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 their wounds 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 ought to 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 what _would_ have 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 cruelty nor 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 woods of 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. The French 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 victorious instead 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 beyond a 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.