Wellington is the classical war taking its revenge; Bonaparte, in his dawn, had met it in Italy and superbly defeated it,--the old owl fled before the young vulture. The old tactics had been not only overthrown, but scandalized. Who was this Corsican of six-and-twenty years of age? What meant this splendid ignoramus who, having everything against him, nothing for him, without provisions, ammunition, guns, shoes, almost without an army, with a handful of men against masses, dashed at allied Europe, and absurdly gained impossible victories? Whence came this mad thunderer, who, almost without taking breath, pulverized one after another the five armies of the Emperor of Germany, upsetting Beaulieu upon Alvinzi, Wurmser upon Beaulieu, Mélas upon Wurmser, Mack upon Mélas? Who was this new-comer of war who possessed the effrontery of a planet? The academic military school excommunicated him, while bolting, and hence arose an implacable rancor of the old Cæsarism against the new, of the old sabre against the flashing sword, and of the chess-board against genius. On June 18, 1815, this rancor got the best; and beneath Lodi, Montebello, Montenotte, Mantua, Marengo, and Arcola, it wrote,--Waterloo. It was a triumph of mediocrity, sweet to majorities, and destiny consented to this irony. In his decline, Napoleon found a young Wurmser before him,--in fact, it is only necessary to whiten Wellington's hair in order to have a Wurmser. Waterloo is a battle of the first class, gained by a captain of the second.
What must be admired in the battle of Waterloo is England, the English firmness, the English resolution, the English blood; and what England had really superb in it is (without offence) herself; it is not her captain, but her army. Wellington, strangely ungrateful, declares in his despatch to Lord Bathurst, that his army, the one which fought on June 18, 1815, was a "detestable army." What does the gloomy pile of bones buried in the trenches of Waterloo think of this? England has been too modest to herself in her treatment of Wellington; for making him so great is making herself small. Wellington is merely a hero like any other man. The Scotch Grays, the Life Guards, Maitland and Mitchell's regiments, Pack and Kempt's infantry, Ponsonby and Somerset's cavalry, the Highlanders playing the bagpipes under the shower of canister, Ryland's battalions, the fresh recruits who could hardly manage a musket and yet held their ground against the old bands of Essling and Rivoli,--all this is grand. Wellington was tenacious, that was his merit, and we do not deny it to him; but the lowest of his privates and his troopers was quite as solid as he, and the iron soldier is as good as the iron duke. For our part, all our glorification is offered to the English soldier, the English army, the English nation; and if there must be a trophy, it is to England that this trophy is owing. The Waterloo column would be more just if, instead of the figure of a man, it raised to the clouds the statue of a people.