streets, shaded from the powerful rays of the sun. We had a good
deal of conversation with several of the privates of the 42nd and
92nd regiments, and their account of the battle was most simple and
interesting. They seemed not to have the smallest pride in what they
had done; but to consider it quite as a matter of course; they uttered
not the smallest complaint, but rather made light of their sufferings,
and there was nothing in their words or manner that looked as if they
were sensible of having done anything in the least extraordinary;
nothing that laid claim to pity, admiration, or glory. The carnage
among the French, both on the 16th and 18th, in their encounter with
the Highland regiments, was described to us as most dreadful. The
cuirassiers, men and officers, horses and riders, were rolled in
death, one upon another, after the British charge with the bayonet.
In vain the French returned to the attack with furious valour and
reinforced numbers. Their utmost efforts could make no impression on
the impenetrable squares of the infantry, and the spiked wall of the
British embattled bayonets; and when they retired from the ineffectual
attack, the brave Highlanders, with loud cries of "Scotland for ever!"
rushed among them, bore down all resistance, and scattered their
legions like withered leaves before the blast of autumn.
It is but justice to these gallant men to say, that it was not from
themselves we heard this relation of their own deeds. _They_ could
not be induced to speak of what they had done, but it was repeated on
every side; it was the theme of every tongue. The love and admiration
of the whole Belgic people for the Highlanders are most remarkable.
Whenever they heard them mentioned, they exclaimed, "Ah! ces braves
hommes! ces bons Ecossais! ils sont si doux--et si aimables--et dans
la guerre!--ah! mon Dieu! comme ils sont terribles!" They never speak
of them without some epithet of affection or admiration. Their merits
are the darling topic of their private circles, and their figures the
favourite signs of their public-houses; in short, they are the best of
soldiers and of men, according to the Belgians--nothing was ever like
them, and the idea they have of their valour is quite prodigious.[18]
The sufferings of the wounded, however, did not form the only affecting
sight that Antwerp presented. The deep, the distracting grief of the
unfortunate people whose friends had perished, and the heart-rending
anxiety of those who vainly sought for intelligence of the fate of
those most dear to them, were amongst the most distressing parts of
the many mournful scenes we witnessed. Of those friends for whose
safety we were deeply solicitous, we could gain no information, and the
suspense, dreadful as it was, we, as well as thousands, were obliged to
endure. But our anxiety, our sorrows, seemed light indeed in comparison
with those of others: there were few who had not some near friend or
relative to deplore, and Antwerp was filled with heart-broken mourners,
whom the victory of yesterday had bereft of all that made life dear to
them. In the same hotel with us was poor Lady de Lancey, a young and
widowed bride, upon whom, in all the hopes of happiness--in the very
flower of youth--unacquainted with sorrow, and far from every friend,
the heaviest stroke of affliction had fallen unprepared. But three
little days ago, she seemed to be at the summit of felicity, and now
she was bereaved of every earthly hope. She bore the intelligence of
her irreparable loss with astonishing firmness. I did not wonder that
she refused to see every human being, for no earthly power could speak
consolation to misery such as hers. In vain I tried to forget her--I
could not banish her from my remembrance; and often, during our long
wanderings in the distant regions of Holland, when I was far from her,
and far from all that might have recalled her to my remembrance, among
other sights and other scenes, her early misfortunes wrung my heart
with the deepest sorrow.
But whatever might be the grief and anxiety of individuals, the
universal joy was unbounded. It is impossible to describe the effects
of this victory upon all ranks of people. Every human heart seemed to
beat in sympathy; every countenance beamed with joy; every tongue spoke
the language of exultation. As the terror and despair of the Belgians
had been excessive, their transport was now vehement and overflowing,
and their volubility not to be imagined. We went into several shops,
and the people, unable to restrain themselves, poured out upon us
the fulness of their joy, their astonishment, their gratitude, their
admiration, and their praise. Totally forgetful of their interests,
they thought not of selling their goods; they thought of nothing--they
could do nothing but talk of the battle and the British, and it was
with difficulty we could get them to show us what we wanted: nay, more
than once we were actually obliged to go away without doing anything,
from the impossibility of making them attend to the business of selling
and buying.
