Page 562 - les-miserables

There are moments in battles in which the soul hardens
the man until the soldier is changed into a statue, and when
all this flesh turns into granite. The English battalions, des-
perately assaulted, did not stir.
Then it was terrible.
All the faces of the English squares were attacked at
once. A frenzied whirl enveloped them. That cold infantry
remained impassive. The first rank knelt and received the
cuirassiers on their bayonets, the second ranks shot them
down; behind the second rank the cannoneers charged their
guns, the front of the square parted, permitted the passage of
an eruption of grape-shot, and closed again. The cuirassiers
replied by crushing them. Their great horses reared, strode
across the ranks, leaped over the bayonets and fell, gigan-
tic, in the midst of these four living wells. The cannon-balls
ploughed furrows in these cuirassiers; the cuirassiers made
breaches in the squares. Files of men disappeared, ground
to dust under the horses. The bayonets plunged into the bel-
lies of these centaurs; hence a hideousness of wounds which
has probably never been seen anywhere else. The squares,
wasted by this mad cavalry, closed up their ranks without
flinching. Inexhaustible in the matter of grape-shot, they
created explosions in their assailants’ midst. The form of
this combat was monstrous. These squares were no longer
battalions, they were craters; those cuirassiers were no lon-
ger cavalry, they were a tempest. Each square was a volcano
attacked by a cloud; lava contended with lightning.
The square on the extreme right, the most exposed of
all, being in the air, was almost annihilated at the very first

562 Les Miserables