Part II, Book 1, Chapter 12
The Guard
Oh boy, another chapter that a pragmatic editor would have cut. Hugo feels it necessary to celebrate the heroism of the Imperial Guard in this chapter. For reasons that I cannot fully explain, I looked up the role of the French Imperial Guard at Waterloo, and found this long-ass piece from the Waterloo Association (!) that made my eyes glaze over.
I take it back—Hugo’s chapter is incredibly concise and enjoyable to read, compared to the alternative.
So here’s Hugo’s version: with the third army (the Prussians, remember?) entering the fray, the French forces were pummeled, and as the sun was setting, the Guards shouted “Long live the emperor!” and made one last stand. (Very poetically, Hugo points out that when they went forth at Austerlitz the sun was rising, so the sun setting here is thematically significant. I did not bother fact-checking this because these Waterloo chapters are already such a slog and I don’t want to slog through even more information about Waterloo. I will just take Hugo at his word.)
The Guards in all their regalia looked splendid appearing on the battlefield and advanced all the while they were being decimated by Wellington’s forces. “Not a man among them shirked that suicide,” Hugo writes, and man, I can see that movie edit now: the Guards surrounded by destruction, moving forward in slow motion while a choir swells and one pure-toned voice soars above it all.
…I just wrote all that out and realized I was picturing The Last March of the Ents.
The Ents Guards went down, and the chapter ends with a note about General Ney, who like the Guards embraced death in battle but, unlike the Guards, did not find it. “Ill-fated man, you were saved for French bullets!” says Hugo, and off I go to Wikipedia again.
Ah, okay, so Michel Ney fought for Napoleon and was sentenced to death for treason after Napoleon was defeated and exiled. According to Wikipedia, Ney’s lawyer tried to argue at his trial that Ney could not be tried by a French court to treason because he was technically Prussian after his hometown had been annexed by Prussia (classic lawyer move), and Ney undid this by interrupting and yelling, “I am French and will remain French!” which is a Peak French thing to do.
Then, at his own execution by firing squad, he refused to wear a blindfold, and issued the order to fire himself, saying it would be his last order to soldiers and that “I have fought a hundred battles for France, and not one against her.”
Damn, an ICON. Why isn’t the whole chapter about this Ney fellow?
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