But sometimes the expression of their feelings was so simple, so
natural, and so touching, and there was so much of truth and naïveté,
both in their manner and their words, that it was impossible to hear
them without emotion. The French they loaded with execrations; and
their hatred, their indignation, and their bitter feelings of their
wrongs, said more than volumes of eloquence, or even facts could have
done, in condemnation of the conduct of their late masters. All the
English merchandise, and all colonial produce, imported even before
it was decreed to be a crime, were seized, carried from their shops
and warehouses, and burnt before their eyes in the Place Verte. No
remuneration, no indemnity whatever was given them; and by this single
act of wanton tyranny, hundreds of industrious families were reduced
to beggary. Heavy exactions and continual contributions were levied,
and the weight of these fell upon the most industrious and respectable
orders of the people. "All that we had they took," was said again and
again to us, "and if we had had thousands more, it would have all
gone." They ruined the commerce, the manufactures, the trade of the
country, and then they drained the poor inhabitants of their property.
They shut up the sources of wealth, and then called on them for money.
They blocked up the fountain, and then asked for its waters. Like
Egyptian task-masters, they took from them the materials, and then
demanded their work. They expected them to make "bricks without straw."
The French soldiers lived at free-quarters upon the people, and the
Belgic youths were marched away to fight in foreign wars. The oppressed
people were subject to the unrestrained rapine and brutal insolence of
the French soldiery, of which they durst not complain. It was unsafe
even to murmur. Not only the liberty of the press, but the liberty of
speech was denied them. Any unfortunate person convicted of holding
intercourse with England was imprisoned, and some of them (we were
told), by way of example, were shot.
We happened to go into a little stationer's shop, kept by a widow and
her three daughters, who received us almost with adoration because we
were English. They all began to talk at once, and relieved their minds
by pouring out a torrent of invectives against those detested tyrants,
"Ces fléaux du genre humain," as they called them. All their goods had
been seized; their shop (which was not then a stationer's) completely
stripped of its contents, under the pretence of its being filled with
British and colonial produce, which they said was not the case; and a
considerable quantity of continental manufactures had also been carried
away. "But _that_ was nothing," the poor mother said, as she wiped
the tears from her eyes, "_that_ she could have borne, for though it
seemed heavy at the time, she thought less of it now;--but her five
sons (fine handsome young men, they were, as ever a mother bore), her
five sons were all taken for soldiers, and perished in the French wars;
some in the retreat from Russia, and some in the subsequent campaign
in Germany." The tears streamed down the cheeks of one of these young
women, as she spoke to me of her "poor brothers." I can give no idea of
the bitterness, the rancour, the hatred, and above all, the volubility
of the abuse which these poor women poured out against the French.
We got away from them with difficulty; and though the deep sense of
their own wrongs rankled in their minds, and aggravated the resentment
and detestation which they must naturally feel towards the authors of
so much misery, yet we found the same sentiments, in greater or in
less degree, among all the Belgians with whom we conversed, or whom we
heard conversing. I had always understood that the French (and Napoleon
in particular) were highly popular in Antwerp, but from some most
respectable old-established merchants, both British and Belgic, we
learned that the inhabitants were decidedly hostile to the French, and
that they were both feared and hated by all, excepting the very dregs
of society, and those individuals who had made fortunes under their
administration.
In the course of our rambles we had many conversations with various
people whom we never saw before, and I suppose shall never see again.
We met a wounded officer who had been taken prisoner by the French. He
said, that after repeatedly threatening to kill him, and loading him
with abuse, they actually knocked him on the head with the butt-end
of a musket, and left him for dead upon the field: he came, however,
to himself, and effected his escape. His face was most frightfully
swelled, and so bruised, that it was every shade of black, and blue,
and green; his head was entirely tied up with white handkerchiefs and
bloody bandages, and in my life I never saw a more battered object. He
had his arm in a sling; but he was by much too rejoiced at his escape
to care about his wounds or bruises. He told us, what _then_ I could
scarcely believe, that the French had killed many of our officers whom
they had taken prisoners, and that they had _piked_ numbers of the
wounded. The truth of these brutal murders, disgraceful to humanity,
and even more dishonourable and more barbarous than the worst cruelty
of savages, were unhappily, afterwards, too indisputably proved.
