part played in it by the Marshals, the very men who are so identified in
our minds with the Emperor, that we might have expected to find that
brilliant band playing a most prominent part in his last great struggle,
no longer for mere victory, but for very existence. In recording how the
Guard came up the fatal hill at Waterloo for their last combat, it would
seem but natural to have to give a long roll of the old historic names as
leading or at least accompanying them; and the reader is apt to ask,
where were the men whose very titles recalled such glorious battle-
fields, such achievements, and such rewards showered down by the man who,
almost alone at the end of the day, rode forward to invite that death
from which it was such cruel kindness to save him?

Only three Marshals were in Belgium in 1815, and even of them one did but
count his promotion from that very year, so it is but natural for French
writers to dream of what might have been the course of the battle if
Murat's plume had waved with the cavalry, if Mortier had been with the
Guard, and if Davoust or one of his tried brethren had taken the place of
Grouchy. There is, however, little real ground for surprise at this
absence of the Marshals. Death, time, and hardships had all done their
work amongst that grand array of commanders. Some were old men, veterans
of the Revolutionary wars, when first created Marshals in 1804; others,
such as Massena, were now but the wreck of themselves; and even before
1812 Napoleon had been struck with the failing energy of some of his
original companions: indeed, it might have been better for him if he had
in 1813, as he half resolved, cast away his dislike to new faces, and
fought his last desperate campaigns with younger men who still had
fortunes to win, leaving "Berthier to hunt at Grosbois," and the other
Marshals to enjoy their well-deserved rest in their splendid hotels at
Paris.