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The Deemster: English

I thought I should drop every moment from weakness, but finally near Waterloo, on mounting a little ridge, we saw the English pickets through the rain. In a cornfield, under a beating storm, we lay like gypsies, our teeth chattering with the cold--and yet thinking of massacring our fellow-men, and esteeming ourselves lucky if we had a turnip, a carrot or anything else to keep up our strength. Is that a life for honest men? Is it for this that God created us? Is it not an abomination to think that a king or an emperor, instead of encouraging commerce and diffusing liberty, should reduce us to this state by hundreds of thousands? I know that this is called glory, but people are foolish to glorify such men who have lost all sense of right and heart and religion.

When I awoke in the morning the church-bells were ringing and I thought: "To-day is Sunday, a day of peace and rest. Father Goulden, dressed in his best coat and a clean shirt, is thinking of me. Catherine is sitting on the bed and weeping. Aunt Grethel has taken her prayer-book and is going to Mass." As I pictured to myself that quiet, happy life, I could have burst into tears. But the drums began to beat and the trumpets sounded. The first movement was when our four divisions were ordered to advance. We were about twenty thousand men, marching in two lines and sinking up to our knees with every step in the soft mud. Nobody spoke a word. Face to face with us were the English, in perfect order, their cannoneers with lighted matches in their hands.

On all sides, as far as the eye could reach, nothing was to be seen but cuirasses, helmets, swords, lances, and rows of bayonets. "What a battle!" cried Buche, my comrade-at-arms. "Woe to the English!" And I thought as he did. I believed that not a single Englishman would escape. But bad luck pursued us that day; though, had it not been for the Prussians, I think we should have exterminated them all.

Down into the little valley we poured, right into the face of the English fire, and shouting all the time, "Give them the bayonet!" The batteries hurled their grape-shot point-blank upon us. It was then, for the first time, I saw the English close at hand. They had fair skins and were clean shaven like respectable citizens. They can fight well, too--but we are as good as they. Every shot of the English told; and this forced us to break our ranks, for men are not mere palisades.

And almost at the same moment we saw a mass of red dragoons, on gray horses, sweeping along like the wind and sabering our stragglers without mercy. It was one of the most terrible moments of my life as we were driven back. What a fearful thing is a battle!

Then out came Marshal Ney waving his sword in the air. Older, thinner, and more bony than when I saw him last, but still the same brave soldier with the clear eyes that seemed to take us all in. "Forward," he cried; "I shall lead you myself!" And we rushed ahead, one after the other like a pack of wolves, until we gained the principal outpost of the British.

But suddenly the rumor spread that the Prussians were coming. I felt myself grow pale.

At that moment cries of "Vive l'Empereur!" rose from thousands of throats behind us, and looking back I saw all our cavalry of the right wing advancing to attack the solid squares of the English. It was an awesome sight. With waving sabers they rushed pell-mell again and again upon the redcoats. Twenty such charges they made, until the horses of our cuirassiers, exhausted, could no longer even walk--and there still firmly stood the great red lines, steadfast as walls.