The road, the whole way through the forest of Soignies, was marked with vestiges of the dreadful scenes which had recently taken place upon it. Bones of unburied horses, and pieces of broken carts and harness were scattered about. At every step we met with the remains of some tattered clothes, which had once been a soldier's. Shoes, belts, and scabbards, infantry caps battered to pieces, broken feathers and Highland bonnets covered with mud, were strewn along the road-side, or thrown among the trees. These mournful relics had belonged to the wounded who had attempted to crawl from the fatal field, and who, unable to proceed farther, had laid down and died upon the ground now marked by their graves—if holes dug by the way-side and hardly covered with earth deserved that name. The bodies of the wounded who died in the waggons on the way to Brussels had also been thrown out, and hastily interred.
Thus the road between Waterloo and Brussels was one long uninterrupted charnel-house: the smell, the whole way through the forest, was extremely offensive, and in some places scarcely bearable. Deep stagnant pools of red putrid water, mingled with mortal remains, betrayed the spot where the bodies of men and horses had mingled together in death. We passed a large cross on the left side of the road, which had been erected in ancient times to mark the place whereonehuman being had been murdered. How many had now sunk around it in agony, and breathed, unnoticed and unpitied, their dying groans! It was surrounded by many a fresh-made, melancholy mound, which had served for the soldier's humble grave; but no monument points out to future times the bloody spot where they expired; no cross stands to implore from the passenger the tribute of a tear, or call forth a pious prayer for the repose of the departed spirits who here perished for their country!
The melancholy vestiges of death and destruction became more frequent, the pools of putrid water more deep, and the smell more offensive, as we approached Waterloo, which is situated at the distance of about three leagues, or scarcely nine miles, from Brussels. Before we left the forest, the Church of Waterloo appeared in view, at the end of the avenue of trees. It is a singular building, much in the form of a Chinese temple, and built of red brick. On leaving the wood, we passed the trampled and deep-marked bivouac, where the heavy baggage-waggons, tilted carts, and tumbrils had been stationed during the battle, and from which they had taken flight with such precipitation.
Even here cannon-balls had lodged in the trees, but hadpassed over the roofs of the cottages. We entered the village which has given its name to the most glorious battle ever recorded in the annals of history. It was the Headquarters of the British army on the nights preceding and following the battle. It was here the dispositions for the action were made on Saturday afternoon. It was here on Monday morning the dispatches were written, which perhaps contain the most brief and unassuming account a conqueror ever penned, of the most glorious victory that a conqueror ever won.[22]Waterloo consists of a sort of long, irregular street of whitewashed cottages, through which the road runs. Some of them are detached, and some built in rows. A small house, with a neat, little, square flower-garden before it, on the right hand, was pointed out to us as the quarters of Lord Uxbridge, and the place where he remained after the amputation of his leg, until well enough to bear removal. His name, and those of "His Grace the Duke of Wellington," "His Royal Highness the Prince of Orange," and other pompous titles, were written on the doors of these little thatched cottages. We also read the lamented names of Sir Thomas Picton, Sir Alexander Gordon, Sir William de Lancey, and Sir William Ponsonby, who had slept there the night before the battle, and many others who now sleep in the bed of honour. Volumes of sermons and homilies upon the instability of human life could not have spoken such affecting and convincing eloquence to our hearts as the sight of these names, thus traced in chalk, which had been more durable than the lives of these gallant men.
After leaving Waterloo, the ground rises: the wood,which had opened, again surrounded us, though in a more straggling and irregular manner—and it was not till we arrived at the little village of Mont St. Jean, more than a mile beyond Waterloo, that we finally quitted the shade of the forest, and entered upon the open field where the battle had been fought. During the whole of the action the rear of the left wing of our army rested upon this little village, from which the French named the battle. We gazed with particular interest at a farm-house, at the farthest extremity of the village nearest the field, on the left side of the road,—with its walls and gates and roofs still bearing the vestiges of the cannon-balls that had pierced them. Every part of this house and offices was filled with wounded British officers; and here our friend Major L. was conveyed in excruciating agony, upon an old blanket, supported by the bayonets of four of his soldiers.
On the right we saw at some distance the church of Braine la Leude, which was in the rear of the extremity of the right wing of our army. From the top of the steeple of this church the battle might have been seen more distinctly than from any other place, if any one had possessed coolness and hardihood sufficient to have stood the calm spectator of such a scene; and if some cannon-ball had not stopped his observations by carrying off his head.
Alighting from the carriage, which we sent back to the barrière of Mont St. Jean, we walked past the place where the beaten down corn, and the whole appearance of the ground, would alone have been sufficient to have indicated that it had been the bivouac of the British army on the tempestuous night before the battle, when, after marching and fighting all day beneath a burning sun, they lay all night inthis swampy piece of ground, under torrents of rain. We rapidly hurried on, until our progress was arrested by a long line of immense fresh-made graves. We suddenly stopped—we stood rooted to the spot—we gazed around us in silence; for the emotions that at this moment swelled our hearts were too deep for utterance—we felt that we stood on the field of battle!
"And these, then, are the graves of the brave!" at length mournfully exclaimed one of the party, after a silence of some minutes, hastily wiping away some "natural tears." "Look how they extend all along in front of this broken, beaten-down hedge—what tremendous slaughter!" "This is, or rather was," said an officer who was our conductor, "the hedge of La Haye Sainte;[23]the ground in front of it, and the narrow lane that runs behind it, were occupied by Sir Thomas Picton's division, which formed the left wing of the army; and it was in leading forward his men to a glorious and successful charge against a furious attack made by an immense force of the enemy, that this gallant and lamented officer fell. He was shot through the head, and died instantly, without uttering a word or a groan!" We gazed at the opposite height, or rather bank, upon which the French army was posted. We thought of the feelings with which our gallant soldiers must have viewed it, before the action commenced, when it was covered with the innumerable legions of France, ranged in arms against them. The solemn and portentous stillness which precedes the bursting of the tempest, is nothing to the awful sublimity of a moment suchas this. The threatening columns of that immense army, which their valour had destroyed and scattered, were then ready to pour down upon them. The cannon taken in the action, which now stood in the field before us under the guard of a single British soldier, were then turned against them.
The field-pieces taken by the Prussians in the pursuit were not here. But 130 pieces of cannon belonging to the British, and taken by them on the field of battle, still remained here. We went to examine them; they were beautiful pieces of ordnance, inscribed with very whimsical names, and some of them with the revolutionary words of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité! Our own artillery, which was admirably served, had been principally placed in two lines upon the ridge of the gentle slope on which our army was stationed. About four o'clock in the afternoon the first line of guns advanced, and the second took the place which the first had before occupied; it was also placed upon every little eminence over the field, and it did great execution amongst the enemy's ranks.[24]
The ground occupied by Sir Thomas Picton's division, on the left of the road from Brussels, is lower than any other part of the British position. It is divided from the more elevated ridge where the French were posted by a very gentle declivity. To the right the ground rises, and the hollow irregularly increases, until at Château Hougoumont it becomes a sort of small dell or ravine, and the banks are both high and steep. But the ground occupied by the French is uniformly higher, and decidedly a stronger position than ours.
