#lm 2.1.11

[the-wraxall-illustrations]

[cliozaur]

What irony! The fate of the Great Man was altered by the willingness of small men to cooperate. The good and bad advice of two peasant-guides defined the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo. At least, this is the perspective presented in Hugo’s interpretation. He is using so many conditionals in his Waterloo digression – it’s a treasure trove for those who like alternative history scenarios.

Unsurprisingly, Hugo's stance remains firmly pro-French. Regarding the arrival of Blücher’s forces, he remarks, 'Death instead of life,' even though it was the opposite for the English. For them, Blücher’s decision to send Bülow was a breath of fresh air  (“We must give air to the English army”).

[pureanonofficial]

LES MIS LETTERS IN ADAPTATION - A Bad Guide to Napoleon; a Good Guide to Bülow, LM 2.1.11 (I miserabili 1964)

The painful surprise of Napoleon is well known. Grouchy hoped for, Blücher arriving. Death instead of life.

[dolphin1812]

Much of this chapter seems to function like the previous ones. Again, we have the consequences of what a local guide (the shepherd) does and does not say:

“If the little shepherd who served as guide to Bülow, Blücher’s lieutenant, had advised him to debouch from the forest above Frischemont, instead of below Plancenoit, the form of the nineteenth century might, perhaps, have been different. Napoleon would have won the battle of Waterloo. By any other route than that below Plancenoit, the Prussian army would have come out upon a ravine impassable for artillery, and Bülow would not have arrived.”

With the shepherd, we don’t have as much detail on how he was treated by these troops, but given that “any other route” would have led to the French army’s success, we can assume that he also felt an incentive to conceal information from them, either because of poor treatment, political reasons, or another cause. 

The “infinite” also remains a major player here. Hugo references it directly (”Such are these immense risks proportioned to an infinite which we cannot comprehend”), but it’s also present in all his comments about the fickleness of fate (or rather, assuming it’s possible to know one’s fate). Even the first lines of the chapter make this clear:

“The painful surprise of Napoleon is well known. Grouchy hoped for, Blücher arriving. Death instead of life.

“Fate has these turns; the throne of the world was expected; it was Saint Helena that was seen.”

The battle is certainly treated as a tragedy (mostly in the loss of life, but that it was a “painful surprise” to Napoleon is acknowledged), but it’s also an inevitable one on the personal level (meaning, with regards to Napoleon). Fate was bound to change his fortunes eventually. Waterloo was simply where it happened.

Hugo consistently portrays Napoleon as a “great man” as well. While there are no references to his “genius” here, there are still signs of it. For instance, he’s “the first” to spot something important, with Hugo emphasizing how early it was when he noticed it. Consequently, we’re made to recognize his talents in relation to the men around him. 

At the same time, the narrative tells us that none of this actually matters. Part of the issue is “the infinite” (which is always more powerful than an individual man), but part of it (as stressed in previous chapters, and as seen with the shepherd here) is that a “great” man is actually just a man, like all of the “minor” figures who were present at Waterloo and were not glorified or condemned for it. The true difference between Napoleon and the shepherd; his guide; his soldiers; the English; and the families living there was their status, with Napoleon’s power drawing attention to all of his successes and failures. This could be a way of coping with censorship, as every time we directly read about Napoleon, we see praise of him, but everything around him tells us that this praise is hollow.

[everyonewasabird]

Brickclub 2.1.11 ‘Bad guide for Napoleon, good guide for Bulow’

A short chapter about the moment the tide turns in this battle.

Napoleon squints into the distance and can’t see, quite--he thinks maybe it’s help for him. Others think it’s just trees. In fact, it’s the force that will destroy him. The order is given, and the cannonballs begin to rain down.

And the difference was made by two peasants, one who led the French forces wrongly, the other who gave good advice to the reinforcements for the English. Such are the inscrutable workings of Providence in this book.

seeing the peril Wellington was in, Blücher ordered Bülow to attack and said this remarkable thing: “We must give the English army time to come up for air.”

@synteis has pointed out the huge, discordant contrast between the horror of the human loss and Napoleon’s blithe disregard for it--this catastrophic loss isn’t at all incompatible with success for him. Wellington is maybe half a shade better, looking at the decimated curassiers fighting like centaurs and whispering, “Sublime”--an acknowledgment of other men’s greatness in the face of horrors during his own defeat and a nod to one of the novel’s central themes, vs. Napoleon’s utter disconnection--but he doesn’t see the horror of war and death for what is either.

But in the above quote, someone in charge sees and acknowledges the drowning metaphor that we always come back to in this book. That acknowledgment turns the tide of history.

[meta-squash]

Brick Club 2.1.11 “Bad Guide For Napoleon, Good For Bulow”

We are thrown immediately into an explanation of the major blow to Napoleon: the arrival of the Prussians uniting with the English, instead of their being overtaken by Grouchy, who didn’t realize the majority of Prussian forces were already on the Waterloo battlefield.

