Page 588 - les-miserables

sides some one was awaited. It was the exact calculator who
succeeded. Napoleon was waiting for Grouchy; he did not
come. Wellington expected Blucher; he came.
Wellington is classic war taking its revenge. Bonaparte,
at his dawning, had encountered him in Italy, and beaten
him superbly. The old owl had fled before the young vulture.
The old tactics had been not only struck as by lightning, but
disgraced. Who was that Corsican of six and twenty? What
signified that splendid ignoramus, who, with everything
against him, nothing in his favor, without provisions, with-
out ammunition, without cannon, without shoes, almost
without an army, with a mere handful of men against mass-
es, hurled himself on Europe combined, and absurdly won
victories in the impossible? Whence had issued that fulmi-
nating convict, who almost without taking breath, and with
the same set of combatants in hand, pulverized, one after
the other, the five armies of the emperor of Germany, up-
setting Beaulieu on Alvinzi, Wurmser on Beaulieu, Melas
on Wurmser, Mack on Melas? Who was this novice in war
with the effrontery of a luminary? The academical mili-
tary school excommunicated him, and as it lost its footing;
hence, the implacable rancor of the old Caesarism against
the new; of the regular sword against the flaming sword;
and of the exchequer against genius. On the 18th of June,
1815, that rancor had the last word. and beneath Lodi, Mon-
tebello, Montenotte, Mantua, Arcola, it wrote: Waterloo. A
triumph of the mediocres which is sweet to the majority.
Destiny consented to this irony. In his decline, Napoleon
found Wurmser, the younger, again in front of him.

588 Les Miserables