Still it is incontestable that what triumphed at Waterloo; what smiled
behind Wellington; what procured him all the marshals' staffs of
Europe, including, by the way, that of Marshal of France; what rolled
along joyously the wheelbarrows of earth mingled with bones to erect
the foundation for the lion, on whose pedestal is inscribed the date
June 18, 1815; what encouraged Blücher in cutting down the routed army;
and what from the plateau of Mont St. Jean hovered over France like a
prey,--was the counter-revolution. It is the counter-revolution that
muttered the hideous word "Dismemberment"; but on reaching Paris it had
a close view of the crater, it felt that the ashes burned its feet, and
it reflected. It went back to the job of stammering a charter.
Let us only see in Waterloo what there really is in it. There is no
intentional liberty, for the counter-revolution was involuntarily
liberal in the same way as Napoleon, through a corresponding
phenomenon, was involuntarily a Revolutionist. On June 18, 1815,
Robespierre on horseback was thrown.
CHAPTER XVIII.
RESTORATION OF DIVINE RIGHT.
With the fall of the Dictatorship, an entire European system crumbled
away, and the Empire vanished in a shadow which resembled that of the
expiring Roman world. Nations escaped from the abyss as in the time of
the Barbarians; but the Barbarism of 1815, which could be called by
its familiar name the counter-revolution, had but little breath, soon
began to pant, and stopped. The Empire, we confess, was lamented, and
by heroic eyes, and its glory consists in the sword-made sceptre; the
Empire was glory itself. It had spread over the whole earth all the
light that tyranny can give,--a dim light, we will say, an obscure
light; for when compared with real day, it is night. This disappearance
of the night produced the effect of an eclipse.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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