Wellington had always been baleful to Bonaparte, or rather the rival genius to France, the English genius, barred the road to victory. To-day, the Prussians lay claim to the honour of this decisive battle, as against the English; but in war it is not the action accomplished but the name that makes the triumpher: it was not Bonaparte who won the real Battle of Jena[330]. The blunders of the French were important: they made mistakes as to friendly or hostile bodies; they occupied the position of Quatre-Bras too late; Marshal Grouchy, whose instructions were to hold the Prussians in check with his thirty-six thousand men, allowed them to pass without seeing them: hence the reproaches which our generals cast at one another. Bonaparte attacked in front, according to his custom, instead of turning the English, and, with a master's presumption, occupied himself in cutting off the retreat of an enemy who was not beaten. Many falsehoods and some rather curious truths have been retailed concerning this catastrophe. The phrase, "The Guard dies but does not surrender," is an invention which no one dares now to defend. It appears to be certain that, at the commencement of the action, Soult made some strategic observations to the Emperor, and that Napoleon replied, drily: "Because Wellington defeated you, you persist in thinking him a great general." At the end of the fighting, M. de Turenne[331] urged Bonaparte to retire, to avoid falling into the hands of the enemy: Bonaparte, emerging from his thoughts as from a dream, at first flew into a passion; then, suddenly, in the midst of his rage, he flung himself upon his horse and fled. * On the 19th of June, a salute of a hundred guns at the Invalides announced the successes of Ligny, Charleroi and Quatre-Bras; they were celebrating victories that had died the day before at Waterloo. The first messenger to bring to Paris the news of this defeat, one of the greatest in history in its results, was Napoleon himself. He re-entered the barriers on the night of the 21st: as who should say returning from his shades to inform his friends that he was no more. He stayed at the Élysée-Bourbon; when he arrived from Elba, he had stayed at the Tuileries: those refuges, instinctively chosen, revealed the change in his destiny. [Sidenote: Flight of Napoleon.] Fallen in a noble fight abroad, Napoleon had, in Paris, to endure the assaults of the advocates who wished to exploit his misfortunes: he regretted that he had not dissolved the Chamber before his departure for the army; he often also repented that he had not had Fouché and Talleyrand shot. But it is certain that Bonaparte, after Waterloo, forbade himself any kind of violence, whether because he obeyed the natural calm of his temperament, or because he was daunted by fate; he no longer said, as before his first abdication: "They shall see what the death of a great man is."