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2.1.16

The title sums up what Hugo has been telling us all along. Even the greatest of men are made of ordinary clay and dust.

I like that Hugo places the artists and the writers above the warriors and war. Byron is greater than Wellington and Goethe is greater than Blucher (Romantic authors are greater than Generals, this is pretty funny to me, I’m sorry, even if I agree with him). Hugo emphasised the continuity of words and writing in Notre Dame de Paris and he does that now. For him, the written word and art are long lasting and worthy of being remembered than heroes in battle. Progress and civilisation instead of war, is I think the main point of this chapter. It’s something that Combeferre also talks about later.

Hugo also says that people’s dignity and work cannot be quantified and thrown into the battle, which is much like a lottery, I can’t help but feel that the numbers at the end of the chapter are also meant to drive this point home, with the very blunt way he writes about people being killed.

Wellington and Napoleon were opposites: Wellington was precise and orthodox in battle, Napoleon was guesswork, intuition and unorthodoxy, yet a genius.( Is that also a dig at how much Hugo dislikes Maths and therefore more reason to admire Napoleon?)

I can’t quite work out whether this might be a sly dig at the grudge between Classicism and Romanticism through Wellington, it feels like that, with the whole talk about 'time honoured traditions being routed and outraged' and 'the triumph of the undistinguished, pleasing to the majority'. But he does seem to feel that England and its people and their art deserves praise instead of Wellington.

Anyway, he continues to have opinions about the English, which are kind of funny, going as far as to say that the English respect authority and rank too much instead of the people, even after their 1688 and the French Revolution, they should rely more on people.

I love the last paragraph about the ghosts rising from the battlefield, it is at once very Gothic and really sketches a very vivid picture of the ghosts of the battle still existing even after so many years have passed by, even if the bit about the skeleton Napoleon and skeleton Wellington is pretty funny. The glint of spectres that keep slaughtering each other and the way it is juxtaposed with the calmness of the present, gives a horrifying view of war itself.

2.1.17

Waterloo may not be regarded as good since it was counter revolutionary in the sense that European empires still tried to attack France like in the time of the French Revolution but despite all that Progress keeps coming in small steps.

‘Divine right rides on the back of Waterloo’ Waterloo may be a tragedy as Hugo mentioned in the previous chapter where thousands died but it was propelled by the hand of Divine and so is Progress and this is why Waterloo is so important and helps set up the rest of the book.

Moreover, Revolution is progress, even if the European Empires fighting against France may have tried to halt the progress for a time being, revolutions inevitably come, they cannot be stopped. They are decreed by Divine hand of God. Waterloo is important and has its place in history being also decreed by the Divine hand.

I guess, the Divine would have adopted even Napoleon as a tool for progress eventually according to Hugo, if Waterloo had not happened (he says that Napoleon did change the old dynasties as well as Louis XVIII had to submit to the Charter, progress was coming in small steps), ‘there is no such thing as a bad tool’, which is why, at least in my understanding, Waterloo ended up being counter-revolutionary and by cutting this way of a revolution short, other ways will be found. Revolution and progress cannot be stopped.

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