Something I truly love about Hugo when he talks about events is the importance he puts on small details. If someone had done x instead of y, or left earlier/later, or stepped out at this location instead of moving south a little, everything would have been different. It’s just another way of reinforcing his idea that history is an accumulation of little events and details rather than one huge picture (as with his discussion of war-paintings), and that an outcome could be decided by one tiny little decision by one single person.

A peasant guiding Bulow gives good advice, countering the lie given to Napoleon by Lacoste. Bulow is late crossing the Dyle, but the battle at Waterloo started late due to the rains. Providence continues to create balances, reflections.

“Some said, ‘They are columns halting.’ Most said, ‘It is trees.’ The fact is the cloud was not moving. The emperor detached Domon’s division of light cavalry to reconnoiter this obscure point.” I suppose it’s a good thing to be better safe than sorry and check on something if you’re not sure what it is, but I do find it interesting that there’s a note here that “most” of Napoleon’s staff rightly believed that those “columns” were trees, and yet Napoleon detaches a division of light cavalry to go inspect. How many people would that be? How much would the battle have changed if that division hadn’t been detached?

There’s some drowning imagery (although FMA translates it poorly and I didn’t catch it until I double checked with Hapgood), only this time the drowning man (the English) finds someone swimming beside him, hooking an arm round his shoulder and heaving him up for some air. And Bulow doesn’t make rash movements: he knows his vanguard is weak and that he must wait for the army proper to catch up. It’s because he does this that he’s able to deploy and start in on Napoleon’s army. It is not two forces floundering together: Bulow had the good sense to gather his own strength first before moving to help the English. Napoleon is doing the opposite here: while waiting for Grouchy, he dispatches part of his cavalry. Grouchy only arrives at Waterloo after Napoleon has already lost. Napoleon is still willing to sort of recklessly throw his weight around, so to speak, while the English and the Prussians seem to be carefully picking their movements, very aware of strengths they do and don’t have.

[fremedon]

Brickclub 2.1.10. “The Mont-St-Jean Plateau” and 2.1.11, “A Bad Guide for Napoleon, A Good Guide for Bülow”

The English battalions, under assault from the surviving cavalry, are turning to stone: granite this time, not marble, but that’s still never a good thing in Hugo.

Despite the metaphor, they’re dying like flesh and blood. After the description of the charge into the sunken road, the descriptions of battle injuries continue to be precise and gruesome, as if now that our viewpoint has zoomed in to the individual level it can’t look away.

(Digression on the death of the bagpiper—Hugo, apparently under the impression that pibroch is a word for the bagpipe itself, writes “Le sabre d'un cuirassier, abattant le pibroch et le bras qui le portait, fit cesser le chant en tuant le chanteur.” Wilbour and FMA both reproduce Hugo’s error and have the cuirassier’s sword “striking down the pibroch and the arm that bore it.”

Donougher says the sword, “lopping off the bag and the arm that held it, put an end to the song by killing the singer,” which accurately translates what Hugo apparently meant. I am obscurely disappointed, however, that she didn’t go with “put an end to the pibroch by killing the player.” Like, if Hugo goes to the trouble of using an actual Scots word—even completely wrongly!—I feel it’s like more in the spirit of the thing to find a way to work it in.

(Hugo has confused the piob mhor, the great highland bagpipe, with the piobaireachd, or pibroch in Anglicized spelling, which is a musical form played on the piob mhor consisting of a ground with progressively more heavily ornamented variations. Normally I make fun of Hugo’s utter uselessness at non-Romance languages but honestly I will give him a pass on this one.)

(One of the only things I still remember from my two years of bagpipe lessons is how to spell piobaireachd. One of the happiest moments of my life was a conversation I had once with a musicologist, in which I mentioned something about piobaireachd and she made a note of it and asked me “How do you spell that?” :D :D :D :D :D )

...moving on.)

The English, despite the immense French losses, despite their granite fortitude, are losing.

From grotesque composite monsters, the armies are now back to being single entities, as they were when we were first surveying the battlefield: “This strange battle was like a ferocious duel between two wounded men who, while still fighting and holding out against each other, are both bleeding to death. Which of the two will be the first to fall?” I am reminded of the unnamed insurgent and National Guardsman who, in the chapter after OFPD, fall from the roof of the Corinthe together, still wrestling each other in midair as they plummet to their deaths.

Here we’re told that Napoleon’s failure to think of his infantry in this charge was his fatal mistake. It’s one of a number of fatal mistakes he’s making—trusting his guide, tempting fate. His defeat is overdetermined now—and not only by his mistakes. We were told the tide of the battle began to turn at the charge on the sunken road; now we’re told that the appearance of a line of bayonets on the crest is the turning point. Napoleon gives Providence multiple tools to use against him, and Providence gives multiple tools to his foes.