In our progress through the streets we could not resist stopping to
speak to such of the poor wounded soldiers as seemed able to talk,
and who looked as if they would thank us even for a word of kindness,
much to the amazement of Mr. D., an Antwerp merchant, who was walking
about with us, to "show us the lions," as he said. However, he waited
most patiently, while Mrs. H., my sister, and I talked to ensigns,
sergeants, corporals, and common soldiers, who were all, more or less,
wounded or disabled.
"We have got six of those wounded soldiers billeted upon us," said
Mr. D., as we walked on, "but I must get them boarded out somewhere,
for they would be very troublesome in the house." "Troublesome!" I
exclaimed. "Yes! you know they would be very troublesome in a house,
though I suppose the surgeons will look after their _wounds_, and all
_that_; they will cost me" (I forget how many guelders he said) "a
week, but I would rather _pay_ it" (with a strong and proud emphasis
upon the word pay) "than have them in the house, it would be so very
disagreeable."
I was silent, for I durst not trust myself to speak. Yet this was a
very well-meaning man. I make no doubt he subscribed _handsomely_ to
the Waterloo fund, and that he would have given money to those very
wounded soldiers to whom he refused shelter--if he had thought they
wanted it. But beyond giving money his ideas of charity did not extend.
To his mercantile mind, money was the chief and only good; the sole
source of pride and of happiness; the only object in life worth seeking
after--the one thing needful. He was a very good kind of man in his
way, but he was entirely occupied with his "snug box" at Clapham, his
brother's grand potteries in Staffordshire, and his own cargoes of
rice, and hogsheads of rum and sugar; he could not feel the vast debt
of gratitude their country owed to "the men of Waterloo;" to those
gallant soldiers who had fought and bled for her safety and glory.
He did not mean to be unkind or ungenerous; he would have started at
the reproach of wanting humanity, or being deficient in gratitude,
but--but--but--in short, he was altogether an Antwerp merchant.
The day was extremely hot, and on the outside of the Cafés, beneath
the shade of awnings, and seated beside little tables in the open
street, the Belgic gentlemen were eating ices and fruit, and drinking
coffee, and reading "L'Oracle de Bruxelles," and playing at domino
and backgammon with the utmost composure, utterly regardless of the
crowds of passengers, and apparently as much at their ease as if they
were in their own houses,--or indeed more so; for the Belgians, like
the French, are more at home at le Café, or in the public streets, or
anywhere, than in their own home, which is the last place in which
they think of looking for enjoyment. They have no notion of domestic
comfort, domestic pleasure, or domestic happiness; and consequently
they cannot have much knowledge of domestic virtues. I cannot,
therefore, help considering the French as a gay, rather than a happy
nation. French habits and manners, and, I am afraid, French morals,
are universally prevalent throughout Belgium. Groups of ladies of the
most respectable character may everywhere be seen, sitting on chairs
or benches, in the public streets or promenades, working, talking,
laughing, and amusing themselves with all the ease and gaiety and
sangfroid in the world. Sometimes only a knot of ladies, but more
frequently ladies coquetting with their obsequious beaux.
We visited the unfinished Quay, begun by Napoleon, which was to have
extended above a mile along the broad and deep Scheldt, and would have
been one of the finest quays in Europe. We saw the flying bridge ("Le
Pont Volant"), a most ingenious contrivance, on which carriages,
horses, and waggons pass with great rapidity and security from one
side of the river to the other, without interrupting its navigation,
even for vessels of the largest burden. Such a plan, I should think,
might be adopted with great success upon the Thames between London and
Gravesend, or in any river where the arches of a stone bridge would
obstruct the passage of the ships, and where the breadth is too great
for the single span of an iron bridge. The mechanism seemed to be very
simple. The largest ships of war can come up close to the quay; but the
navigation of the Scheldt is difficult, and even dangerous, from the
number of sand banks which choke it up. Antwerp is upwards of fifty
miles from the mouth of the river.
