Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the eightieth chapter of Les Miserables.

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>> Speaker A: Take a look in the book and let's see

what we can find.

Take it chapter by chapter. One

fight at a time.

>> Speaker A: So many adventures and mountains

we can climb

to give word for word, line by

line, one bite at a time.

>> Brie Carlisle: Welcome to bite at a time books where we read you your

favorite classics one byte at a time.

my name is Bre Carlisle and I love to read

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>> Brie Carlisle: Values today well be

continuing.

Les miserable by Victor Hugo

chapter ten the plateau of Mont Saint

Jean the battery was

unmasked at the same moment with the ravine,

60 cannons and the 13 squares darted

lightning point blank on the cuirasses.

The intrepid general de lord made the military salute

to the english battery. The whole of the

flying artillery of the English had re entered the squares at a

gallop. A cuirasses had not had

even the time for a halt. The disaster of the

hollow Road had decimated but not discouraged

them. They belonged to that class of

men who, when diminished in number, increase in

courage. Lothirs column alone

had suffered in the disaster. Delords

column, which ney had deflected to the left as, though

he had a presentiment of an ambush, had arrived whole.

The cuirasses hurled themselves on the english

squares at full speed, with

bridles, loose swords in their teeth, pistols and

fists. Such was the attack.

There are moments in battles in which the

soul hardens the man until the soldier is changed into

a statue. And when all this flesh

turns into granite, the english battalions

desperately assaulted, did not stir.

Then it was terrible.

All the faces of the english squares were attacked at

once. A frenzied whirl enveloped

them. That cold infantry remained

impassive. The first rank knelt and

received the cuirasses on their bayonets. The

second ranks shot them down. Behind the

second ranks, the cannoneers charged their guns. The front

of the square parted, permitted the passage of an eruption of

grapeshot, and closed again. A cuirassus

replied by crushing them. Their great

horses reared, strode across the ranks, leapt

over the bayonets and fell gigantic.

In the midst of these four living wells,

the cannonballs plowed furrows. In these cuirasses,

the cuirasses made breaches in the squares.

Files of men disappeared, ground to dust under

the horses. The bayonets plunged into

the bellies of the centaurs. Hence a

hideousness of wounds which has probably never been seen

anywhere else. The squares

wasted by this mad cavalry closed up their ranks without

flinching, inexhaustible in the matter of

grapeshot, they created explosions in their

assailants midst. The form of this

combat was monstrous. These

squares were no longer battalions.

They were craters. Those cuirasses

were no longer calvary. They were a

tempesthe. Each square was a

volcano attacked by a cloud. Lava contended

with lightning. The square on the extreme

right, most exposed of all, being in the

air, was almost annihilated at the very first shock.

It was formed of the 75th regiment of Highlanders.

The bagpipe player in the center dropped his melancholy

eyes, filled with the reflections of the forests and

the lakes, in profound inattention, while men were

being exterminated around him and seated on a

drum with his pibroch under his arm, played

the highland heirs. The

escotchman died thinking of Ben Lothian,

as did the Greeks, recalling Argos,

the sword of a cuirassier which hewed down

the bagpipes, and the arm which bore it, put an end to

the song by killing the singer. A

cuirasses, relatively few in number and

still further diminished by the catastrophe of the ravine,

had almost the whole english army against them.

But they multiplied themselves so that each man of them was equal

to ten. Nevertheless, some hanoverian

battalions yielded. Wellington perceived it

and thought of his cavalry. Had

Napoleon, at that same moment, thought of his infantry,

he would have won the battle. This

forgetfulness was his great and fatal

mistake. All at once, the cuirasses who

had been the assailants found themselves assailed.

The english cavalry was at their back before

them, two squares behind them,

Somerset. Somerset meant

1400 dragoons of the guard on

the right. Somerset had Doernberg with the german light horse

and on his left trip with the belgian

carabiners. A cuirass is attacked

on the flank and in the front before and in

the rear by infantry and cavalry had to face all

sides. What mattered it to them,

they were a whirlwind. Their valor was

something indescribable. In addition to this,

they had behind them the battery, which was still thundering.

It was necessary that it should be so, or, they could never have

been wounded in the back. One of their

cuirasses, pierced on the shoulder by a

ball from a biscayan, is in the collection of the Waterloo

museum. For such Frenchmen, nothing

less than such Englishmen was needed.

It was no longer a hand to hand conflict.

It was a shadow, a fury, a

dizzy transport of souls and courage, a

hurricane of lightning swords. In an

instant, the 1400 dragoon guards numbered only

800. Fuller, their

lieutenant colonel, fell dead. They rushed up

with the lancers and le Fabre and

dessernettes light horse. The plateau of Mont

Saint Jean was captured, recaptured,

captured again. The cuirasses quitted the

cavalry to return to the infantry. Or

to put it more exactly, the, whole of that formidable

route collared each other without releasing the other.

The square still held firm. There were

a dozen assaults. They had four horses killed

under him. Half the cuirasses remained on the

plateau. This conflict lasted

2 hours. The english army was

profoundly shaken. There is no doubt that had

they not been enfeebled in their first shock by the disaster of the

hollow road, the cuirasses would have overwhelmed the center

and decided the victory. This

extraordinary cavalry petrified Clinton, who

had seen Palavera in Badajaz. Wellington,

three quarters vanquished, admired heroically,

he said in an undertone, sublime.

