Waterloo

[Javert]

In the part "Cosette" Hugo gives a full discription of the battle of Waterloo. Does anybody know if it's absolutely and undoubtfully accurate from historical perspective? Can this episode be used as a historical source?

[bazarov]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Waterloo

There is a really long description of battle on Wiki so you can compare. In my opinion, Hugo is too good and too serious to make his own stories; so I think it's probably true.

P.S. Javert is really unusual choice...:)

[Javert]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Waterloo

There is a really long description of battle on Wiki so you can compare. In my opinion, Hugo is too good and too serious to make his own stories; so I think it's probably true.

P.S. Javert is really unusual choice...:)

Thank you, it's just that I love the way Hugo describes things! And I like Javert. "Bazarov" is also pretty unusual. You seem to like Dostoyevsky, do you read in Russian?

[bazarov]

Thank you, it's just that I love the way Hugo describes things! And I like Javert. "Bazarov" is also pretty unusual. You seem to like Dostoyevsky, do you read in Russian?

Personally I like Javert. I mean, of course I like Jean Valjean more, but I admire Javert's principles. He was Jean's worst enemy, that's probably nobody likes him.
Why is Bazarov unusual? Unusual name or choice?

No, I don't read in Russian; although I would really like it one day.

[Javert]

Personally I like Javert. I mean, of course I like Jean Valjean more, but I admire Javert's principles. He was Jean's worst enemy, that's probably nobody likes him.
Why is Bazarov unusual? Unusual name or choice?

No, I don't read in Russian; although I would really like it one day.

Well, it is kind of unusual choice. Bazarov (in Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons") is an absolute nihilist. As for Javert, I also like him for his principles.

[bazarov]

Well, the thing is I find Bazarov very similar to me and I don't think he is a nihilist. :) I know, everyone disagrees with me.

[Javert]

You definitely have a right to think that way and, personally, I respect people who have unusual ideas based on real existing facts.

[kiki1982]

The description in general about how they started fighting too late, how the battlefield was absolutely soaking wet, etc. is probably farely accurate, but the things he describes like the battle in the small town Hougomont where a whole regiment was slaughtered because they were sieged stuck in a farm, I think was a little dramatised... It's probably true, but there was no reason for him to go off like that. Hugo did his work very well, but he could get on his high horse about some things like the unjustness of Hougomont, and even the unjustness of Napoleon loosing the battle of Waterloo. He puts it as a fatality of a great empire that had to fall. "Napoléon gênait Dieu" (Napoleon troubled God): although Napoleon had more soldiers, better trained, more artilery, better strategy etc, God made sure the English won.
Hugo was a revolutionary, but got dissapointed because he saw that the revolution in itself didn't change society as he hoped it would. With the battle of Waterloo, the revolution ended and the restauration came into practice and everything went back to the old times. So he found it unjust that the English won, he found it said that such a great country that changed the history of Europe and that had, for centuries, been one of the main powers, now became one reigned by the nobiliy again, sunk into nothingness and poverty and demonised for ever.