He was a grenadier … black with powder, covered in mud, legs stretched out, exhausted, soaked with sweat, but holding his musket … saying to me, “… leave me to die here on the battlefield! I cannot move; it is not courage that I am lacking, it is strength! … It is all over! Poor France!” I left him, tears running from my eyes …— Chef d’Escadron, Marie-Jean-Baptiste Lemonnier-Delafosse At Waterloo, Napoleon committed the French Imperial Guard as a last attempt to break the Allied lines. In doing so, he also threw away any hope of his army maintaining any coherency. Had the Guard been used to cover the retreat, Napoleon might have saved some of the French army. Instead, they were wasted in one last gamble.
Napoleon took that…