Nothing struck me with more surprise than the confined space in which this tremendous battle had been fought; and this, perhaps, in some measure contributed to its sanguinary result. The space which divided the two armies from the farm-house of La Haye Sainte, which was occupied by our troops, to La Belle Alliance, which was occupied by theirs, would, I think, scarcely measure three furlongs. Not more than half a mile could have intervened between the main body of the French and English armies; and from the extremity of the right to that of the left wing of our army, I should suppose to be little more than a mile.
The hedge along which Sir Thomas Picton's division was stationed, and through which the Scots Greys, with the Royals and the Inniskillens, headed by Lord Uxbridge, made their glorious and decisive charge at the close of the action, is almost the only one in the field of battle. The ground is occasionally divided by some shallow ditches, and in one place there is a sort of low mud dyke, which was very much broken and beaten down. This was not on the ground our troops occupied, but rather below the French position; and excepting this, the whole field of battle is unenclosed. Theground is, however, very uneven and broken, and the soil a strong clay. It belongs to different farmers, and bore crops of different kinds of corn; but it is entirely arable land, and, excepting a very small piece on the French side, none of it was in grass.
Against the left wing of our army the attacks of the French were furious and incessant. Buonaparte had stationed opposite to it the chief body of his Corps de Réserve, and fresh columns of troops continually poured down, without being able to make the smallest impression upon the firm and impenetrable squares which the British regiments formed to receive them. It was Buonaparte's object to turn the left wing of our army, and cut it off from the Prussians, with whom a communication was maintained through Ohain, and who were known (at least by the commanders of the British army) to be advancing.[25]The Duke expected them to have joined before one o'clock, but it was seven before they made their appearance.
On the top of the ridge in front of the British position, on the left of the road, we traced a long line of tremendous graves, or rather pits, into which hundreds of dead had been thrown as they had fallen in their ranks, without yielding an inch of ground. The effluvia which arose from them, even beneath the open canopy of heaven, was horrible; and the pure west wind of summer, as it passed us, seemed pestiferous, so deadly was the smell that in many places pervaded the field. The fresh-turned clay which covered those pitsbetrayed how recent had been their formation. From one of them the scanty clods of earth which had covered it had in one place fallen, and the skeleton of a human face was visible. I turned from the spot in indescribable horror, and with a sensation of deadly faintness which I could scarcely overcome.
On the opposite side of the road we scrambled up a perpendicular bank, through which the road had evidently been cut. It was upon this eminence that the Duke of Wellington stood, beneath the memorable tree, from the commencement of the action, surrounded by his staff. It was here, we were told, that in the most critical part of it he rallied the different regiments, and led them on again in person to renew the shock of battle. Here we stood some time to survey the field.
Immediately before us, nearly in the hollow, was the farm-house of La Haye Sainte, surrounded by a quadrangular wall, full of holes for musketry. At the commencement of the action it was occupied by the British, and it formed the most advanced post of the left centre of our army. It was gallantly and successfully defended by a detachment of the light battalion of the German Legion, until nearly the close of the day, when their ammunition was exhausted; it was impossible to send them a supply, as all communication with them was cut off by the enemy, who at length succeeded in carrying it, after a most obstinate resistance; but its brave defenders only resigned its possession with their lives.
On the opposite side of the road, a little behind La Haye Sainte, and immediately below the ground occupied by Sir Thomas Picton's division, is a quarry which was surrounded by British artillery at the commencement of the battle. Towards the close of the action it was filled with the wounded, who had taken refuge in it as a shelter from theshot and shells, and from the charge of the cavalry—when, horrible to relate! a body of French Cuirassiers were completely overthrown into this quarry by a furious charge of the British, and horses and riders were rolled in death upon these unfortunate sufferers. The ghastly spectacle which it exhibited next morning was described to me by an eye-witness of this scene of horror. On the left, in the hollow between the two armies, we saw the hamlet of Ter la Haye, which was occupied by British troops;—its possession was never disputed by the enemy, although it was close advanced upon their position. Beyond it, still farther to the left, were the woods of Frischermont, and the road to Wavre, from which the Prussians issued through a narrow defile, and advanced to attack the right flank of the French.
These woods bounded the prospect on that side. On the right stood the ruins of Château Hougoumont (or Château Goumont, as the country-people called it), concealed from view by a small wood which crowns the hill. It formed the most advanced post of the right centre of our army, and it was defended to the last with efforts of successful valour, almost more than human, against the overpowering numbers and furious attacks of the enemy. The battle commenced here about eleven o'clock. The French, suddenly uncovering a masked battery, opened a tremendous fire upon this part of our position, and advanced to the attack with astonishing impetuosity, led on, it is said, by Jerome Buonaparte in person, while Napoleon viewed it from his station near the Observatory on the opposite height. They were completely repulsed by the bravery of General Byng's brigade of Guards, but they succeeded in carrying the wood, which was occupied by the Belgic troops. The French, however,after a dreadful struggle, were driven out of the wood again by the Coldstreams and the third regiment of Guards, and never afterwards were able to regain possession of it. The Black Brunswickers behaved most gallantly. In retrieving the consequences of the misconduct of the Belgic troops, and in defending the Château and the garden, the British Guards performed prodigies of valour, though they suffered most severely. Lieutenant General Cooke, Major-General Byng, Lord Saltoun, the lamented Colonel Miller, who died as he had lived—a brave and honourable soldier; Captain Adair, Captains Evelyn and Ellis; Colonels Askew, Dashwood, and D'Oyley, with many others, particularly distinguished themselves by their steady gallantry and personal valour. The house was consumed by fire, and numbers of the wounded perished in the flames; yet the British maintained possession of it to the last, in spite of the incessant and desperate attacks of the enemy, who directed against it a furious fire of shot and shells, under cover of which large bodies of troops advanced continually to the assault, and were driven back again and again with tremendous slaughter. Without the possession of this important post the right flank of our army could not be attacked; it formed what is called the key of the position; from its elevation it commanded the whole of the ground occupied by our army, and had it been lost, the victory to the French would scarcely have been doubtful.
Opposite, but divided from it by a deep hollow, were the heights occupied by the French, upon which, at some distance, and secure from the storm of war, stands the Observatory, where Buonaparte stationed himself at the beginning of the action, and whence he issued his orders, and commanded column after column to advance to the charge, and rush upon destruction. His "invincible" legions, his invulnerable Cuirassiers, in vain assaulted the position of the British with the most furious and undaunted resolution. In vain the vast tide of battle rolled on—like the rocks of their native land, they repelled its rage.—Squares of infantry received the onset of the French columns; directed against them a steady and uninterrupted fire of musketry, and stood firm and unshaken beneath the most tremendous showers of shot and shell. Every vacancy caused by death was instantly filled up: the enemy vainly sought for an opening through which they might penetrate the impenetrable phalanx; and when at last they receded from the ineffectual attack, the British cavalry rushed forward to the charge, and, notwithstanding their superiority of numbers, drove them back with immense slaughter. But I am relating the history of the battle, forgetful that I am only describing the field.
