peared above the crest, with casques, trumpets, and standards, and three thousand faces, with gray mustaches, crying, "Vive l'Empereur!" All this cavalry debouched on the plateau, and it was like the beginning of an earthquake. Victor Hugo.

FOR PREPARATION.-I. From "Les Misérables." The extracts are from Book II., "Cosette," Chapters III. to XIII. What battle is referred to by Austerlitz? Read some account of Blücher and Wellington;-of Ney. Find Hal and Tongres on the map (the one ten miles to the west, and the other forty-five miles to the east, of Waterloo).

II. Ma-neu'-ver (-nu'-), çon'-ter, sym'-bol, plå-teau' (-tō'), yield'-ing, gen'-ius-es, lis'-tened (lis'nd), in-erēas'-ing, ǎl-ter'-nate, měas'-ured (mězh'urd), fiērce (feers), easques (casks), mus-tach'-eş (-tash'-), suf'-ficed' (-fizd'). (For the names, see page 263.)

III. Unseasonable (un?); overthrow (over?); crossing (ing ?).

IV. Prostrated, sufficed, "scale of fortune," allied, fragments, precise, involuntary, supreme, triangle, preceding, sagacity, prescience, serious, reenforced, concave, dense, compact, declivity, enthusiastic, Vandal, frigidly, laconically, retrograde, rallied, concealed, repulse, abruptly, courier, thunderbolt, enormous, squadrons, precision, battering-ram, coincidence, crest, standards.

V. "Allied line" (4): who were in alliance against Napoleon? Explain the allusions to Talavera, Vittoria, Salamanca (locations of Wellington's victories in Spain);-to Cressy, Poitiers, Agincourt, etc. (English victories in France, the two former by Edward the Black Prince, and the latter by Henry V.—Malplaquet and Ramillies by the Duke of Marlborough).

LXXXVIII.-THE DEFEAT AT WATERLOO.

1. All at once, tragic to relate, at the left of the English, and on our right, the head of the column of cuirassiers reared with a frightful clamor. Arrived at the culminating point of the crest, unmanageable, full of fury, and bent upon the extermination of the squares and cannons, the cuirassiers saw between themselves and the

English a ditch-a grave. It was the sunken road of Ohain.

2. It was a frightful moment. There was the ravine, unlooked for, yawning at the very feet of the horses, two fathoms deep between its double slopes. The second rank pushed in the first, the third pushed in the second; the horses reared, threw themselves over, fell upon their backs, and struggled with their feet in the air, piling up and overturning their riders; no power to retreat. The whole column was nothing but a projectile. The force acquired to crush the English crushed the French.

3. The inexorable ravine could not yield until it was filled; riders and horses rolled in together pellmell, grinding each other, making common flesh in this dreadful gulf; and when the grave was full of living men, the rest rode over them and passed on. Almost a third of Dubois's brigade sank into this abyss. Here the loss of the battle began.

4. A local tradition, which evidently exaggerates, says that two thousand horses and fifteen hundred men were buried in the sunken road of Ohain. This undoubtedly comprised all the other bodies thrown into this ravine on the morrow after the battle.

5. Napoleon, before ordering this charge of Milhaud's cuirassiers, 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 It may almost be said that from this shake of a peasant's head came the catastrophe of Napoleon.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. There are moments in battle when the soul hardens a man, even to changing the soldier into a statue, and all his flesh becomes granite. The English battalions, desperately assailed, did not yield an inch. Then it was frightful. All sides of the English squares were attacked at once. A whirlwind of frenzy enveloped them.

9. This frigid infantry remained impassable. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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 themselves—each 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.

12. Suddenly the assailing cuirassiers perceived that they were assailed. The English cavalry was upon their back. Before them the squares, behind them SomersetSomerset, with the fourteen hundred dragoon guards. Somerset had on his right Domberg, 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. Their valor became unspeakable.

13. 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?

14. At five o'clock Wellington drew out his watch, and was heard to murmur these somber 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.

15. 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 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 the terrible crumbling.

16. 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.

17. 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!"

18. 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 in the vast overthrow of the rout; they heard the "Sauve qui peut!" which had replaced the