For some critics, this description of the Battle of Waterloo is simply a typical example of nineteenth-century long-windedness, but in fact it is a vital part of Les Misérables. The society that persecutes Jean Valjean is not irrevocably cruel; it is capable of change and of radical change in the interest of the poor and oppressed, as the Revolution showed. Napoleon I, dictator though he was, was a child of that Revolution and consolidated some of its liberal social advances. With his defeat at Waterloo and the consequent restoration of the Bourbons, social progress was checked; Jean Valjean, Fantine, Cosette, and thousands of others like them were again neglected. But their fate is not inevitable; history may again intervene to reverse the effects of Waterloo, and it is one of Hugo's purposes in writing Les Misérables to encourage it to do so.
Furthermore, Hugo uses the battle scene to warn us that his stage and his cast of characters is about to widen and that we shall meet not only characters from Book I, like Thénardier, but others yet unknown to us, of whom Pontmercy is the forerunner.
Finally, the epic quality of this book underlines the epic quality of the novel as a whole. The same capricious fate thwarts indifferently the plans of Napoleon I and M. Madeleine; the men of Waterloo and Jean Valjean struggle against their destinies with the same blind determination and terrible valor. From the moment when Hugo leads us, unsuspecting, through the gate of the farm of Hougomont with its brave bird singing and its banks of violets, we are in the hands of a great poet, who is as sensitive to the nuances of war as to those of everyday life and sees in both alike pity and horror, irony and beauty.
