Just as in the clock, the result of the complex action of countless different wheels and blocks is only the slow, regular movement of the hand marking the time, so the result of all the complex human movement of those 160,000 Russians and Frenchmen—of all the passions, hopes, regrets, humiliations, sufferings, impulses of pride, of fear, and of enthusiasm of those men—was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the so-called battle of the three Emperors, that is, the slow shifting of the registering hand on the dial of the history of mankind.