From the spot where we now stood I cast my eyes on every side, and saw nothing but the dreadful and recent traces of death and devastation. The rich harvests of standing corn,[26]which had covered the scene of action we were contemplating, had been beaten into the earth, and the withered and broken stalks dried in the sun, now presented the appearance of stubble, though blacker and far more bare than any stubble land.
In many places the excavations made by the shells had thrown up the earth all around them; the marks of horses' hoofs, that had plunged ankle deep in clay, were hardenedin the sun; and the feet of men, deeply stamped into the ground, left traces where many a deadly struggle had been. The ground was ploughed up in several places with the charge of the cavalry, and the whole field was literally covered with soldiers' caps, shoes, gloves, belts, and scabbards; broken feathers battered into the mud, remnants of tattered scarlet or blue cloth, bits of fur and leather, black stocks and havresacs, belonging to the French soldiers, buckles, packs of cards, books, and innumerable papers of every description. I picked up a volume of Candide; a few sheets of sentimental love-letters, evidently belonging to some French novel; and many other pages of the same publication were flying over the field in much too muddy a state to be touched. One German Testament, not quite so dirty as many that were lying about, I carried with me nearly the whole day; printed French military returns, muster rolls, love-letters, and washing bills; illegible songs, scattered sheets of military music, epistles without number in praise of "l'Empereur, le Grand Napoléon," and filled with the most confident anticipations of victory under his command, were strewed over the field which had been the scene of his defeat. The quantities of letters and of blank sheets of dirty writing paper were so great that they literally whitened the surface of the earth.
The road to Genappe, descending from the front of the British position, where we were now standing, passes the farm-house of La Haye Sainte, and ascends the opposite height, on the summit of which stands La Belle Alliance, which was occupied by the French. We walked down the hill to La Haye Sainte—its walls and slated roofs were shattered and pierced through in every direction with cannon shot. We could not get admittance into it, for it was completely deserted by its inhabitants. Three wounded officersof the 42nd and 92nd Regiments were standing here to survey the scene: they had all of them been wounded in the battle of the 16th. One of them had lost an arm, another was on crutches, and the third seemed to be very ill. Their carriage waited for them, as they were unable to walk. After some conversation with them, we proceeded up the hill to the hamlet of La Belle Alliance. The principal house on the left side of the road was pierced through and through with cannon balls, and the offices behind it were a heap of dust from the fire of the British artillery. Notwithstanding the ruinous state of the house, it was filled with inhabitants. Its broken walls, "its looped and windowed wretchedness," might indeed defend them sufficiently "well from seasons such as these," when the soft breezes and the bright beams of summer played around it—but against "the pelting of the storm," it would afford them but a sorry shelter. It was immediately to be repaired; but I rejoiced that it yet remained in its dilapidated state.
The house was filled with vestiges of the battle. Cuirasses, helmets, swords, bayonets, feathers, brass eagles, and crosses of the Legion of Honour, were to be purchased here. The house consisted of three rooms, two in front, and a very small one behind. On the opposite side of the road is a little cottage, forming part of the hamlet of La Belle Alliance; and at a short distance, by the way side, is another low-roofed cottage, which was pointed out to us as the place where Buonaparte breakfasted on the morning of the battle. Farther along this road, but not in sight, was the village of Planchenoit, which was the head-quarters of the French on the night of the 17th.[27]
We crossed the field from this place to Château Hougoumont, descending to the bottom of the hill, and again ascending the opposite side. Part of our way lay through clover; but I observed that the corn on the French position was not nearly so much beaten down as on the English, which might naturally be expected, as they attacked us incessantly, and we acted on the defensive, until that last, general, and decisive charge of our whole army was made, before which theirs fled in confusion. In some places patches of corn nearly as high as myself was standing. Among them I discovered many a forgotten grave, strewed round with melancholy remnants of military attire. While I loitered behind the rest of the party, searching among the corn for some relics worthy of preservation, I beheld a human hand, almost reduced to a skeleton, outstretched above the ground, as if it had raised itself from the grave. My blood ran cold with horror, and for some moments I stood rooted to the spot, unable to take my eyes from this dreadful object, or to move away: as soon as I recovered myself, I hastened after my companions, who were far before me, and overtook them just as they entered the wood of Hougoumont. Never shall I forget the dreadful scene of death and destruction which it presented. The broken branches were strewed around, the green beech leaves fallen before their time, and stripped by the storm of war, not by the storm of Nature, were scattered over the surface of the ground, emblematical of the fate of the thousands who had fallen on the same spot in the summer of their days. The return of spring will dress the wood of Hougoumont once more in vernal beauty, and succeeding years will see it flourish:
"But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn,Oh! when shall it dawn on the night of the grave!"
The trunks of the trees had been pierced in every direction with cannon-balls. In some of them I counted the holes, where upwards of thirty had lodged:[28]yet they still lived, they still bore their verdant foliage, and the birds still sang amidst their boughs. Beneath their shade the hare-bell and violet were waving their slender heads; and the wild raspberry at their roots was ripening its fruit. I gathered some of it with the bitter reflection, that amidst the destruction of human life these worthless weeds and flowers had escaped uninjured.
Melancholy were the vestiges of death that continually met our eyes. The carnage here had indeed been dreadful. Amongst the long grass lay remains of broken arms, shreds of gold lace, torn epaulets, and pieces of cartridge boxes; and upon the tangled branches of the brambles fluttered many a tattered remnant of a soldier's coat. At the outskirts of the wood, and around the ruined walls of the Château, huge piles of human ashes were heaped up, some of which were still smoking. The countrymen told us, that so great were the numbers of the slain, that it was impossible entirely to consume them. Pits had been dug, into which they had been thrown, but they were obliged to be raised far above the surface of the ground. These dreadful heaps were covered with piles of wood, which were set on fire, so that underneath the ashes lay numbers of human bodies unconsumed.
The Château itself, the beautiful seat of a Belgic gentleman, had been set on fire by the explosion of shells during the action, which had completed the destruction occasioned by a most furious cannonade. Its broken walls and falling roof presented a most melancholy spectacle: not melancholy merely from its being a pile of ruins, but from the vestiges it presented of that tremendous and recent warfare by which those ruins had been caused. Its huge blackened beams had fallen in every direction upon the crumbling heaps of stone and plaster, which were intermixed with broken pieces of the marble flags, the carved cornices, and the gilded mirrors, that once ornamented it.