We saw the docks, the offspring of Napoleon's hatred against our
country; one of them was made sufficiently large and deep to be capable
of containing the greatest part of the British navy, and at one time he
exulted in the expectation of seeing the "wooden walls" of Old England
safely moored in _his_ docks at Antwerp. Little did he anticipate the
day when the little army of England, which he despised and ridiculed,
should be the unmolested possessors of _his_ capital of Paris!
The Arsenal (la Maison de Marine) is now emptied of its stores, and
deserted by its workmen. We saw a long building erected by Napoleon for
the manufacture of ropes for ships--now equally useless. Its length is
precisely the same as that of the cable of a first-rate British ship
of war. The manner in which they repair ships in these docks is unlike
anything I ever saw before. Instead of lifting the ship entirely out
of water, and placing it upon the stocks (in effecting which, or in
relaunching it, a vessel is said often to sustain injury), a rope is
attached to the masts, and the ship is hauled down until its keel is
exposed; after repairing that side they haul it down on the other in
the same manner, and the workmen stand upon a raft that is fastened to
its side.
We went to see the Citadel, a noble and complete fortification
overlooking the Scheldt. The walls are of such an immense height and
thickness, that I should imagine them to be quite invulnerable. The
fortress is capable of containing 10,000 men; by means of the river
fresh reinforcements might be constantly thrown in; and with a strong
garrison, and an adequate supply of provisions and ammunition, I should
suppose, that like another Troy, it might stand a ten years' siege;
only that modern patience would never hold out such a length of time.
The commandant was confined to his bed by indisposition; but every
part of the fortification was explained to us by a very good-humoured,
intelligent Irish officer, whose name I have forgotten, but who seemed
to be excessively amused by the (I fear) almost childish delight which
my sister and I betrayed in seeing all the wonders of this wonderful
place. Everything to us was new and interesting. It was the first
citadel we had ever seen: and to see with our own eyes a real, actual
citadel--nay, more, to be in one, was so very delightful, that we both
agreed, if we had seen nothing else, we should have thought ourselves
amply repaid for our journey to Antwerp.
This good-natured officer contentedly toiled along with us, under the
burning rays of a most sultry sun, round the whole fortifications, and
pointed out to us where and how attacks might be made with success,
and in what manner they could be resisted. The sight of the moat,
the draw-bridges, the ramparts, the bastions, and the dungeons; the
sally-ports and gates, which communicate with the citadel from the moat
by long subterranean passages, so forcibly recalled to my recollection
all that I had heard and read of battles and sieges in history and in
tales of chivalry, that I could have fancied myself transported back
into ages long since past--into the iron times of arms; and all that
had before existed only in imagination was at once realised.
After visiting all the lions of Antwerp, docks and fortresses; and
ships and statues; and pictures and prisons; and quays and cathedrals;
and battle-beaten walls and flying bridges; and decayed monasteries,
and modern arsenals; which, as they have all been often so much better
described than I can describe them, I shall forbear to describe at
all--we returned to the hotel, excessively heated and tired, and very
glad to sit down to rest. To-day, for the first time since our arrival,
we began to have serious thoughts of getting some dinner. We might have
eaten something during those days of alarm and agitation, and I suppose
we did; but, excepting the breakfast we had got upon the stairs at
Brussels on Saturday, I have not the most distant recollection of ever
having eaten at all.
Upon the necessity and expediency of now dining, however, we were all
unanimously agreed: the difficulty was how to achieve it. Mr. and Mrs.
