Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the seventy-ninth 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 M at a time

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 and wanted to

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>> Brie Carlisle: Today we'll be continuing les miserable

by, Victor Hugo. Chapter

nine the unexpected

there were 3500 of them.

They formed a front a quarter of a league in extent.

They were giant men on colossal horses.

There were six and 20 squadrons of them, and

they had behind them to support them Lefebrives de

senetes division the 106

picked gendarmes, the light cavalry of the

Guardhouse, 1197

men, and the lancers of the guard of

880 lances. They

wore casques without horsetails and cuirasses of

beaten iron with horse pistols in their holsters

and long saber swords. That morning

the whole army had admired them when at

00 with braying of trumpets and all the music

playing, let us watch over the safety of the empire.

They had come in a solid column with one of their

batteries on their flank, another in their

center, and deployed in two ranks between the roads

to Genappe and Frischemont, and taken up their position

for battle in that powerful second line,

so cleverly arranged by Napoleon,

which, having on its extreme left, Kellermans

cuirasses, and on its extreme right,

Milhads cuirasses, had, so to speak,

two wings of iron, aide de camp.

Bernard carried them the emperors orders.

He drew his sword and placed himself at their head.

The enormous squadrons were set in motion.

Then a formidable spectacle was

seen. All their cavalry, with

upraised swords, standards and

trumpets flung to the breeze, formed in

columns by divisions, descended by a

simultaneous movement. And like one man, with the

precision of a brazen battering ram, which is effecting

a breach, the hill of La Belle alliance,

plunged into the terrible depths in which so many

men had already fallen, disappeared there in the

smoke. Then, emerging from that shadow,

reappeared on the other side of the valley, still

compact and in close ranks, mounting at a

full trot through a storm of grapeshot, which burst

upon them the terrible, muddy slope of the

tableland of Mont Saint Jean. They

ascended grave

threatening, imperturbable. In the intervals

between the musketry and the artillery. Their

colossal trampling was audible between

two divisions. There were two columns of them.

Wethers division held the right. Dellords

division was on the left. It seemed as though

two immense adders of steel. Were to be seen crawling towards the

crest of the tableland. It traversed the

battle like a prodigy. nothing like it had been seen

since the taking of the great redoubt of the Meskawa by the heavy

cavalry. merit was lacking here, but ney was again

present. It seemed as though that

mass had become a monster and had but one

soul. Each column undulated

and swelled like the ring of a polyp. It

could be seen through a vast cloud of smoke which was rent here

and there. A confusion of helmets,

of cries, of saberse, a stormy

heaving of the cruppers of horses amid the cannons and the flourish

of trumpets. A terrible and disciplined

tumult. Overall, the

cuirass is like the scales on the hydra.

These narrations seemed to belong to another

age. Something parallel to this vision

appeared, no doubt, in the ancient orphic

epics which told of the centaurs,

the old Hippanthropes, those

titans whose human heads and equestrian

chests, who scaled Olympus at a gallop.

Horrible, invulnerable, sublime

gods and beasts.

Odd numerical coincidence.

26 battalions rode to meet 26

battalions behind the crest of the plateau.

In the shadow of the masked battery. The english

infantry, formed into 13 squares. Two

battalions to the square in two lines, with seven

in the first line, six in the second.

The stalks of their guns to their shoulders,

taking aim at that which was on the point of appearing,

waited, calm,

mute, motionless. They did not see

the cuirasses and the cuirasses did not see

them. They listened to the rise of this flood

of men. They heard the swelling noise of

3000 horse, the alternate and

symmetrical tramp of their hooves at full trot.

The jingling of the cuirasses, the clang of the

sabers and a sort of grand and savage

breathing. There ensued a most terrible

silence. Then

all at once a long file of uplifted arms

brandishing sabers appeared above the crest.

And casques, trumpets and standards and

3000 heads with grey moustaches

shouting vive lampreur. All

this calvary debouched on the plateau

and it was like the appearance of an earthquake.

All at once a tragic incident. On the

English left on our right, the head of

the column of cuirasses reared up, with a frightful

clamor. On arriving at the culminating point of the

crest, ungovernable, utterly given

over to fury in their course of extermination of the

squares and cannon. And the cuirasses had just

caught sight of a trench, a trench between

them and the English. It was the

hollow road of Ohayn. It was a

terrible moment. The ravine was there,

unexpected yawning directly under the horses

feet, two fathoms deep between its double

slopes. The second file pushed the first into

it and the third pushed on the second.

The horses reared and fell backward,

landed on their haunches, slid down all

4ft in the air, crushing and overwhelming the

riders. And there being no means of retreat,

the whole column being no longer anything more than a

projectile. The force which had been acquired to crush

the English crushed the French. The inexorable

ravine could only yield when filled.

Horses and riders rolled their pell mell grinding each

other, forming, but one mass of flesh in this

gulf. When this trench was full of living

men the rest marched over them and passed

on. Almost a third of Dubois brigade

fell into that abyss. This

began the loss of the battle. A local

tradition which evidently exaggerates matters says

that 2000 horses and 1500 men were

buried in the hollow road of Ohayan. This

figure probably comprises all the other corpses which were

flung into this ravine the day after the combat.

Let us note in passing that it was Dubois sorely

tried brigade which an hour previously

making a charge to one side had captured the flag of the

Lunenburg battalion.

Napoleon, before giving the order for

this charge of Milhots, cuirasses had scrutinized

the ground, but had not been able to see that hollow road

which did not even form a wrinkle on the surface of the plateau.

Warned nevertheless, and put on the alert by the

little white chapel which marks its angle of

junction with the nival highway. he had probably put a question

as to the possibility of an obstacle to the guy de la

Coste. The guide had answered

no. We might almost affirm that

Napoleons catastrophe originated in that sign of a peasant's

head. Other fatalities were destined

to arise. Was it

possible that Napoleon should have won that battle?

We answered no. Why?

Because of Wellington? Because of Blueshire?

No. because of God.

>> Brie Carlisle: Bonaparte.

>> Brie Carlisle: Victor at Waterloo. That does not come within the law of the

19th century. Another series of facts was

in preparation in which there was no longer any room

for Napoleon. The ill will of events had

declared itself long before it

was time that this vast man should fall.

The excessive weight of this man in human destiny

disturbed the balance. This individual

alone counted for more than a universal group.

These plethoras of all human vitality concentrated

in a single head, the world mounting to

the brain of one man. This would be

mortal to civilization were it to last.

The moment had arrived for the incorruptible and supreme

equity to alter its plan. Probably

the principles and the elements on which the regular

gravitations of the moral as of the material

world depend had complained.

Smoking blood, overfilled

cemeteries, mothers in tears, these are

formidable pleaders. When the earth is

suffering from too heavy a burden, there are

mysterious groanings of the shades to which the

abyss lends an ear. Napoleon

had been denounced in the infinite and his fall had been

decided on. He embarrassed

God.

Waterloo is not a battle. It

is a change of front on the part of the universe.

Thank you for joining bite at a time. Books today, while we read a

bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlisle and

I hope you come back tomorrow, for the next bite of

Le Miserable.

>> Brie Carlisle: Dont forget to sign up for our

newsletter@biteoutimebooks.com dot. 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, we'd love to hear from you

on social media as well.

>> Speaker A: Mountains we can climb,

take your word, go word line by

line, one bite at a time.