We went into the garden, which had sustained comparatively little injury, while every thing around it was laid waste. Its gay parterres and summer flowers made it look like an island in the desert. A berçeau, or covered walk, ran round it, shaded with creeping plants, amongst which honey-suckles and jessamines were intermixed, en treillage. The trees were loaded with fruit; the myrtles and fig-trees were flourishing in luxuriance, and the scarlet geraniums, July flowers, and orange-trees, were in full blow. My native country can boast of no such beauty as bloomed at Château Hougoumont: its rugged clime produces no fruitful fig-trees, no flowers rich in the fragrance of orange blossom:—but it is the land of heroes!
"Man is the nobler growth our realms supply,And souls are ripened in our northern sky."
I saw the pure and polished leaves of the laurel shining in the sun, and I could not restrain my tears at the thought that the laurels, the everlasting laurels which England had won upon this spot, were steeped in the heart-blood of thousands of her brave, her lamented sons. But if not immortalin their lives, they will be so in their fame: their laurels will never wither; and no British heart, henceforward, will ever visit this hallowed spot without paying a tribute of veneration and regret to those gallant spirits who here fought and fell for their country.
At the garden gate I found the holster of a British officer, entire, but deluged with blood. In the inside was the maker's name—Beazley and Hetse, No. 4, Parliament-street. All around were strewed torn epaulets, broken scabbards, and sabretashes stained and stiffened with blood—proofs how dreadfully the battle had raged. The garden and courts were lined during the engagement with Nassau troops, as sharpshooters, who did great execution.
A poor countryman, with his wife and children, inhabited a miserable shed amongst these deserted ruins. This unfortunate family had only fled from the spot on the morning of the battle. Their little dwelling had been burnt, and all their property had perished in the flames. They had scarcely clothes to cover them, and were destitute of everything. Yet the poor woman, as she told me the story of their distresses, and wept over the baby that she clasped to her breast, blessed heaven that she had preserved her children. She seemed most grateful for a little assistance, took me into her miserable habitation, and gave me the broken sword of a British officer of infantry (most probably of the Guards), which was the only thing she had left; and which, with some other relics before collected, I preserved as carefully as if they had been the most valuable treasures.
It is a remarkable circumstance that amidst this scene of destruction, and surrounded on all sides by the shattered walls and smoking piles of "this ruined and roofless abode," the littlechapel belonging to the Château stood uninjured. Its preservation appeared to these simple peasants an unquestionable miracle; and we felt more inclined to respect than to wonder at the superstitious veneration with which they regarded it. No shot nor shell had penetrated its consecrated walls; no sacrilegious hand had dared to violate its humble altar, which was still adorned with its ancient ornaments and its customary care. A type of that blessed religion to which it was consecrated, it stood alone, unchanged, amidst the wreck of earthly greatness—as if to speak to our hearts, amidst the horrors of the tomb, the promises of immortality; and to recal our thoughts from the crimes and sorrows of earth to the hopes and happiness of heaven. The voice of the Divinity himself within his holy temple seemed to tell us, that those whom we lamented here, and who, in the discharge of their last and noblest duty to their country, had met on the field of honour "the death that best becomes the brave,"—should receive in another and a better world their great reward! Blackened piles of human ashes surrounded us; but I felt that though "the dust returns to the earth, the spirit returns unto Him that gave it."
The countryman led me to one of these piles within the gates of the court belonging to the Château, where, he said, the bodies of three hundred of the British Guardsmen who had so gallantly defended it, had been burnt as they had been found, heaped in death.[29]I took some of the ashes and wrapped them up in one of the many sheets of paper that were strewed around me; perhaps those heaps that then blackened the surface of this scene of desolation are alreadyscattered by the winds of winter, and mingled unnoticed with the dust of the field; perhaps the few sacred ashes which I then gathered at Château Hougoumont are all that is now to be found upon earth of the thousands who fell upon this fatal field!
It was not without regret that we left this ever-memorable spot, surrounded as it was by horrors that shocked the mind, and vestiges that were revolting to the senses. Still we lingered around it, till at length, after gazing for the last time at its ruined archways and desolated courts, we struck into the wood, and lost sight for ever of the Château Hougoumont. The road to Nivelles, which strikes off to the right from the highroad to Genappe at the village of Mont St. Jean, passes the Château on the other side. The right wing of the British army crossed this road, and in the deep ditches on each side of it we were told that human remains still lay uninterred. Some of the party returned to Mont St. Jean by this road, which is considerably nearer; but my brother, my sister, and myself, once more crossed the field in order to pay another visit to La Belle Alliance.
I could not be persuaded to go to see the skeleton of a calf which had been burnt in one of the outhouses of Hougoumont, and over which one of the ladies of our party uttered the most pathetic lamentations. It seemed to fill her mind with more concern than anything else. At another time I might have been sorry for the calf; but when I remembered how many poor wounded men had been burnt alive in these ruins, it was impossible to bestow a single thought upon its fate. Finding that her sensibility obtained no sympathy from me, the lady turned to my sister, and began to bewail the calf anew, till at last, wearied out with such folly, "out ofher grief and her impatience," she exclaimed, "that she did not care if all the calves in the world had been burnt, compared to one of the brave men who had perished here."
As we passed again through the wood of Hougoumont, I gathered some seeds of the wild broom, with the intention of planting them at H. Park, and with the hope that I should one day see the broom of Hougoumont blooming on the banks of the Tweed. In leaving the wood I was struck with the sight of the scarlet poppy flaunting in full bloom upon some new-made graves, as if in mockery of the dead. In many parts of the field these flowers were growing in profusion: they had probably been protected from injury by the tall and thick corn amongst which they grew, and their slender roots had adhered to the clods of clay which had been carelessly thrown upon the graves. From one of these graves I gathered the little wild blue flower known by the sentimental name of "Forget me not!" which to a romantic imagination might have furnished a fruitful subject for poetic reverie or pensive reflection.
While my sister was taking a view of the field of battle, and my brother was overlooking and guarding her, I entered the cottage of "La Belle Alliance," and began to talk to Baptiste la Coste, Buonaparte's guide, whom I found there. He is a sturdy, honest-looking countryman, and gave an interesting account of Buonaparte's behaviour during the battle. He said that he issued his orders with great vehemence, and even impatience: he took snuff incessantly, but in a hurried manner, and apparently from habit, and without being conscious that he was doing so: he talked a great deal, and very rapidly—his manner of speaking was abrupt, quick, and hurried: he was extremely nervous and agitated attimes, though his anticipations of victory were most confident. He frequently expressed his astonishment, rather angrily, that the British held out so long—at the same time he could not repress his admiration of their gallantry, and often broke out into exclamations of amazement and approbation of their courage and conduct. He particularly admired the Scotch Greys—"Voilà ces chevaux gris—ah! ce sont beaux cavaliers—très beaux;" and then he said they would all be cut to pieces. He said—"These English certainly fight well, but they must soon give way;" and he asked Soult, who was near him, "if he did not think so?" Soult replied, "He was afraid not." "And why?" said Napoleon, turning round to him quickly. "Because," said Soult, "I believe they will first be cut to pieces." Soult's opinion of the British army, which was founded on experience, coincided with that of the Duke of Wellington. "It will take a great many hours to cut them in pieces," said the Duke, in answer to something that was said to him during the action; "and I know they will never give way."
