rassiers, had examined the ground, but could not see this hollow road, which did not make even a wrinkle on the surface of the plateau. Warned, however, and put on his guard by the little white chapel which marks its junction with the Nivelles road, he had, probably on the contingency of an obstacle, put a question to the guide Lacoste. The guide had answered. no. It may almost be said that from this shake of a peasant's head came the catastrophe of Napoleon.

14. At the same time with the ravine, the artillery was unmasked. Sixty cannon and the thirteen squares thundered and flashed into the cuirassiers. The brave General Delord gave the military salute to the English battery. All the English flying artillery took position in the squares at a gallop. The cuirassiers had not even time to breathe. The disaster of the sunken road had decimated, but not discouraged them. They were men who, diminished in numbers, grew greater in heart.

15. Wathier's column alone had suffered from the disaster. Delord's, which Ney had sent obliquely to the left, as if he had a presentiment of the snare, arrived entire. The cuirassiers hurled themselves upon the English squares. At full gallop, with free rein, their sabers in their teeth, and their pistols in their hands, the attack began. There are moments in battle when the soul hardens a man, even to changing the soldier into a statue, and all this flesh becomes granite. The English battalions, desperately assailed, did not yield an inch. Then it was frightful.

16. All sides of the English squares were attacked at once. A whirlwind of frenzy enveloped them. This frigid infantry remained impassible. The first rank, with knee on the ground, received the cuirassiers on their bayonets, the second shot them down; behind the second rank, the cannoneers loaded their guns, the front of the square opened, made way for an eruption of grape, and closed again.

17. The cuirassiers answered by rushing upon them with crushing force. Their great horses reared, trampled upon

the ranks, leaped over the bayonets, and fell, gigantic, in the midst of these four living walls. The balls made gaps in the ranks of the cuirassiers, the cuirassiers made breaches in the squares. Files of men disappeared, ground down beneath the horses' feet.

18. The squares, consumed by this furious cavalry, closed up without wavering. Inexhaustible in grape, they kept up an explosion in the midst of their assailants. It was a monstrous sight. These squares were battalions no longer-they were craters; these cuirassiers were cavalry no longer-they were a tempest. Each square was a volcano attacked by a thunder-cloud; the lava fought with the lightning.

19. The square on the extreme right, the most exposed of all, being in the open field, was almost annihilated at the first shock. It was formed of the 75th regiment of Highlanders. The cuirassiers, relatively few in number, lessened by the catastrophe of the ravine, had to contend with almost the whole of the English army; but they multiplied themselveseach man became equal to ten. Nevertheless, some Hanoverian battalions fell back. Wellington saw it, and remembered his cavalry. Had Napoleon, at that very moment, remembered his infantry, he would have won the battle. This forgetfulness was his great fatal blunder.

Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French, and the greatest general of modern times, was born on the island of Corsica, August 15, 1769. He was chosen Emperor of the French, May, 1804. The Battle of Waterloo was fought on the 18th of June, 1815. The allied forces of Prussia and England were commanded by the Duke of Wellington, while those of France were under Napoleon. It ended in a total rout of the French army. Napoleon was banished to the island of St. Helena, where he died, after an imprisonment of nearly six years, May 5th, 1821.

SUDD

LESSON LXVII.

THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO.

PART SECOND.

UDDENLY the assailing cuirassiers perceived that they were assailed. The English cavalry was upon their back. Before them the squares, behind them Somerset; Som

erset, with the fourteen hundred dragoon guards. Somerset had on his right Dornberg with his German light-horse, and on his left, Trip with the Belgian carbineers. The cuirassiers, attacked front, flank, and rear, by infantry and cavalry, were compelled to face in all directions. What was that to them? They were a whirlwind.

unspeakable.

Their valor became

2. Besides, they had behind them the ever-thundering artillery. All that was necessary in order to wound such men in the back. It was no longer a conflict, it was a darkness, a fury, a giddy vortex of souls and courage, a hurricane of sword-flashes. In an instant the fourteen hundred horseguards were but eight hundred; Fuller, their lieutenantcolonel, fell dead.

3. Ney rushed up with the lancers and chasseurs. The plateau of Mont St. Jean was taken, retaken, taken again. The cuirassiers left the cavalry to return to the infantry, or more correctly, all this terrible multitude wrestled with each other without letting go their hold. The squares still held. There were twelve assaults. Ney had four horses killed under him. Half of the cuirassiers lay on the plateau. This struggle lasted two hours. The English army was terribly shaken. There is no doubt, if they had not been crippled in their first shock by the disaster of the sunken road, the cuirassiers would have overwhelmed the center, and decided the victory.

