Question
A student in a café angrily points at a map after overhearing this place’s name and the word “crime” in a novel that calls an event here the “hinge” of its century and a “change of front on the part of the Universe.” A 17-year-old gets drunk by buying four glasses of brandy from a cantinière at this place, which he reaches after being imprisoned for claiming to be the barometer salesman Vasi. A 19-chapter digression set at this place uses a dash to represent the word “Merde!” spoken by the “titan” Cambronne and includes a scene in which (*) Pontmercy asks the innkeeper Thénardier to check his pockets, not realizing he has already robbed him. At this place, a boy with diamonds sewn into his coat has his horse stolen and tries to shoot a trooper in a chaotic sequence that inspired Tolstoy’s depiction of Borodino. For 10 points, name this site of a battle depicted in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables and Stendhal’s The Charterhouse of Parma. ■END■
ANSWER: Waterloo [accept Battle of Waterloo or the Waterloo battlefield; accept Mont Saint-Jean or Hougoumont; prompt on Wallonia or Belgium or battefield]
<JK, European Literature>
= Average correct buzz position
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