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THE CLOSING SCENE AT WATERLOO.

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Note 39.

THE CLOSING SCENE AT WATERLOO.

AT five o'clock in the afternoon, Wellington drew out his watch and was heard to murmur these sombre words: "Blücher or night!" It was about this time that a distant line of bayonets glistened on the heights beyond Frichemont. Here is the turning-point in this colossal drama.

The rest is known. The irruption of a third army; the battle thrown out of joint: eighty-six pieces of artillery suddenly thundering forth: a new battle falling at night upon the dismantled French 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 the terrible crumbling. 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.

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!"

The red regiment of English Guards, lying behind the hedges, rose up. A shower of grape riddled the tri-colored flag, fluttering about the French eagle. All hurled themselves forward, and the final charge began. The Imperial Guard felt the army slipping away round them in the gloom and in the vast overthrow of the rout. They heard the "Sauve qui peut!" which had replaced the "Vive 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.

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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, rolls, crashes, plunges. Mysterious disintegration! Napoleon gallops along the fugitives, harangues them, urges, threatens, entreats. The mouths which in the morning were crying "Vive l'Empereur!" are now agape. He is barely recognized; the Prussian cavalry just come up, spring forward, fling themselves upon the enemy. Teams rush off; the guns are left to take care of themselves; the soldiers of the train take the horses to escape. Wagons upset with their four wheels in the air, block up the road. They crash, they crowd, they trample upon the living and the dead. Arms are broken. A multitude fills roads, bridges, valleys, woods, choked up by the flight of forty thousand men. No more comrades; no more officers; no more generals. Inexpressible dismay.

In the gathering night, on a field near Genappe, Bernard and Bertrand seized by a flap of his coat, and stopped a haggard, thoughtful, gloomy man, who dragged thus far by the current of the rout, had dismounted, passed the bridle of his horse under his arm, and, with bewildered eye, was returning alone towards Waterloo. It was Napoleon endeavoring to advance again. Mighty somnambulist of a vanished dream!

VICTOR HUGO.

Note 40.

DEATH OF TOUSSAINT L'OVERTURE.

RETURNING to the hills, Toussaint issued the only proclamation which bears his name, and breathes vengeance : 'My children, France comes to make us slaves. us liberty: France has no right to take it away.

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God gave

Burn the

DEATH OF TOUSSAINT L'OVERTURE.

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cities, destroy the harvests, tear up the roads with cannon, poison the wells. Show the white man the hell he comes to make"; and he was obeyed.

When the great William of Orange saw Louis XIV. cover Holland with troops, he said: "Break down the dikes, give Holland back to ocean"; and Europe said, "Sublime!" When Alexander saw the armies of France descend upon Russia, he said: "Burn Moscow, starve back the invaders!" and Europe said, "Sublime!" This black saw all Europe come to crush him, and gave to his people the same heroic example of defiance.

Holland lent sixty ships. England promised by special message to be neutral; and you know neutrality means, sneering at freedom, and sending arms to tyrants. England promised neutrality, and the black looked out and saw the whole civilized world marshalled against him. America, full of slaves, was of course hostile. Only the Yankee sold him poor muskets at a very high price. Mounting his horse, and riding to the eastern end of the island, he looked out on a sight such as no native had ever seen before. Sixty ships of the line, crowded by the best soldiers of Europe, rounded the point. They were soldiers who had never yet met an equal, whose tread, like Cæsar's, had shaken Europe: soldiers who had scaled the Pyramids, and planted the French banners on the walls of Rome. He looked a moment, counted the flotilla, let the reins fall on the neck of his horse, and turning to Christophe, exclaimed: "All France is come to Hayti; they can only come to make us slaves; and we are lost! "

Arrived at Paris, Toussaint was flung into a jail. He was then, shortly after, sent to the Castle of St. Joux, to a dungeon twelve feet by twenty, built wholly of stone, with a narrow window, high up on the side, looking out on the snows of Switzerland. In winter, ice covers the floor; in summer, it is damp and wet. In this living tomb the child of the sunny tropics was left to die. But he did not die fast enough. Napoleon ordered the commandant to go into

Switzerland, to carry the keys of the dungeon with him,

and to stay four days. When he returned, Toussaint was found starved to death. That imperial assassin was taken, twelve years after, to his prison at St. Helena, planned for a tomb, as he had planned that of Toussaint, and there he whined away his dying hours in pitiful complaints of curtains and titles, of dishes and rides! God grant that when some future Plutarch shall weigh the great men of our epoch, the whites against the blacks, he do not put that whining child at St. Helena into one scale, and into the other the negro, meeting death like a Roman, without a murmur, in the solitude of his icy dungeon.

WENDELL PHILLIPS.

FEDERALISM AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

Note 41.

WHEN the American colonies had gained independence, there sprung up a feeling of competition and jealousy. The object of the Federal party was complete unification, and a strong central government. Their means to this end was mutual consent and agreement Their way to union was through self-sacrifice for general welfare. Such sentiments among the revolutionists of France were unknown. The want of a strong government was the nation's destruction. Hundreds of terrorists gave laws to thousands of terrified. He who thought of compromise was lost; and the only success was beyond the death of every opponent.

Federalism and the French Revolution manifest their principles in their characteristics. France proclaimed a universal brotherhood. She offered sympathy and assistance to every sufferer; and with her own people starving and murdered, wished to lead all nations to a grand realization of liberty. America made no such gracious professions, but modestly established a safe republican government. In France were wild sentiment and shocking profanity. A

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rouged opera-dancer was made "Goddess of Reason"; while Senators and rabble together fell down and worshipped their new divinity. Robespierre decreed "the existence of the Supreme Being"; while Clootz held that "there is but one god, and that god is the people.”

In contrast to such a spirit is the sober dignity of the founders of our Republic. They still remembered and adored Him, who had been to them the God of battles and the God of peace, who had led their fathers' steps to a free land, and who would guide the feet of their children through a prosperous and happy future. The French began with their Revolution a new era, and dated, "Year of the Republic, One." The American people would rather know the time of their political birth, as "The Year of our Lord, 1776." The fundamental principle of Federalism was lawful liberty; that of French Revolution was lawless freedom. The one viewed man as a moral agent, and an accountable being the other as an utterly irresponsible creature. The French Revolution taught some narrow creed about "The rights of man." Federalism enforced the old lesson of "Love thy neighbor." The one was heartless selfishness; the other was Christian charity.

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Note 42.

AUX ITALIENS.

WM. H. DEWITT.

Ar Paris it was, at the Opera there :

And she looked like a queen in a book, that night,

With the wreath of pearl in her raven hair,
And the brooch on her breast, so bright.

Of all the operas that Verdi wrote,

The best, to my taste, is the Trovatore ;
And Mario can soothe with a tenor note
The souls in Purgatory.

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