, lose all their blood. Which of the two shall fall first? At five o'clock Wellington drew out his watch, and was heard to murmur these somber words, “Blücher, or 15 night!" It was about this time that a distant line of bayonets glistened on the heights beyond Frichemont. Here is the turning point in this colossal drama. The rest is known: the irruption of a third army; the battle thrown out of joint; eighty-six pieces of artillery 20 suddenly thundering forth; a new battle falling at nightfall upon our dismantled regiments; the whole English line assuming the offensive, and pushing forward; the gigantic gap made in the French army; the English grape and the Prussian grape lending mutual aid; exter25 mination, disaster in front, disaster in flank; the Guard entering into line amid the terrible crumbling. Feeling that they were going to their death, they cried out, "Vive l'Empereur!" There is nothing more touching in history than this death agony bursting forth in 30 acclamations. Each battalion of the Guard, for this final effort, was commanded by a general. When the tall caps of the grenadiers of the Guard, with their large eagle plates, appeared, symmetrical, drawn up in line, calm, in the smoke of that conflict, the enemy felt respect for France. 5 They thought they saw twenty victories entering upon the field of battle, with wings extended, and those who were conquerors, thinking themselves conquered, recoiled; but Wellington cried, "Up, Guards, and at them!" The red regiment of English Guards, lying behind the 10 hedges, rose up. A shower of grape riddled the tri-colored flag fluttering about our eagles; all hurled themselves forward, and the final carnage began. The Imperial Guard felt the army slipping away around them in the gloom and in the vast overthrow of the rout; they heard 15 the "Sauve qui peut!" which had replaced the "Vive l'Empereur!" and, with flight behind them, they held on their course, battered more and more, and dying faster and faster, at every step. The rout behind the Guard was dismal. The army fell 20 back rapidly from all sides at once. The cry, "Treachery!" was followed by the cry, "Sauve qui peut!" Napoleon gallops along the fugitives, harangues them, urges, threatens, entreats. The mouths which in the morning were crying "Vive l'Empereur!" are now 25 agape. He is hardly recognized. The Prussian cavalry, just come up, spring forward, fling themselves upon the enemy, saber, cut, hack, kill, exterminate. Teams rush off; the guns are left to the care of themselves; the soldiers of the train unhitch the 30 caissons, and take the horses to escape; wagons upset, with their four wheels in the air, block up the road, and are accessories of massacre. They crush and they crowd; they trample upon the liv5 ing and the dead. Arms are broken. A multitude fills roads, paths, bridges, plains, hills, valleys, woods, choked up by the flight of forty thousand men. Cries, despair; knapsacks and muskets cast into the growing rye; passages forced at the point of the sword; no more comrades, 10 no more officers, no more generals; inexpressible dismay. In the gathering night, on a field near Genappe, Bernard and Bertrand seized by a flap of his coat and stopped a haggard, thoughtful, gloomy man, who, dragged thus far by the current of the rout, had dismounted, passed 15 the bridle of his horse under his arm, and, with bewildered eye, was returning alone toward Waterloo. It was Napoleon, endeavoring to advance again-mighty somnambulist of a vanished dream. - From "Les Misérables," by Victor Hugo. On the night before the battle of Waterloo many of the 20 English officers were at a ball at Brussels, ten miles away, where were the headquarters of Wellington. In the midst of the festivities the cannon were heard which summoned them to the field. Lord Byron, in a few stanzas in "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," has given a 25 poetical description of what occurred a description which rivals in vividness that of Victor Hugo, and which has been more generally read and admired than any other poem on that event. BATTLE OF WATERLOO. There was a sound of revelry by night, Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, But hush! hark! - a deep sound strikes like a rising knell! Did ye not hear it? No; 'twas but the wind, And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before! Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro, |