Napoleon launches his charge, one that Hugo describes as two giant snakes winding their way across the field and up the hill to challenge their enemies on the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean. Everything seems to be going as planned. They make their way through the region that was at the heart of the earlier clashes we talked about as occurring within the “fog of war”. They come out the other side and it seems like a clear point where victory will be seized.
cresting the hill and charging toward the enemy the “snake” on the right (from the perspective of the French charge) realizes the furrow exists too late. Desperately trying to stop horses and their riders begin to plunge into the ravine - the road itself had 15 foot embankments on either side. with the full force of the “snake behind, body after body, horse after horse, us plunged into the ravine in a terrifyingly tragic twist.
A third of the brigade ended up dead in the ditch, and essentially created a “bridge” for the rest to cross. It’s an awful picture and a tragic turn. Local tradition (which Hugo notes was clearly exaggerated) claimed that two thousand horses and fifteen hundred men ended up dead in the sunken lane of Ohain.
The unknown that Napoleon had not accounted for has become known, and with it the battle has turned.
Hugo declares:
Napoleon had been impeached in Heaven and his fall decreed; he was troublesome to God.
Waterloo was not a battle but a change in the direction of the world.
It takes a certain kind of bold brashness to speak for God. Was Napoleon prideful and arrogant in his assurance of victory? Yes. Was there much about his actions that I find repulsive and repugnant? Yes. Am I comfortable saying “God threw him down”? No. The view of God that comes to the surface here is one of a divine chess master who moves the pieces of the world around the board according to his own pleasure. That’s a view that I have rejected. I don’t believe in a God that maintains that kind of control of events. Do people reap what they sow? Are their consequences for our actions? Yes, and we don’t need a God who plays puppet master for those things to be true.
We’ll see where things go and in what way all of this has bearing on our story in the pages to come.