536 Les Miserables
is a certain instant when the battle degenerates into a com-
bat, becomes specialized, and disperses into innumerable
detailed feats, which, to borrow the expression of Napoleon
himself, ‘belong rather to the biography of the regiments
than to the history of the army.’ The historian has, in this
case, the evident right to sum up the whole. He cannot do
more than seize the principal outlines of the struggle, and
it is not given to any one narrator, however conscientious
he may be, to fix, absolutely, the form of that horrible cloud
which is called a battle.
This, which is true of all great armed encounters, is par-
ticularly applicable to Waterloo.
Nevertheless, at a certain moment in the afternoon the
battle came to a point.