第七十八章 皇帝向向导拉科斯特提问
第八章 皇帝向向导拉科斯特提问
因此，滑铁卢战役的清晨，拿破仑是满意的。
他是对的；他构思的作战计划，正如我们所见，确实堪称卓越。
战斗一旦开始，其千变万化的进展——乌古蒙的抵抗；圣拉埃的顽强；博杜安阵亡；富瓦受伤；那堵意外出现的墙垣粉碎了索瓦耶的旅；吉耶米诺既无炸药包又无火药袋的致命疏忽；炮兵连陷入泥沼；十五门孤炮在洼地中被阿克斯布里奇击溃；炮弹落入英军阵线，深陷于雨水浸透的泥土中，仅炸起泥浆火山，霰弹化作泥泞；皮雷对布赖讷拉勒的佯攻毫无效果；所有骑兵——十五个中队几乎全军覆没；英军右翼受到严重威胁，左翼遭到猛烈打击；内伊奇怪地错误集结第一军的四个师，而不是分散排列；士兵们以二十七人纵深、二百人正面迎敌，暴露于霰弹之下；炮弹在密集队列中炸出可怕缺口；进攻纵队溃散；侧翼突然暴露的炮兵连；布尔热瓦、东泽洛和迪吕特陷入困境；基奥被击退；维埃中尉——这位综合理工学院的赫拉克勒斯，在直射炮火下用斧头劈开圣拉埃大门时受伤；马科涅的师在步兵与骑兵之间被夹击，在贝斯特和帕克的枪口下倒在麦田里，又被庞森比屠戮；他的七门炮被钉死火门；萨克森-魏玛亲王不顾德隆伯爵的指挥，坚守并保卫弗里舍蒙和斯莫安；第105团旗被夺，第45团旗被俘；黑普鲁士骠骑兵被在瓦夫尔和普朗斯努瓦之间侦察的三百轻骑兵的散兵拦截；俘虏们所说的令人惊恐的消息；格鲁希的延误；不到一小时内乌古蒙果园中一千五百人阵亡；更短时间内在圣拉埃附近一千八百人丧生——所有这些风暴般的事件如同战役的乌云从拿破仑眼前掠过，几乎未扰乱他的目光，也未遮蔽那张充满帝国自信的面容。拿破仑习惯于镇定地凝视战争；他不曾逐项累加那些令人心碎的细节；数字对他无关紧要，只要它们能得出总数——胜利；即便开局出现偏差，他也不惊慌，因为他自认为是结局的主宰和拥有者；他懂得等待，自以为超然物外，将命运视为平等的对手：他似乎对命运说，你不敢。
由一半光明和一半阴影构成的拿破仑，自认为在善行中受庇护，在恶行中被容忍。他拥有，或自以为拥有，事件对他的纵容——几乎可说是共谋，这等同于古代的不可战胜。
然而，当一个人身后有别列津纳、莱比锡和枫丹白露时，他似乎应该对滑铁卢心存疑虑。一种神秘的蹙额在天空深处变得可察觉。
当威灵顿撤退时，拿破仑颤抖了。他突然看到圣让山高地空了，英军前卫消失了。那是重新集结，却在隐藏。皇帝在马镫上半站起身。胜利的闪电从他眼中迸射。
威灵顿被困在苏瓦涅森林并遭毁灭——那将是法国对英格兰的最终征服；那是克雷西、普瓦捷、马尔普拉凯和拉米伊的复仇。马伦戈的征服者要抹去阿金库尔的耻辱。
于是，皇帝思考着这可怕的命运转折，最后一次用望远镜扫视战场上的所有要点。他的近卫军，持枪立正站在他身后，以一种近乎宗教般的敬畏从下方注视着他。他沉思着；他审视山坡，注意斜坡，细察树丛、黑麦田和小径；他似乎数着每一丛灌木。他专注地盯着两条公路上的英军路障——两处巨大的树木障碍，一个在热纳普路上，圣拉埃之上，配备两门大炮，这是英军炮兵中仅有的能控制战场尽头的炮火；另一个在尼维尔路上，那里闪烁着沙塞旅荷兰人的刺刀光芒。在这处路障附近，他注意到那座粉刷成白色的圣尼古拉斯小教堂，它矗立在布赖讷拉勒附近十字路口的一角；他俯下身，低声向向导拉科斯特说话。向导摇了摇头，那可能是背信弃义的。
皇帝直起身，陷入沉思。
威灵顿已撤退。
剩下的就是通过碾压他来彻底完成这次撤退。
拿破仑猛地转过身，派出一名特使全速赶往巴黎，宣布战斗已获胜。
拿破仑是那种雷霆闪电从中劈出的天才之一。
他刚刚找到了他的霹雳。
他命令米约的胸甲骑兵夺取圣让山高地。
So, on the morning of Waterloo, Napoleon was content.
He was right; the plan of battle conceived by him was, as we have seen,
really admirable.
