The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I
History
The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I
Authors -- Biography; Literature -- Collections
Altogether, we will assert, there is more of a massacre than of a
battle in Waterloo. Waterloo, of all pitched battles, is the one which
had the smallest front for such a number of combatants. Napoleon's
three-quarters of a league. Wellington's half a league, and
seventy-two thousand combatants on either side. From this density came
the carnage. The following calculation has been made and proportion
established: loss of men, at Austerlitz, French, fourteen per cent.;
Russian, thirty per cent.; Austrian, forty-four per cent.: at Wagram,
French, thirteen per cent.; Austrian, fourteen per cent.: at Moscow,
French, thirty-seven per cent.; Russian, forty-four per cent.: at
Bautzen, French, thirteen per cent.; Russian and Prussian, fourteen
per cent.: at Waterloo, French, fifty-six per cent.; allies,
thirty-one per cent.--total for Waterloo, forty-one per cent., or out
of one hundred and forty-four thousand fighting men, sixty thousand
killed.
The field of Waterloo has at the present day that calmness which
belongs to the earth, and resembles all plains; but at night, a sort
of visionary mist rises from it, and if any traveler walk about it,
and listen and dream, like Virgil on the mournful plain of Philippi,
the hallucination of the catastrophe seizes upon him. The frightful
June 18th lives again, the false monumental hill is leveled, the
wondrous lion is dissipated, the battle-field resumes its reality,
lines of infantry undulate on the plain; furious galloping crosses the
horizon; the startled dreamer sees the flash of sabers, the sparkle of
bayonets, the red light of shells, the monstrous collision of
thunderbolts; he hears, like a death groan from the tomb, the vague
clamor of the fantom battle. These shadows are grenadiers; these
flashes are cuirassiers; this skeleton is Napoleon; this skeleton is
Wellington; all this is nonexistent, and yet still combats, and the
ravines are stained purple, and the trees rustle, and there is fury
even in the clouds and in the darkness, while all the stern heights,
Mont St. Jean, Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, and Plancenoit, seem
confusedly crowned by hosts of specters exterminating one another.
II
THE BEGINNINGS AND EXPANSIONS OF PARIS[58]
The Paris of three hundred and fifty years ago, the Paris of the
fifteenth century, was already a gigantic city. We modern Parisians in
general are much mistaken in regard to the ground which we imagine it
has gained. Since the time of Louis XI Paris has not increased above
one-third; and certes it has lost much more in beauty than it has
acquired in magnitude.
[Footnote 58: From Book III, Chapter II, of "The Hunchback of Notre
Dame." From an anonymous, non-copyright translation published by A. L.
Burt Company.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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