On rushed the devoted French columns led by Ney, _bravest of the brave_, who, covered with blood and dust, hatless, with clothing torn, and on foot--five horses having been shot under him--still dared to dream of victory. As the French reached the top of the hill, for one madly exultant moment they thought that the enemy had fled; but at Wellington’s hissing command, “Up, Guards, and at them!”, they stood aghast as the very earth seemed to open and pour out brigade after brigade of British Red Coats. The onslaught was awful. Over the crest of the hill and far down the slope the French were driven saber-slaughtered and slaughtering. _La Garde Reculée_ (The Guard is repulsed)--this cry with its ominous suggestion sped from blanched lip to lip. And soon the most desperate of all defeat cries _Sauve qui peut!_ (All’s lost: save himself who can!) became general among the fleeing French forces. At La Belle Alliance Napoleon attempted to make a rallying point; he hastily pressed his few devoted followers into a square, declaring it his intention to perish with them. But as it is the surgeon that has most mercilessly used his knife upon others, who shrinks back in awful dread from the knife as used upon himself: so Napoleon who had seen thousands of soldiers die of bloody wounds, could not endure for himself that which he had been willing to witness in others. As the English drew near and, seeing the hopelessness of the French position, called upon them to surrender; and even as General Cambronne gallantly replied, “The Guard dies; it does not surrender”, Napoleon spurred back his horse, turned, and galloped at full speed from the field. EXILE. Napoleon a second time signed a treaty of abdication just one hundred days after his flagrant violation of the first treaty of abdication. One hundred days of doubtful triumph and then--Waterloo: was it worth while! The Machiavellian principles--honorable fraud; splendid rascality; a ruler should combine the qualities of the fox and the lion; no matter what the means may be, the vulgar are ever caught by appearances and judge only by the event--which Napoleon had so deeply imbibed from perusal of his favorite book _Il Principe_, suffered sudden collapse of inflation and wraith-like glimmered as will-o-the-wisps in a bog. That stripping away of names and epithets and phrases and opinions and customs and sunlight success from the--Lie: and that Lie in naked hideousness black-branded on the soul for self and all the world to see;--how terrible a triumph of the unseen over the seen, the real over the apparent, the truth over the lie! What Austerlitz concealed Waterloo revealed. Outlaw of Europe, execrable wretch, vile miscreant whom no promises or vows could hold in honor, etc., were among the uncouth Teutonic free translations of Nap’s subtly soft _Il Principe_.