The battle once begun, its very various changes,—the resistance of
Hougomont; the tenacity of La Haie-Sainte; the killing of Bauduin; the
disabling of Foy; the unexpected wall against which Soye’s brigade was
shattered; Guilleminot’s fatal heedlessness when he had neither petard
nor powder sacks; the miring of the batteries; the fifteen unescorted
pieces overwhelmed in a hollow way by Uxbridge; the small effect of the
bombs falling in the English lines, and there embedding themselves in
the rain-soaked soil, and only succeeding in producing volcanoes of
mud, so that the canister was turned into a splash; the uselessness of
Piré’s demonstration on Braine-l’Alleud; all that cavalry, fifteen
squadrons, almost exterminated; the right wing of the English badly
alarmed, the left wing badly cut into; Ney’s strange mistake in
massing, instead of echelonning the four divisions of the first corps;
men delivered over to grape-shot, arranged in ranks twenty-seven deep
and with a frontage of two hundred; the frightful holes made in these
masses by the cannon-balls; attacking columns disorganized; the
side-battery suddenly unmasked on their flank; Bourgeois, Donzelot, and
Durutte compromised; Quiot repulsed; Lieutenant Vieux, that Hercules
graduated at the Polytechnic School, wounded at the moment when he was
beating in with an axe the door of La Haie-Sainte under the downright
fire of the English barricade which barred the angle of the road from
Genappe to Brussels; Marcognet’s division caught between the infantry
and the cavalry, shot down at the very muzzle of the guns amid the
grain by Best and Pack, put to the sword by Ponsonby; his battery of
seven pieces spiked; the Prince of Saxe-Weimar holding and guarding, in
spite of the Comte d’Erlon, both Frischemont and Smohain; the flag of
the 105th taken, the flag of the 45th captured; that black Prussian
hussar stopped by runners of the flying column of three hundred light
cavalry on the scout between Wavre and Plancenoit; the alarming things
that had been said by prisoners; Grouchy’s delay; fifteen hundred men
killed in the orchard of Hougomont in less than an hour; eighteen
hundred men overthrown in a still shorter time about La
Haie-Sainte,—all these stormy incidents passing like the clouds of
battle before Napoleon, had hardly troubled his gaze and had not
overshadowed that face of imperial certainty. Napoleon was accustomed
to gaze steadily at war; he never added up the heart-rending details,
cipher by cipher; ciphers mattered little to him, provided that they
furnished the total—victory; he was not alarmed if the beginnings did
go astray, since he thought himself the master and the possessor at the
end; he knew how to wait, supposing himself to be out of the question,
and he treated destiny as his equal: he seemed to say to fate, Thou
wilt not dare.
Composed half of light and half of shadow, Napoleon thought himself
protected in good and tolerated in evil. He had, or thought that he
had, a connivance, one might almost say a complicity, of events in his
favor, which was equivalent to the invulnerability of antiquity.
Nevertheless, when one has Bérésina, Leipzig, and Fontainebleau behind
one, it seems as though one might distrust Waterloo. A mysterious frown
becomes perceptible in the depths of the heavens.
At the moment when Wellington retreated, Napoleon shuddered. He
suddenly beheld the table-land of Mont-Saint-Jean cleared, and the van
of the English army disappear. It was rallying, but hiding itself. The
Emperor half rose in his stirrups. The lightning of victory flashed
from his eyes.
Wellington, driven into a corner at the forest of Soignes and
destroyed—that was the definitive conquest of England by France; it was
Crécy, Poitiers, Malplaquet, and Ramillies avenged. The man of Marengo
was wiping out Agincourt.
So the Emperor, meditating on this terrible turn of fortune, swept his
glass for the last time over all the points of the field of battle. His
guard, standing behind him with grounded arms, watched him from below
with a sort of religion. He pondered; he examined the slopes, noted the
declivities, scrutinized the clumps of trees, the square of rye, the
path; he seemed to be counting each bush. He gazed with some intentness
at the English barricades of the two highways,—two large abatis of
trees, that on the road to Genappe above La Haie-Sainte, armed with two
cannon, the only ones out of all the English artillery which commanded
the extremity of the field of battle, and that on the road to Nivelles
where gleamed the Dutch bayonets of Chassé’s brigade. Near this
barricade he observed the old chapel of Saint Nicholas, painted white,
which stands at the angle of the crossroad near Braine-l’Alleud; he
bent down and spoke in a low voice to the guide Lacoste. The guide made
a negative sign with his head, which was probably perfidious.
The Emperor straightened himself up and fell to thinking.
Wellington had drawn back.
All that remained to do was to complete this retreat by crushing him.
Napoleon turning round abruptly, despatched an express at full speed to
Paris to announce that the battle was won.
Napoleon was one of those geniuses from whom thunder darts.
He had just found his clap of thunder.
He gave orders to Milhaud’s cuirassiers to carry the table-land of
Mont-Saint-Jean.