Buonaparte, however, who knew less of them, and whose head always ran upon the idea of the English flying to their ships, had never dreamt that with a force so inferior they would think of giving him battle, but imagined that they would continue their retreat during the night, and that he should have to pursue them. It is said that he expressed great satisfaction when the morning broke and he saw them still there; and that he exclaimed, "Ah! pour le coup—je les tiens donc—ces Anglais!"
Before the engagement began he harangued the army, promising them the plunder of Brussels and Ghent. Once, towards the close of the battle, he addressed himself to theImperial Guard, leading them on to the brink of the hill, and telling them "that was the road to Brussels." Regardless of the waste of human life, he incessantly ordered his battalions to advance—to bear down upon the enemy—to carry every thing before them. He inflamed their ardour by the remembrance of past, as well as the prospect of present victory, and the promise of future reward: but he never led them on to battle himself—he never once braved the shock of British arms. It is not true as has been reported, that he was ever near Lord Uxbridge, or in any danger of being taken prisoner by the English. Indeed, he exposed himself to very little personal risk—a proof of which is, that not one of those who attended him the whole day was wounded.
La Coste said, that at first, when he was told that the Prussians were advancing, he obstinately and angrily refused to believe it, declaring it was the French corps under Marshal Grouchy.[30]He then commanded this news to be spread amongst the army, and ordered Marshal Ney, at the head of two columns, each composed of four battalions of the old Imperial Guard, and seconded by all the available force of the French army, both cavalry and infantry, to charge, and to penetrate to the centre of the British position. He stood to witness the desperate struggle which ensued, and the final and complete overthrow of theéliteof his gallant army, of immensely preponderating force, by a handful of determinedBritish troops; but when he perceived his "invincible legions" give way, and retreat in confusion before the grand simultaneous charge of the British army, which immediately ensued, led by the Duke of Wellington in person, who was amongst the foremost in the onset, he turned pale, his perturbation became extreme, and exclaiming, "All is lost—let us save ourselves" (Tout est perdu; or, Sauve qui peut!), or words to that effect; he put spurs to his horse, and galloped from the field. La Coste expressly said, that he was among the first of the officers to set the example of flight.[31]His own old Imperial Guard still remained—disputed every foot of ground—fought desperately to the last, and at length, overpowered by numbers, fell gloriously—as their leader should have fallen.
But he!—not even despair could prompt him to one noble thought, or rouse him to one deed of desperate valour. He fled—as at Egypt, at Moscow, and at Leipsic he had fled—while his faithful veterans were still fighting with enthusiastic gallantry, and shedding the last drop of their blood in his cause!
Was this the conduct of a hero? Was this the conduct of a general? Was this the conduct of a great mind? No! He had set his "life upon a cast, and he should have stood the hazard of the die." And for what did he abandon his army, and basely fly in the hour of danger? That he might be humiliated, pursued, and taken—that he might become a suppliant to that hated enemy whose ruin he had pursued with implacable hostility, and be indebted to their faith and generosity for life and safety—that he might live to hear hisname execrated, and linger out a few years of miserable existence in exile, obscurity, and degradation.
It has been said by his advocates and admirers, that he was not only a great man, but the greatest man who ever lived—and that his only fault was ambition. Yes! Napoleon Buonaparte had, indeed, ambition; but it was selfish ambition; it was for power, not for glory; for unbounded empire and unlimited dominion, not for the welfare of his subjects and the prosperity of his country. He used the talents, the opportunities, and the power, with which he was gifted, and such as perhaps no mortal ever before enjoyed, not to save, but to destroy, not to bless, but to desolate, the world.
The conduct of the leaders of the contending armies was as opposite as the cause for which they fought. While Napoleon kept aloof from the action, Lord Wellington exposed himself to the hottest fire, threw himself into the thickest of the fight, and braved every danger of the battle. He issued every order, he directed every movement, he seemed to be everywhere present, he encouraged his troops, he rallied his regiments, he led them on against the tremendous forces of the enemy, charged at their head, and defeated their most formidable attacks. No private soldier in his army was exposed to half the personal danger that he encountered.[32]All who surrounded him fell by his side, wounded and dying. All his personal staff, with scarcely an exception, were either killed or wounded. In the battle's most terrible moment, and most hopeless crisis, when our gallant army, weakened by immense losses, and by more than seven hours of unequal combat, were scarcely able to stand against the overwhelming number of fresh troops which the enemy poured down against them; when the recreant Belgians fled, when every British soldier was in action, when reinforcements were asked for in vain; when no reserve remained, and no prospect of succour from our allies appeared, Lord Wellington, exposed to the hottest fire, calmly rode along the lines of his diminished army, animating and encouraging the men; directed fresh arrangements of his remaining forces; rallied in the fight, the wavering Brunswickers, cheered on, and headed the brave British Brigades,[33]and finally, having repulsed the last tremendous attack of the enemy,—with the memorable words, "Up guards! and at them!" led on the remnant of his gallant army to the most glorious victory a general ever won.[34]
Nor was the conduct of the two generals on this day more opposite than that of the armies which they commanded, and the motives by which they were actuated. The French fought to obtain plunder and aggrandisement—the British to fulfil their duty to their country. Well did their generals know this essential difference! Buonaparte held out to his troops the spoils of Belgium and Holland. When he wished to animate them to the greatest exertions, he led them forward and told them, "That was the road to Brussels!" Lord Wellington, in the most critical moment of the battle, held another language. "We must not be beaten," he said to his soldiers; "What will they say of us in England!" After the battle their conduct was equally different. The French had murdered numbers of their prisoners, and those whoselives they spared, they robbed, insulted, and treated with the utmost cruelty, shutting them up without food, without dressing their wounds, and subjecting them to every hardship and privation. The British, on the contrary, though irritated by the knowledge of these barbarities, protected the wounded French from the rage of the Prussians, who would have gladly revenged the cruelties with which they had been treated by them. Our wounded soldiers, who were able to move, employed themselves in assisting their suffering enemies, binding up their wounds, and giving them food and water—but the brave are always merciful.
A countryman, who belonged either to La Belle Alliance, or to some of the neighbouring cottages, told me, that when he came here early on the morning after the battle, the house was surrounded with the wounded and dying of the French army, many of whom implored him, for God's sake, to put an end to their sufferings.
But the agonising scenes which had so recently taken place here, and the images of horror which every object in and around La Belle Alliance was irresistibly calculated to suggest to the mind, were almost too dreadful for reflection. More pleasing was the remembrance, that it was here Napoleon Buonaparte stood when he prematurely dispatched a courier to Paris with the false news that he had won the day; and that it was here the Duke of Wellington and Marshal Blucher accidently met, a few hours after, in the very moment of victory, when Buonaparte was flying before their triumphant armies, himself the bearer of the news of his own defeat. [SeeAppendix, E.]