4. Wellington, though three fourths conquered, was struck with heroic admiration. He said in a low voice: "Splendid!" The cuirassiers annihilated seven squares out of thirteen, took or spiked sixty pieces of cannon, and took from the English regiments six colors, which three cuirassiers and three chasseurs of the guard carried to the Emperor before the farm of La Belle-Alliance. The situation of Wellington was growing worse. This strange battle was like a duel between two wounded infuriates, who, while yet fighting and resisting, lose all their blood. Which of the two shall fall first?

5. The victory was still undecided. Both armies were in

need of reinforcements, which were not at hand. At five o'clock Wellington drew out his watch, and was heard to murmur these somber words, "Blucher, or night!" It was about that time that a distant line of bayonets glistened on the heights beyond Frischemont. Here is the turning point in this colossal drama. Blucher was in sight.

6. The rest is known; the interruption of a third army, the battle thrown out of joint; a new battle falling at nightfall upon our dismantled regiments, the whole English line assuming the offensive and pushing forward, the gigantic gap made in the French army, the English grape and the Prussian grape lending mutual aid, extermination, disaster in front, disaster in flank, the Guard entering into line amid this terrible crumbling.

7. Feeling that they were going to their death, they cried out: Vive l'Empereur! There is nothing more touching in history than this death-agony bursting forth in acclamations. The sky had been overcast all day. All at once, at this very moment—it was eight o'clock at night-the clouds in the horizon broke, and through the elms on the Nivelles road streamed the sinister red light of the setting sun. The rising sun shone upon Austerlitz.

8. Each battalion of the Guard, for this final effort, was commanded by a general. When the tall caps of the Grenadiers of the Guard with their large eagle-plates appeared, symmetrical, drawn up in line, calm, in the smoke of that conflict, the enemy felt respect for France; they thought they saw twenty victories entering upon the field of battle, with wings extended, and those who were conquerors, thinking themselves conquered, recoiled; but Wellington cried: "Up Guards, and at them!"

9. The red regiment of English Guards, lying behind the hedges, rose up, a shower of grape riddled the tricolored flag fluttering about our eagles, all hurled themselves forward, and the final carnage began. The Imperial Guard felt the army slipping away around them in the gloom, and the vast over

throw of the rout; they heard the sauve qui peut! which had replaced the rire l'Empereur! and with flight behind them, they held on their course, battered more and more, and dying faster and faster at every step. There were no weak souls or cowards there. The privates of that band were as heroic as their general. Not a man flinched from the suicide.

10. Ney, desperate, great in all the grandeur of accepted death, bared himself to every blow in this tempest. He had his horse killed under him. Reeking with sweat, fire in his eyes, froth upon his lips, his uniform unbuttoned, one of his epaulets half cut away by the saber stroke of a horse-guard, his badge of the grand eagle pierced by a ball, bloody, covered with mud, magnificent, a broken sword in his hand, he said: "Come and see how a Marshal of France dies upon the field of battle!" But in vain ; he did not die. He was haggard and exasperated. He flung this question at Drouet D'Erlon. "What! are you not going to die?” He cried out in the midst of all this artillery which was mowing down a handful of men: "Is there nothing then, for me? Oh! I would that all these English balls were buried in my body!" Unhappy man! thou wast reserved for French bullets!

11. The rout behind the Guard was dismal. The army fell back rapidly from all sides at once. The cry: Treachery! was followed by the cry: Sauve qui peut! A disbanding army is a thaw. The whole bends, cracks, snaps, floats, rolls, falls, crashes, hurries, plunges. Mysterious disintegration. Ney borrows a horse, leaps upon him, and without hat, cravat, or sword, plants himself in the Brussels road, arresting at once the English and the French. He endeavors to hold the army, he calls them back, he reproaches them, he grapples with the rout. He is swept away. The soldiers flee from him, crying: vive Marshal Ney!

12. Durutte's two regiments come and go, frightened, and tossed between the sabers of the Uhlans and the fire of the brigades of Kempt, Best, Pack, and Rylandt; rout is the worst of all conflicts; friends slay each other in their flight;