Page 572 - les-miserables

CHAPTER XII

THE GUARD

Every one knows the rest,—the irruption of a third army;
the battle broken to pieces; eighty-six months of fire thun-
dering simultaneously; Pirch the first coming up with
Bulow; Zieten’s cavalry led by Blucher in person, the French
driven back; Marcognet swept from the plateau of Ohain;
Durutte dislodged from Papelotte; Donzelot and Quiot
retreating; Lobau caught on the flank; a fresh battle pre-
cipitating itself on our dismantled regiments at nightfall;
the whole English line resuming the offensive and thrust
forward; the gigantic breach made in the French army; the
English grape-shot and the Prussian grape-shot aiding each
other; the extermination; disaster in front; disaster on the
flank; the Guard entering the line in the midst of this ter-
rible crumbling of all things.
Conscious that they were about to die, they shouted,
‘Vive l’Empereur!’ History records nothing more touching
than that agony bursting forth in acclamations.
The sky had been overcast all day long. All of a sudden, at
that very moment,—it was eight o’clock in the evening—the
clouds on the horizon parted, and allowed the grand and

572 Les Miserables