The interview between the Duke of Wellington and Marshal Blucher was short, but it will be for ever memorable in the annals of history. They did not enter the house, but remained together a few minutes in earnest conversation. It is well known that Blucher and the Prussians continued the pursuit during the night. The remains of the British army rested from their toils on the ground, surrounded by the bleeding and dying French, on the very spot which they had occupied the preceding night—and Lord Wellington returned to Waterloo.
"As he crossed again the fatal field, on which the silence of death had now succeeded to the storm of battle, the moon, breaking from dark clouds, shed an uncertain light upon this wide scene of carnage, covered with mangled thousands of that gallant army whose heroic valour had won for him the brightest wreath of victory, and left to future times an imperishable monument of their country's fame. He saw himself surrounded by the bloody corpses of his veteran soldiers, who had followed him through distant lands, of his friends, his associates in arms, his companions through many an eventful year of danger and of glory: in that awful pause, which follows the mortal conflict of man with man, emotions, unknown or stifled in the heat of battle, forced their way—the feelings of the man triumphed over those of the general, and in the very hour of victory Lord Wellington burst into tears."[35]
The state of the wounded during this dreadful night may be conceived. Not even a drop of water was to be had on the field to relieve their thirst, and none was to be procured nearer than Waterloo. Late as it was, and exhausted as our officers must have been with the fatigue of such unremitting exertions, many of them mounted their horses, slung over their shoulders as many canteens as they could carry, galloped to Waterloo, a distance of more than two miles from almost every part of the field, filled them with water, and returned with it for the relief of the wounded men.
I did not leave a corner of La Belle Alliance unrummaged, but I cannot say that I saw anything particularly worthy of notice: I ate a bit of intolerably bad rye-cake, as sour as vinegar, and as black as the bread of Sparta, which nothing but the consideration of its having been in La Belle Alliance during the battle (which the woman assured me was the case) could have induced me to swallow:—but I need not stop to relate my own follies.
I bought from the people of the house the feather of a French officer, and a cuirass which had belonged to a French Cuirassier, who, they said, had died here the day after the battle. Loaded with my spoils, I traversed the whole extent of the field, thinking, as I toiled along beneath the burning sun, under the weight of the heavy cuirass, that the poor man to whom it had belonged, when he brought it into the field, in all the pride of martial ardour, and all the confidence of victory, little dreamed who would carry it off. If he had known that it was to be an English lady, he would have been more surprised than pleased.
I did not stop till I got to the old tree now known by the name of Lord Wellington's tree,[36]near which he stood for a length of time during the battle, and beneath which I now sat myself down to rest. Its massy trunk and broken branches were pierced with a number of cannon-balls, but its foliage still afforded me a grateful shade from the rays of the sun.
It was between this part of the field and Hougoumont that the lamented Sir William Ponsonby gloriously fell in the prime of life and honour, after repeatedly leading the most gallant and successful charges against the enemy, in which he took upwards of 2000 prisoners and two French eagles. The particulars of his death are well known. In the heat of the action he was unfortunately separated from his brigade, his horse stuck fast in the deep wet clay of some newly-ploughed land, and he saw a large body of Polish Lancers bearing down against him. In this dreadful situation he awaited the inevitable fate that approached him with the composure of a hero: he calmly turned to his aide-de-camp, who was still by his side, and it is said that he was in the act of giving him a picture and a last message to his wife, when he was pierced at once with the pikes of seven of the Polish Lancers, and fell covered with wounds. England never lost a better soldier, nor society a brighter ornament. He was deservedly beloved by his friends and companions, adored by his family, and lamented and honoured by his country.
Numbers of country-people were employed in what might be called the gleanings of the harvest of spoil. The muskets, the swords, the helmets, the cuirasses—all the large and unbroken arms had been immediately carried off; and now the eagles that had emblazoned the caps of the French infantry, the fragments of broken swords, &c., were rarely to be found, though there was great abundance upon sale. But there was still plenty of rubbish to be picked up upon the field, for those who had a taste for it like me—though the greatest part of it was in a most horrible state.
It was astonishing with what dreadful haste the bodies of the dead had been pillaged. The work of plunder was carried on even during the battle; and those hardened and abandoned wretches who follow the camp, like vultures, to prey upon the corpses of the dead, had the temerity to press forward beneath a heavy fire to rifle the pockets of the officers who fell of their watches and money. The most daring and atrocious of these marauders were women.[37]
The description I heard of the field the morning after the battle from those who had visited it, I cannot yet recal without horror. Horses were galloping about in every direction without their riders: some of them, bleeding with theirwounds and frantic with pain, were tearing up the ground, and plunging over the bodies of the dead and the dying—and many of them were lying on the ground in the agonies of death.
Over the whole field the bodies of the innumerable dead, already stripped of every covering, were lying in heaps upon each other; the wounded in many instances beneath them. Some, faint and bleeding, were slowly attempting to make their way towards Brussels; others were crawling upon their hands and knees from this scene of misery; and many, unable to move, lay on the ground in agony.
For four days and nights some of these unfortunate men were exposed to the beams of the sun by day, and to the dews by night; for notwithstanding the most praiseworthy and indefatigable exertions, the last of the wounded were not removed from the field until the Thursday after the battle; and if we consider that there were at least 8000 British, besides the Belgic, Brunswick, and Prussian wounded soldiers, and an incalculable number of wounded French—we shall find cause for surprise and admiration, that they could be removed in so short a time. Their conveyance, too, was rendered extremely difficult, as well as inconceivably painful to the poor sufferers, by the dreadful and almost impassable state of the roads.
The Belgic peasantry showed the most active and attentive humanity to these poor wounded men. They brought them the best food they could procure; they gave them water to drink—they ministered to all their wants—complied with all their wishes—and treated them as if they had been their own children.
An officer, with whom we are well acquainted, went over the field on the morning of the battle, and examined the ghastly heaps of dead in search of the body of a near relation; and after all the corpses were buried or burnt—in the same melancholy and fruitless search, many an Englishwoman, whom this day of glory had bereft of husband or son, wandered over this fatal field, wildly calling upon the names of those who were now no more. The very day before we visited it, the widow and the sister of a brave and lamented British officer had been here, harrowing up the souls of the beholders with their wild lamentations, vainly demanding where the remains of him they loved reposed, and accusing Heaven for denying them the consolation of weeping over his grave. I was myself, afterwards, a sorrowful witness of the dreadful effects of the unrestrained indulgence of this passionate and heart-breaking grief. In the instance to which I allude, sorrow had nearly driven reason from her seat, and melancholy verged upon madness.
I have forced myself to dwell upon these scenes of horror, with whatever pain to my own feelings, because in this favoured country, which the mercy of Heaven has hitherto preserved from being the theatre of war, and from experiencing the calamities which have visited other nations, I have sometimes thought that the blessings of that exemption are but imperfectly felt, and that the sufferings and the dangers of those whose valour and whose blood have been its security and glory, are but faintly understood, and coldly commiserated. I wished that those who had suffered in the cause of their country should be repaid by her gratitude, and that she should learn more justly to estimate "the price of victory." But it is impossible for me to describe, or for imagination to conceive, the horrors of Waterloo!
