The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01Brann, William Cowper
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The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
Maranatha of men infinitely worse than Oscar Wilde. What
the Mirror means by "Cambronne's surrender" I cannot
imagine, unless Editor Reedy was indulging in grim irony. I
present extracts from the account of Cambronne, which he
suspects may have given the pietistical Quakers a pain. It
is the finale of Hugo's matchless word-painting of the Battle
of Waterloo:
"A few squares of the guard, standing motionless in the
swash of the rout, like rocks in running water, held out till
night. They awaited the double shadow of night and death,
and let them surround them. Each regiment, isolated from
the others, and no longer connected with the army, which
was broken on all sides, died where it stood. The gloomy
squares, deserted, conquered and terrible, struggled
formidably with death, for Ulm, Wagram, Jena and
Friedland were dying in it. When twilight set in at nine in
the evening, one square still remained at the foot of the
plateau of Mont St. Jean. In this mournful valley, at the
foot of the slope scaled by the cuirassiers, now inundated
by the English masses, beneath the converging fire of the
hostile and victorious artillery, under a fearful hailstorm of
projectiles, this square still resisted. It was commanded by
an obscure officer by the name of Cambronne. At each
volley the square still diminished, but continued to reply to
the canister with musketry fire, and each moment
contracted its four walls. Fugitives in the distance, stopping
at moments to draw breath, listened in the darkness to this
gloomy diminishing thunder. When this legion had become
only a handful, when their colors were but a rag,
when their ammunition was exhausted, and muskets were
clubbed, and when the pile of corpses was greater than the
living group, the victors felt a species of sacred awe, and
the English artillery ceased firing. It was a sort of respite;
these combatants had around them an army of specters,
outlines of mounted men, the black profile of guns, and the
white sky visible through the wheels; the colossal death's
head which heroes ever glimpse in the smoke of battle,
advanced and looked at them. They could hear in the
twilight gloom that the guns were being loaded; the lighted
matches, resembling the eyes of a tiger in the night, formed
a circle round their heads. The linstocks of the English
batteries approached the guns, and at this moment an
English general, Colville according to some, Maitland
according to others, holding the supreme moment
suspended over the heads of these men, shouted to them,
'Brave Frenchmen, surrender!' Cambronne answered,
'Merde.' To Cambronne's exclamation, an English voice
replied, 'Fire!' The batteries flashed, the hillside trembled,
from all these throats of brass came a last eruption of
grape, a vast cloud of smoke vaguely whitened by the
rising moon rolled up, and when the smoke had been
dissipated, there was nothing. The dreaded remnant was
annihilated, the guard was dead. The four walls of the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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