Part II, Book 1, Chapter 17
Should Waterloo Be Regarded as a Good Thing?
Look. I’ve been told that Victor Hugo is one of the greatest writers of all time. I don’t want to get swept up in Great Man nonsense, but I am willing to accept the premise that he is a pretty good writer, maybe even very good.
So what is he doing with this high-school-essay-ass chapter title? And in fact, this whole chapter reads like a particularly loquacious high school essay.
Like any good student of history, Hugo explains that Napoleon and Waterloo didn’t happen in a vacuum (and therefore cannot be seen as good/bad, liberal/illiberal, etc.)—that revolutionary forces are inevitable and that, in this case, they first carried Napoleon and then crushed him. It’s an accurate, if somewhat basic idea—then again, it’s one that plenty of literate adults still struggle with today, with the binary “is this good for my side or bad for my side” approach to politics.
Because yes, as long as there are people suffering en masse and left out of the national dialogue, and as long as this is all happening while power is unjustly concentrated in the hands of an egotripping few, there will always be tinder for revolution, and those who seize on that potential energy are not point-blank “good or bad” so much as they are inevitable catalysts in the larger sweep of history.
It’s a nice thematic callback to G’s pronouncement in Part I: “A cloud gathered for fifteen hundred years. At the end of fifteen centuries it burst. And you put the thunderbolt on trial.”
We get a few lines with big Idealistic High School Student Energy here: “If you want to understand what revolution is, call it Progress. And if you want to understand what progress is, call it Tomorrow. Tomorrow comes into effect irresistibly, and does so even today.”
Oh my god, you guys, Victor Hugo wrote the Carousel of Progress song.
Hugo finishes the chapter, reinforcing his main point, by saying that Waterloo was “not intentionally liberal” (for all the reasons I summarized above)—which is a turn of phrase I am going to yoink for all my political analysis going forward.
A ghoulish congressperson takes a stand against a more ghoulish politician? Not intentionally liberal. A despotic foreign leader makes some good points attacking the despotic tendencies of our own leader? Not intentionally liberal! A policy designed to stifle freedom of speech backfires and creates an outpouring of inclusive expression? NOT INTENTIONALLY LIBERAL.
This is going to be such a useful phrase.
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