Now, in 2.1.11, we discover that those bayonets belong, not to Napoleon’s reinforcements, but to Wellington’s: “Napoleon’s bitter disappointment is common knowledge, the hoped-for Grouchy turning out to be Blücher. Death instead of life. Fate takes these turns. You were expecting to rule the world; St. Helena comes into view.”

Blücher’s second-in-command also had a peasant guide, who not only steered him accurately but by the only possible path that could have gotten him there in time. Had the battle started earlier, the Prussians would have arrived to find the French already victorious—Providence’s work: the rain that delayed the artillery movement until the ground could dry. Had Bülow’s guide not pointed out the one route through the forest that artillery could pass, he would also have arrived too late to relieve Wellington: fatalité, yes. But another fatal error for Napoleon, who terrorized Lacoste and tied him to his saddle to keep him from fleeing, and yet never doubted him when he told the emperor exactly what he wanted to hear.

[synteis]

2.1.11 - Mauvais guide à Napoléon, bon guide à Bülow

As in previous chapters, the English are also facing problems. I wonder to what extent Providence as a whole was against this battle occurring at all within Hugo’s magic system. It feels like there are forces working to get in the way of everything even if Napoleon is the bigger target.

So Bülow is having serious problems bringing up these English reinforcements and we find out that without them, Napoleon would have won in spite of all that has already gone wrong like the losses in 2.1.9. Furthermore, if Napoleon had started the battle a bit earlier instead of delaying it, the French also would have won because Bülow would have been too late.

But all those things were out of Bülow's control. What he did have control over was how he treated his own guide. In 2.1.7 and 2.1.8, Napoleon harassed his own guide before relying on his expertise and the consequence was the disaster. Bülow clearly treated his own guide better because he led them on the only possible route for them to make it in time.

The French and Napoleon in particular are giving lots of chances where they could have beahved differently and come off with the victory in these chapters. By contrast the English have a tightrope to walk where they had to do things exactly as they did to win even as their actions in some cases led to them stacking up the losses. You really get the sense that a supernatural force (and Napoleon's own overconfidence) has stepped in so that Napoleon might be defeated. That force is using all its powers and the English wind up winning as a consequence but that force isn’t in favour of the English either. But they aren’t against using them as a tool to bring down Napoleon even as the forces of the universe are against the occurrence of this battle at all.

[gpllife]

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[pilferingapples]

Les Mis 365, 2.1.11, 2.1.12, 2.1.13

2.1.11

Again, Hugo chalks this battle up to "the immense quirks of fate", meaning the weather that delayed the battle; but again, there seems to be an obvious and very human force really changing things, and it's Bulow's guide. However Bulow found his guide, if the shepherd boy had misdirected Bulow's troops the wayLacoste misdirected Napoleon's, the battle might have gone very differently.  At least from this telling, the battle seems to depend, as much as anything, on the goodwill of the non-combatants; and it might be the shepherd boy who's the single most important actor here. And we don't even get his name.

2.1.12

The Imperial Guard is determined to charge into death, knowing it's death; the rest of their army seems to not be so on board with this plan, and tries to retreat. Hugo assigns? credits? the non-French forces with appreciating the courage and heroism of the Guard. And, interestingly to me, Hugo refers to what the Guard does here as 'suicide'.  There is definitely a different tone to the way Hugo uses that word, and the way I'm used to hearing it used; though I have to think more about exactly what that difference is.  But there's often an approval of it, in a way I'm not at all used to seeing associated with any sort of chosen death; I think even martyrdom has some negatice connotations in modern discourse. So is this use of the (very loaded) word a common thing for Hugo's era, or is Hugo making a personal stand about it, or what?  

2.1.13

At least Ney and the Guard, charging to their deaths (or TRYING to , in Ney's case)  hang on to some sort awareness and self-control. The French army in retreat is described in terms of hopeless and unthinking terror, friends killing each other to make their getaway, and unlike Hugo I don't feel the need to say they witnessed the specter of Providence to account for it.

The winners of the battle aren't merciful or honorable in victory, and of course that's another parallel between the book's battle scenes-- and, I think, a connection to a LOT of the character's individual struggles in the book. The victors, in combat or in social war, tend to show no mercy. They demand first surrender and then abasement, and then, too often, even death. It's  of a kind with Javert's sense of triumph, Victurnien's sense of triumph. For the universe to be in alignment by their lights, victory isn't enough; the vanquished have to suffer.

Napoleon failed to understand the will of Providence before and during the battle, and he fails to recognize it afterward. It's not just that Napoleon can't go back and re-fight Waterloo; he can't re-start the age of the Great Men. Maybe I'm mean to feel a little wistful at that, a twinge of The Legends Are Dying nostalgia for a Grander Era.  But to HECK WITH THAT.The Great Man mythos is horrible. I want to know what happened to the guides, not the Emperor.