Only as day begins to dawn does he return to the little hut in his shabby headquarters at Le Caillou, where he finds Grouchy’s first dispatches: confused reports of the retreat of the Prussians, but at least there is the reassuring promise to keep following them. The rain gradually slackens. The emperor paces impatiently up and down his room and stares at the yellow horizon to see whether the terrain in the distance will be revealed at last—and with it his decision.

At five in the morning—the rain has stopped—his inner cloud, a cloud of indecision, also clears. The order is given: the whole army is to form up in rank and file, ready to attack, at nine in the morning. Orderlies gallop off in all directions. Soon drums are beating to summon the men. Only now does Napoleon throw himself on his camp bed to sleep for two hours.

The Mor ning of Waterloo

Nine in the morning, but the troops are not yet assembled in their full numbers. The ground underfoot, sodden after three days of rain, makes every movement difficult, and slows down the artillery as the guns come up. The sun appears only slowly, shining in a sharp wind, but it is not the sun of Austerlitz, radiant in a bright sky and promising good fortune; this northerly light is dull and sullen. But at last the troops are ready and now, before the battle begins, Napoleon rides his mare all along the front once more. The eagles on the banners bow down as if in a roaring gale, the cavalry shake their sabres in warlike manner, the infantry raise their bearskin caps on the tips of their bayonets in greeting. All the drums roll, the trumpets sound to greet their field marshal, but above all these sparkling notes, rolling thunderously above the regiments, rises the jubilant cry of Vive l’empereur! from the throats of 70,000 soldiers.

No parade in Napoleon’s twenty-year reign was more spectacular and enthusiastic than this, the last of them. The cries of acclamation have hardly died away at eleven o’clock—two hours later than foreseen, two fateful hours later!—than the gunners are given the order to mow down the redcoats on the hill with case-shot. Then Ney, “the bravest of the brave”, advances with the infantry, and Napoleon’s deciding hour begins. The battle has been described a thousand times, but we never tire of reading the exciting accounts of its vicissitudes, whether in Sir Walter Scott’s fine version or in Stendhal’s episodic rendering. It is seen from both near and far, from the hill where the field marshals met or from the cuirassier’s saddle, as a great incident, rich in diversity; it is a work of art with tension and drama brought to bear on its constant alternation of hope and fear, suddenly resolving into a moment of extreme catastrophe. And it is a model of a genuine tragedy, because the fate of Europe was determined in one man’s destiny, and the fantastic firework of Napoleon’s existence shoots up once more into the skies, before flickering as it falls and goes out.

From eleven to one o’clock, the French regiments storm the heights, take villages and military positions, are thrown back, storm into the attack once more. Ten thousand men already lie dead on the wet, muddy hills of the empty landscape, and nothing has been achieved but the exhaustion of the two adversaries. Both armies are tired to death, both commanders are uneasy. They both know that the victory will go to whichever of them gets reinforcements first, Wellington from Blücher, Napoleon from Grouchy. Napoleon keeps nervously raising his telescope, he keeps sending more orderlies out. If his marshal arrives in time, the sun of Austerlitz will shine over France again.

Grouchy Loses His Way

Meanwhile Grouchy, unaware that he holds Napoleon’s destiny in his hands, has set out according to his orders on the evening of 17th June, following the Prussians in the prescribed direction. The rain has stopped. The young companies who tasted gunpowder for the first time yesterday stroll along, as carefree as in peacetime; the enemy is still not in evidence, there is still no trace of the defeated Prussian army.

Then suddenly, just as the marshal is eating a quick breakfast in a farmhouse, the ground shakes slightly under their feet. They prick up their ears. The sound rolls over the country towards them with a muted tone that is already dying away: they are hearing cannon, batteries of them, being fired far away, but not too far away. A march of three hours, at the most, will get them there. A few of the officers throw themselves down on the ground, in the style of American Indians, to get a clear idea of the direction the sound is coming from. That distant noise is constant and muted. It is the cannonade of Saint-Jean, the beginning of Waterloo.