H. had a pigeon-hole for their only habitation, in which it would
have been perfectly impossible to have introduced a table; a single
chair was all it was capable of containing. In our rooms we had some
difficulty in turning round when more than one person at a time was
in them; but by dint of sitting _out_ of the window, and against the
door, and upon all the boxes, we had, I was assured--for I actually did
not remember it--ingeniously succeeded in getting some breakfast--but
to dine was perfectly impracticable. There happened, however, to be in
this very hotel, a Captain F., an idle, not a fighting, captain; one
who made his campaigns, not at Waterloo, but in Bond-street; and this
Captain F., who had been in Antwerp long before the commencement of
hostilities, had, luckily for us, got possession of a room in which
it was possible to move. He was a Newmarket friend of Mr. H.'s, who
introduced him to us, with the recommendation that he was a young man
of fashion and fortune, well known about town; and in Captain F.'s room
and company, Mr. and Mrs. H., my sister, my brother, and I accordingly
dined; we were also favoured with the company of a particular friend
of his, a Mr. C. Many foolish young men it has been my lot to see, but
never did I meet with any whose folly was at all comparable to that of
Captain F.
Captain F. was a young man who prided himself upon his knowledge of
horse-flesh, and who had, by his own account, been jockeyed out of
"many a cool thousand" by his ignorance of it; he was a young man who
delighted in building more _new invented_ carriages in one year than
he could pay for in twenty; he was a young man who prided himself upon
borrowing money from Jews at fifteen per cent. while his guardians were
saving it for him at five; and in squandering it at Newmarket while
they thought him poring over Greek and mathematics at Cambridge; he
was a young man whose highest pride consisted in driving four-in-hand
"knowingly;" whose greatest ambition was to resemble a stage-coachman
exactly, and whose distinguishing characteristic was that of being a
most egregious fool.
In consequence, I suppose, of a perseverance in this laudable career,
Captain F. now found it more convenient to play the fool upon the
continent than in England. After recounting to us various and manifold
deeds of folly committed in London and Newmarket, amongst Jews and Whip
Clubs, he at length gravely asserted, "that it was impossible for any
man to dress under seven hundred a year."
This piece of information was received by some of the party with equal
amazement and incredulity: but Captain F. assured us, "'Pon his soul
it was true; that he knew as well as any man what it was to dress, and
that it could not be done for less than seven hundred a year--nay, that
it often costs nine."
"And pray, Captain F.," said I, involuntarily glancing at his coat,
which happened not to be by any means a new one, "do _you_ spend nine
hundred a year upon dress?"
"Oh! not _now_," he exclaimed; "I don't dress _now_; I never dressed
but eighteen months in my life." He then explained at large to me,
who, in my ignorance, had not understood what to dress meant, "that
'to dress' signified to be the first in fashion, to make it the study
of one's life to appear in a new mode before anybody else; 'to sport'
something new every day; and during the time he dressed," he said,
"his tailor sent him down three boxes of clothes every week from town,
wherever he might happen to be." Having thus satisfactorily proved,
that, at a considerable expense to his pocket, he had turned himself
into a sort of block for the tailors to attire in their new invented
coats and waistcoats, like the wooden dolls the milliners dress up
to set off their new fashions, he next poured out such a quantity
of nonsense about the battle and the wounded, that he reminded me of
Hotspur's account of his interview with a coxcomb of the same species:
"When the fight was done,----"
But why do I waste a word upon him.
A Scotch acquaintance, Mr. E., of M., arrived this evening from the
field, where he had been ineffectually engaged in the soul-harrowing
employment of searching among the dead, the wounded, and the dying,
for his youngest brother, who was nowhere to be found. He was a
gallant-spirited youth of eighteen, and this was his first campaign.
His horse had returned without its rider--among the multitude of
wounded he could not be found. Some hopes, some faint hopes, yet
remained that he might have been taken prisoner, and that he might yet
appear; but there was too much reason to fear that he had perished,
though where or how was unknown. Alas! every passing day made the hopes
of his friends more and more improbable. No tidings were ever heard of
him, and "on earth he was seen no more." The uncertainty in which the
fate of this lamented young man was involved was even more dreadful
than the knowledge of the worst could have been. Mrs. H.'s anxiety
respecting her brother was relieved by Mr. E.'s assurance of his being
in perfect safety. He could tell us nothing of the fate of those for
whom we were so deeply anxious. "Do not ask me," he exclaimed, "who
_is_ wounded--I cannot tell you. It would be easy to say who are
_not_." Intelligence from another quarter, however, relieved our fears,
and although it subsequently proved false, for the present it led us
to believe that our friends were in safety.