The cuirasses annihilated seven squares out of 13,

took, or spiked 60 pieces of ordnance

and captured from the english regiments six

flags, which three cuirasses and

three chasseurs of the guard bore to the emperor in front of the farm

of La Belle alliance, Wellingtons

situation had grown worse. This strange

battle was like a duel between two raging wounded

men, each of whom, still fighting and still

resisting, is expending all his blood.

Which of the two will be the first of all?

The conflict on the plateau continued.

What had become of the cuirassiers

no one could have told. One thing is

certain, that on the day after the battle, a, cuirassier

and his horse were found dead among the woodwork of the scales for

vehicles at Mont Saint Jean. At the very point were

the four roads from Nival, Gianapi, Leholp

and Brussels meet and intersect each other.

This horseman had pierced the english lines.

One of the men who picked up the body still lives at Mont Saint

Jean. His name is Dehaz.

He was 18 years old. At that time.

Wellington felt that he was yielding. The

crisis was at hand. The cuirasses had

not succeeded. Since the center was not broken through.

As everyone was in possession of the plateau, no one held

it. And in fact it remained to a great extent

with the English. Wellington held the

village and the culminating plain. Ney had only the

crest and the slope. They seemed rooted in that fatal

soil on both sides.

But the weakening of the English seemed irremediable.

The bleeding of that army was horrible.

Kempt on the left wing demanded reinforcements.

There are none, replied Wellington. He must

let himself be killed almost at

that same moment. A singular

coincidence which paints the exhaustion of the two

armies. Ney demanded infantry from

Napoleon, and Napoleon exclaimed

infantry. Where does he expect me to get it? Does

he think I can make it?

Nevertheless, the english army was in the

worst case of the two. The furious

onsets of those great squadrons with cuirasses of iron

and breasts of steel had ground the infantry to

nothing. A few men clustered round a

flag marked the post of a regiment. Such and

such a battalion was commanded only by a captain or

lieutenant. Altens division,

already so roughly handled at La Haye Sainte, was almost

destroyed. The intrepid Belgians of Van

Cluis brigade strewed the Ryfields all along the

niveal road. Hardly anything was left to those dutch

grenadiers who intermingled with the Spaniards in our ranks

in 1811, fought against Wellington,

and who in 1815 rallied to the english

standard, fought against Napoleon.

The loss in officers was considerable.

Lord Uxbridge, who had his leg buried on the following

day, had his knee shattered.

If on the french side, in that tussle of the

cuirasses de Lord Herrier,

Colbert, Knope, Travers and Blancard were

disabled. On the side of the English there was Alten

wounded, Barne wounded, Delancey

killed, Van Meeren killed, Amtempe, killed.

The whole of Wellingtons staff decimated, and

England had the worst of it in that bloody scale.

The second regiment of Foot guards had lost five lieutenant

colonels. Four captains and three

ensigns. The first battalion of the

30th infantry had lost 24 officers and

1200 soldiers. The 79th

Highlanders had lost 24 officers, wounded,

18 officers killed, 450

soldiers killed. The hanoverian Hussars of

Cumberland, a whole regiment with colonel hack at its

head, who was destined to be tried later on and

cashiered, had turned bridle into peasants of the

fray and had fled to the forest of soins,

sowing defeat all the way to Brussels. The

transports, ammunition wagons, the

baggage wagons, the wagons, filled with wounded. On

perceiving that the French were gaining ground and approaching the

forest, rushed headlong. Thither,

the Dutch, mowed down by the french cavalry, cried

alarm from Vert. Cauchau

to Grenadiel for a distance of nearly two

leagues in the direction of Brussels. According to the

testimony of eyewitnesses who are still alive,

the roads were encumbered with fugitives.

This panic was such that it attacked the prince de Conde

at Mechlin and Louis XVIII at

Ghent, with the exception of the feeble reserve

echeloned behind the ambulance established at the farm of Mont

Saint John, and Ovivians and Vandeleurs

brigades, which flanked the left wing.

Wellington had no cavalry left. A number

of batteries lay unhorsed. These

facts are attested by cyborn and

pringle. Exaggerating the disaster goes so far as to say

that the anglo dutch army was reduced to 34,000

mendenna. The iron duke remained

calm, but his lips

blanched. Vincent, the austrian

commissioner, Oliva. Ah, the spanish commissioner,

who were present at the battle, and the english staff thought

the duke lost at 05:00.

Wellington drew out his watch and he was heard to murmur the

sinister words, blue shirt or knight?

It was at about that moment that a

distant line of bayonets gleamed on the heights in the

direction of Frischemonthe. Here

comes the change of face in this giant drama.

Thank you for joining Byte at a time books today while

we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie carlisle, and.

>> Brie Carlisle: I hope you come back tomorrow for.

>> Brie Carlisle: The next bite of, le miserable.

>> Brie Carlisle: Don't forget to sign up for our

newsletter@byteouttimebooks.com, and check

out the shop. You can check out the show notes or

our website, byteadittimebooks.com, for

the rest of the links for our show. wed love to hear from

you on social media as well.

>> Speaker B: Take a look and a broken let's

see what we can find.

>> Speaker A: Take it chapter by chapter.

>> Speaker B: One night at a time

so many adventures and

mountains we can climb.

>> Brie Carlisle: Line.

>> Speaker A: By line, one bite at a time.