How gladly would I dwell upon the individual merits of those who fell upon this glorious field, had I but the power to snatch from oblivion one of the many names which oughtto be enrolled in the proud list of their country's heroes! In the heat of such a battle, probably thousands have fallen, whose untold deeds surpass all that from childhood our hearts have worshipped. But that heroic valour and devoted patriotism, which in other days were confined to individuals and signalised their conduct—at Waterloo pervaded every breast. Every private soldier acted like a hero, and thus individual merit was lost in the general excellence, as the beams of the stars are undistinguished in the universal blaze of day.
But it is not only the unrivalled glory of my countrymen in arms, of which I am proud, it is the noble use which they have made of their triumph. It is not only their irresistible valour in battle, but their unexampled mercy and moderation in victory which exalts them above all other nations. It has been justly said by those whom they conquered, that no other army than the British could have won the battles of Quatre Bras and Waterloo: and no other army but the British, after such a battle and such a victory, after a long course of incessant warfare, after recent insults and wanton cruelties, and after ages of inveterate hostility and national animosity,—no other army but the British, in such circumstances, would have marched through the heart of that enemy's country, and entered that enemy's capital, as the British army marched through France and entered Paris.
We have only to remember what has invariably been the conduct of the French armies in their march through the countries they have conquered. We have only to picture to ourselves whatwouldhave been their conduct, if they had triumphantly marched through England, and we shall then be able to appreciate the meritorious moderation of the British army. No plundered towns, no burning villages, no ruined houses marked their course; no outrage, no crueltynor violence disgraced their triumphant progress. The French people received from their enemies that mercy which was denied them by their own soldiers. There is not a spot on the earth, from the burning sands of Egypt to the frozen deserts of Russia—from the Black Sea to the Pillars of Hercules—from the coasts of the Baltic to the shores of the Mediterranean, where the name of Frenchman and of Napoleon Buonaparte is not dreaded and detested. Whereever the power of Buonaparte has been known, or his dominion felt, his name is uttered with execrations. Wherever he has gone, his path, like that of the pestiferous serpent, has been traced by misery and desolation. But it is a proud reflection to every British heart, that there is not a country of the civilised world where England is not mentioned with respect and gratitude, and the very name of Englishman coupled with blessings.
I am too sensible of my own incompetency, and too conscious of my want of knowledge, to attempt to give any account of the battle itself. The deeds of my countrymen I can only admire—I am not qualified to record them. Abler pens than mine must do justice to the events of this day of glory, which I cannot recal to memory without tears: but it was impossible to stand on the field where thousands of my gallant countrymen had fought and conquered, and bled and died—and where their heroic valour had won for England her latest, proudest wreath of glory—without mingled feelings of triumph, pity, enthusiasm, and admiration, which language is utterly unable to express.
I stood alone upon the spot so lately bathed in human blood—where more than two hundred thousand human beings had mingled together in mortal strife: I cast my eyes upon the ruined hovels immortalised by the glorious achievements of my gallant countrymen. I recalled to mind their invincible constancy—their undaunted intrepidity—their heroic self-devotion in the hour of trial—their magnanimity and mercy in the moment of victory: I cast my eyes upon the tremendous graves at my feet, filled with the mortal remains of heroes.—Silence and desolation now reigned on this wide field of carnage: the scattered relics of recent slaughter and devastation covered the sun-burnt ground; the gales of heaven, as they passed me, were tainted with the effluvia of death. I shuddered at the thought that, beneath the clay on which I stood, the best and bravest of human hearts reposed in death. Oh! surely in such a moment and on such a spot, "some human tears might fall and be forgiven!"
Alas! those for whom I mourned sleep in death—and in vain for them are the tears, the praise, or the gratitude of their country: but though their bodies may moulder in the tomb, and their ashes, mingled with the dust, be scattered unnoticed by the winds of winter, their names and their deeds shall never perish—they shall live for ever in the remembrance of their country, and the tears which pity—gratitude—admiration—wring from every British heart, shall hallow their bloody and honourable grave. On earth they shall receive the noblest meed of praise; and oh! may we not, without impiety or presumption, indulge the hope, that in heaven the crown of glory and immortality awaits those who fell in the field of honour, and who in the discharge of their last and noblest duty to their country, "resigned their spirit unto Him that gave it?"
It was with difficulty I could tear myself from the spot—but after casting one long and lingering look upon the wood-crowned hill of Hougoumont, the shattered walls of La Haye Sainte, the hamlet of La Belle Alliance, the woodsof Frischermont, the broken hedge in front of which Sir Thomas Picton's division had been stationed, and which was doubly interesting from the remembrance that it was there that gallant and lamented general had fought and fallen; and after giving one last glance at the ever memorable tree beneath which I stood, I joined my brother and sister, who had been taking sketches at a little distance, and set off with them to Mont St. Jean—lightened of the load of my cuirass, which a little girl, who before the battle had been one of the inhabitants of La Haye Sainte, joyfully carried to the village for half a franc.
On our return we entered the farm-house where Major L. had been conveyed when wounded. The farm-house and offices enclose a court into which the windows of the house look. It is only one story high, and consists of three rooms, one through another. Not only these rooms, but the barns, out-houses, and byres were filled with wounded British officers, many of whom died here before morning.
In that last tremendous attack which took place towards the close of the day, before the arrival of the Prussians (but which, thanks to British valour, was wholly unsuccessful), the battle extended even here. The French suddenly turned the fire of nearly the whole of their artillery against this part of our position, in front of Mont St. Jean, and a general charge of their infantry and cavalry advanced, under cover of this tremendous cannonade, to the attack. Weakened as our army had been in this quarter with the immense loss it had sustained, they expected it to give way instantly, and that they should be able to force their way to Brussels. The Belgians fled at this tremendous onset. The British stood firm and undaunted, contesting every inch of ground. Every little rise was taken and retaken. TheFrench and English, intermingled with each other, fought man to man, and sword to sword, around these walls, and in this court, while cannon-shot thundered against the walls of the house, and shells broke in at the windows of the rooms crowded with wounded. Such of the officers as it was possible to remove were carried out beneath a shower of musketry. But our troops maintained their ground in spite of the immense numbers of the enemy, and of a most tremendous and incessant fire; and after a long and desperate contest, the French were completely repulsed and driven back. They never for a moment gained possession even of this farm-house, much less of the village of Mont St. Jean, to which indeed the battle never extended. Some cannon-balls indeed were lodged in the walls of the cottages, but the action took place entirely in front of the village, and its possession was never therefore disputed.
