Chapter 16 - The Imperial Guard
The Imperial Guard advanced as evening fell.
They came uphill through smoke.
Drums.
Officers.
Flags.
Columns.
For years people had said they did not break.
Napoleon had used them as the final weight on battlefields across Europe.
Now he threw part of them toward Wellington’s line.
The waiting was almost worse than the firing.
Allied troops remained concealed behind parts of the ridge.
Then, at close range, they rose.
Volley.
The sound was enormous.
Smoke exploded along the line.
The Guard continued.
Another volley.
Men fell.
Officers shouted.
French columns fired back.
For minutes, nobody around me understood the result.
Then something impossible happened.
The Guard stopped.
Not everywhere.
Not all at once.
But momentum died.
They wavered.
They fell back.
A cry spread through Allied troops.
“The Guard is retreating!”
At first I did not believe it.
Then I heard French voices farther down the slope.
Confusion.
Movement backward.
The phrase passed from mouth to mouth.
La Garde recule.
The Guard is falling back.
Whatever held the French army together began to crack.
Wellington appeared along the ridge—I saw only a distant mounted figure and later learned what officers around me already knew.
The order came.
Advance.
The Allied line moved forward.
After hours of standing, firing, dying, and waiting, men went down the slope.
William passed near me.
His face had changed.
Fear was still there.
But something else too.
“Is it over?” I shouted.
He shook his head.
“Not yet!”
Then he ran forward.
The French retreat spread.
Some units held.
Others broke.
Prussians pressed from the east.
Allied troops from the ridge.
Napoleon’s army was being squeezed into darkness.
The battle that had seemed balanced for hours suddenly became movement in one direction.
North to south.
Forward for us.
Backward for France.
I should have felt triumph.
Instead I felt tired.
So tired that even history seemed distant.
Then someone brought in a wounded man.
May you like
William Carter.
The world became small again.
