planning another campaign! In doing so, he could hardly forget that
the Grand Army of his glory was under the Russian snows!


WATERLOO.

One battle in this century rises in fame above all other conflicts of
the ages. It is Waterloo.

It was on the night of the seventeenth of June, 1815, that the British
and French armies, drawing near each other on the borders of Belgium,
encamped, the one near the little village of Waterloo and the other at
La Belle Alliance. They were close together. A modern fieldpiece could
easily throw a shell from Napoleon's headquarters over La Haie Sainte
to Mont St. Jean, and far beyond into the forest. During the afternoon
of the seventeenth, and the greater part of the night, there was a
heavy fall of rain. On the following morning the ground was muddy.
The Emperor, viewing the situation, was unwilling to precipitate the
battle until his artillery might deploy over a dry field.

As to the temper of the Emperor, that was good. Hugo says of him:
"From the morning his impenetrability had been smiling, and on June
18, 1815, this profound soul, coated with granite, was radiant. The
man who had been sombre at Austerlitz was gay at Waterloo. The
greatest predestined men offer these contradictions; for our joys are
a shadow and the supreme smile belongs to God.

"'Cæsar laughs, Pompey will weep,' the legionaries of the Fulminatrix
legion used to say. On this occasion Pompey was not destined to weep,
but it is certain that Cæsar laughed.