2.1.11
Hugo is still musing about Napoleon’s defeat and attributing the incidents to fate and providence. We are in the midst of contemplating hypothetical scenarios for how the events could have turned out differently.
Could the battle have been won if things had gone differently, if Napoleon’s general had arrived at the right time instead of the enemy General? If the shepherd boy had guided Bulow wrongly? If the battle had not been delayed? So much could have changed if things had gone otherwise. But it didn’t and somehow, I can’t much find any fault with the way things turned out, since it focuses on the little shepherd boy, who is remembered in these pages for the fact that he guided Wellington’s reinforcements out of harm's way.
2.1.12
The last stand of the French army is quite brave and heroic despite everything turning into a disaster for them, even the red glow of the setting sun is reflecting the gloomy story being played out for the French. They shout ‘Long Live the Emperor’ before their deaths, which Hugo tells us is tragic (also a shoutout to Prouvaire’s Long Live the Future, maybe). The Generals are named, we see Wellington’s army feel a sense of respect for them, even for a time fall back because of the way they are fighting. The Imperial guard advancing forward despite it being a hopelessly lost battle now, makes me admire their courage, Hugo has made me care about these generals, the soldiers and their lives and it also ties back to the fact that Hugo also thinks that their bravery and their fight was spectacular, they had been compared to giants before. Marshal Ney’s story is perhaps the more tragic out of them, he has accepted that he would be killed and is advancing bravely/recklessly towards the enemy with a broken sword, destroying the enemy but instead of finding his name on one of the English bullets, his fate is to die by a French one. It is a sad chapter, and even if I don’t care about wars personally as a pacificist, my heart breaks for these soldiers on the battlefield.