The farmer's wife had actually remained in this farm-house during the whole of this tremendous battle, quite alone, shut up in her own room, or rather garret. There she sat the whole day, listening to the roar of the cannon, in solitude and silence, unable to see anything, or to hear any account of what was passing. It seemed to me that the utmost ingenuity of man could not have devised a more terrible punishment than this woman voluntarily inflicted upon herself. When I asked her what could have been her motives for remaining in such a dreadful situation, she said that she stayed to take care of her property—that all she had in the world consisted in cows and calves, in poultry and pigs—and she thought if she went away and left them, she should lose them all—and perhaps have her house and furniture burnt. She seemed to applaud herself not a little for her foresight. If the French, however, had been victoriousinstead of the English, the woman, as well as her hens and chickens, would have been in rather an awkward predicament.
Her husband first told me this story, which I could scarcely credit till she herself confirmed it. But he, honest man! had wisely run away before the battle had begun, leaving his wife, his pigs, and poultry to take care of themselves. She said she stayed in her room all that night, and never came down till the following morning, when all the surviving wounded officers had been removed, but the bodies of those who had expired during the night still remained, and the floors of all the rooms were stained with blood. She seemed very callous to their fate, and to the sufferings of the wounded; and very indifferent about everything except her hens and chickens. She led me to a little miserable dark cow-house, where General Cooke (or Cock, as she called him) had remained a considerable time when wounded, and it seemed to be a sort of gratification to her, that a British general had been in her cow-house.
Leaving this farm-house, we walked through the village of Mont St. Jean, and stopped at the little inn, where we found the rest of the party busily employed upon every kind of eatable the house afforded, which consisted of brown bread, and butter and cheese—small beer, and still smaller wine. Although I had rejected with abhorrence at Château Hougoumont a proposal of eating, which some one had ventured unadvisedly to make; and though it did seem to me upon the field of battle that I should never think of eating again, yet no sooner did I cast my eyes upon these viands than I pounced upon them, as a falcon does upon its prey, and devoured them with nearly as much voracity. They seemed to me to be delicious; and the brown bread and butter, especially, were incomparable.
The woman of the house and her two daughters, who were industriously employed in plain needlework, related to us with great naïveté all the terrors they had suffered, and all the horrors they had seen. Like all the other inhabitants of the village, they had fled the day before the battle—not into the woods, but to a place, the name of which I do not remember, but which they said was very far off ("bien loin").
Several cannon-balls had lodged in the walls about this house, although it was at the extremity of the village, farthest from the field. Having finished our frugal repast, for which these kind and simple people asked a most trifling recompense, we left Mont St. Jean, passed through the village of Waterloo for the last time, and returned to Brussels with an impression on our minds, from our visit to the field of Waterloo, which no time can efface.
It was on Wednesday, the 19th of July, that we learnt the astonishing news that Napoleon Buonaparte had surrendered himself to the British, and was actually a prisoner on board the Bellerophon. An aide-de-camp of the King of France, going express to the King of Holland at the Hague, was the bearer of this important intelligence. It was communicated to us by General Murray, who came in with a countenance radiant with joy, and scarcely could my sister and I, in our transports, refrain from embracing the good old general. He had himself seen the aide-de-camp of Louis XVIII.; yet this news was so unexpected, so wonderful—and above all so good; that scarcely could it be credited. Could it indeed be possible that Napoleon—the dreaded Napoleon—was really a prisoner to the English! All ranks of people were breathless with expectation, and with trembling eagerness and anxious inquiries awaited further intelligence. In a few hours it was confirmed beyonda possibility of doubt.—"Buonaparte est pris!—il est pris!—c'est vrai—c'est bien vrai!" cried M. Weerid, the Belgic gentleman in whose house Major L. was an inmate, bursting into his room with a turbulence of joy ill-suited to the suffering state of our poor wounded friend. The loud acclamations of the populace—the ejaculations of thanksgiving and tears of joy which burst from the women—and the curses which were freely bestowed on him by the men—proved the strength of their terror, and the bitterness of their detestation.
It was our fate to be the bearers of this intelligence almost the whole way through Belgium. So slowly does news travel in this country, that although it had arrived in Brussels at five o'clock in the afternoon, and we did not set off till eight the following morning, no rumours of it had been received in any of the towns or villages through which we passed; and we even found the good people of Ghent in profound ignorance of it. But the Belgians were slow of belief, and the transport and the vociferous joy with which it was uniformly received at first, were generally followed by doubts and fears, and fervent wishes for its truth.
At the inn at Alost we found a party comfortably sitting down to dinner at twelve o'clock, at the well-spread Table d'Hôte. No sooner had I mentioned this news than knives and forks were thrown down, plates and dishes abandoned. An old fat Belgic gentleman, overturning his soup plate, literally jumped for joy; another, more nimble, began to caper up and down the room. A corpulent lady, in attempting to articulate her transport, was nearly choked, like little Hunchback, with a fish-bone; and the demonstrations of joy shown by the rest of the party were not less extravagant. One old man, however, shook his head in sign of incredulity, and said with fervour, when I assured him that Buonaparte was really a prisoner to the English, "that he should have lived long enough if he ever lived to see that day." Nothing amused me more, however, than the squall set up by an old country-woman, who shook my hand till she nearly wrung it off, and then, shocked at what she had done, burst forth into apologies to me, exclamations of joy, and abuse of Buonaparte, all in a breath.
To my cost, however, the official account of this important news did arrive at Ghent, just after I had gone to bed. It had been more than twenty-four hours on its way, travelling at the rate of about a mile an hour; and much did I wish that it had been longer, for neither peace nor repose was now to be had. Bonfires were lighted, guns fired, squibs and crackers let off in the streets, rockets sent up to the clouds, and both heaven and earth disturbed by the uproar. Not satisfied with this, they took it into their heads to keep up a firing with muskets under my windows; and the inhabitants and the English soldiers, royally drunk and loyally noisy, vied with each other in singing or rather roaring out the most discordant strains; and "God save the King," in English, and a variety of Belgic songs in low Dutch, were sung all at once, with the most patriotic perseverance, in the streets. By the time these outrageously loyal people found their way to bed, it was nearly time for me to get up, which I did at five o'clock, in order to see a very fine cabinet of paintings. The old Flemish gentleman to whom they belonged, not satisfied with giving me permission to see them, had the politeness to rise at that unseasonable hour, in order that he might be ready to receive me, and to show them to me himself. What English gentleman would have got out of his bed before six o'clock in order to show his collection of paintings to a foreigner, a person of no distinction, of whom heknew nothing, who had no introduction to him, whom he had never seen before, and would most probably never see again?
Next day at nine o'clock we embarked from Ostend for England in a large packet crowded with passengers. We set sail with a favouring gale, but the winds and the waves maintained their usual capricious and inconstant character, and after a succession of calms, contrary winds, and opposing tides, we found ourselves, late on the evening of the second day, at anchor within sight of the harbour of Margate, but without a hope of reaching it till the following morning. In order to escape spending another night on board, we embraced the expedient of committing ourselves to a little boat, in which it seemed invariably to be our fate to end all our voyages.