Waterloo Days

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.

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 he knew 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.

We were rowed ashore, and landed in the dark, at past eleven o'clock at night, upon the slippery and weed-covered rocks of Margate, exactly six weeks after we had landed in the same manner, at the same hour, and the same day of the week, on the deep and deserted sands of Ostend. In that six weeks what a change had taken place! When I left England, Buonaparte was the terror of the world – Europe was arming against him, and his threatening hosts were ready to overwhelm it again with ruin. When I returned, these tremendous armies were defeated and scattered – the victorious troops of England were in the capital of France; and Buonaparte himself, fallen from the highest imperial throne of the universe to the lowest abyss of fortune, was a prisoner on board a British ship of war, and a suppliant to the mercy of my country!

Events so extraordinary and improbable, and changes so sudden and so wonderful, seemed to outrun the rapidity of imagination itself, and to exceed the limits of possibility. The past seemed like a dream. Scarcely, on retrospection, could we believe it to be real, or be convinced that the scenes we had witnessed, since our departure from England, had not been the illusions of fancy, or the "baseless fabric of a vision." They bore more resemblance to the shifting and imaginary scenes represented on the stage, than to events which had actually happened on the great theatre of the world. It had indeed been a great and a bloody tragedy, and it had been our lot to witness it from the first to the last scene. It began at our entrance, it finished at our departure from Brussels. The news of Buonaparte having attacked the Prussians reached Brussels at the very moment of our arrival – the news of his surrender to the British was received the night before we left it.

In that six weeks the work of an age had been accomplished; an usurper had been dethroned; a monarch had been restored; a kingdom had been lost and won; a war had begun and ended; peace had revisited the world; and justice – strict, impartial justice – had descended upon the head of the guilty. And all this was the work of England!

Yet it has been asked – and I have often heard the question slightingly repeated by my own countrymen – "And what, after all, has England gained for years of war and bloodshed but glory?" I might answer that she has gained security, peace, and prosperity for the world, and for herself, besides, the highest place among nations: but granting that she had only gained glory – what, I ask in return, could she gain that is equivalent to it? What is there on earth to be compared to it?

"Is aught on earth so precious and so dearAs Fame or Honour? or is aught so brightAnd beautiful as Glory's beams appear,Whose goodly light than Phœbus' lamp doth shine more clear?"Faerie Queen.

Glory is the highest, the most lasting good. Without it, extent of empire, political greatness, and national prosperity, are but a name; without it, they can have no security, and can command no respect; without it all other possessions are worthless and despicable – unstable and transitory. Fortune may change; arts may perish; commerce may decay; and wealth and power, and dominion and greatness may pass away – but glory is immortal and indestructible, and will last when empires and dynasties are no more.

What gives nations honour and renown in future times but the glory they have acquired? What exalted Greece and Rome to their proud pre-eminence among the nations, and transmitted the lustre of their name to the remotest time? Why does the traveller still traverse distant countries, to explore with hallowed respect their mouldering temples, and linger with silent awe amidst the ruins of the Parthenon, or on the site of the Capitol? Why does generation after generation contemplate with veneration the plains of Marathon, and the heights of Leuctra? Why do they still retrace with enthusiasm the deeds of their departed heroes, and the long catalogue of their ancient glories? – It is to these ancient glories that they owe their present interest and importance. The nations of the East were possessed of unbounded wealth, magnificence, and power – and were long the seats of commerce, of the arts of life, and of learning, when the western world was immersed in ignorance and barbarism. – Yet their antiquities are unexplored – their history neglected – their very existence almost forgotten; for they have left no proud remembrance, no ray of glory, to immortalise their name.

If it had been extent of empire, or superiority of wealth, that gave nations lasting greatness, Persia would have enjoyed that veneration which is now paid to Athens. If it had been conferred by antiquity, or by being the birth-place of the arts and sciences, Egypt would have stood upon that pedestal of fame which Rome now fills.

Yes! England has nobly fought, triumphantly conquered and well has she been rewarded! She has gained that unalienable, imperishable prize, which neither time nor fortune, nor fate – nor any earthly power can ever wrest from her. She has won the immortal meed! Generations yet unborn shall pride themselves on being the descendants of those who fought and conquered in the righteous cause of Justice, Honour, and Independence, on the plains of Spain, and on the glorious field of Waterloo; and feel the throb of generous enthusiasm and of virtuous patriotism, when they retrace the bright history of their country's achievements.

With these sentiments deeply impressed upon my mind; with the proud consciousness, that highly as the fame of England had stood in all ages, she had now attained an unparalleled height of greatness and glory; that the ancient triumphs of Cressy, Poictiers, and Agincourt, in one age, of Ramillies, Malplaquet, and Blenheim, in another, had been surpassed in those of Salamanca, Vittoria, and Waterloo, in our own; that her name would descend to the latest times as unrivalled in arms, invincible by land and by sea, and pre-eminent, not only in valour, but in faith and honour – in justice, mercy, and magnanimity, and in public virtue – I returned to my country after all the varying and eventful scenes through which it had been my lot to pass, more proud than when I left it of the name of

An Englishwoman.

A TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON

WRITTEN THE DAY AFTER HIS FUNERAL19th November, 1852.

The great Arthur, Duke of Wellington, whose latest achievements in war form the subject of the preceding pages, is no more. Long, long will the nation mourn the greatest, the most irreparable loss it ever sustained. The last sad and solemn scene has passed away. That great and wondrous man, who was its stay, its pride and glory, has been borne to his honoured tomb, amidst those splendid obsequies and funeral pomps with which his grateful country vainly sought to evince her unbounded admiration, her devoted love, and her profound veneration, for him who was her deliverer and preserver; to whom she owed her unprecedented triumphs in war – her prolonged blessings in peace.

"His funeral pall has been borne by nations – not by the nations he enslaved, but the nations he liberated; – the truncheons of eight armies have dropped from his grasp, and they were borne in the funeral procession by the companions and allies of his arms and victories."38 But, nobler far, he was followed to the grave by the blessings and the tears of millions; and he, alone, amidst all the great generals and conquerors of the earth, merits the proud eulogium, that he was at once a true patriot and a benefactor to his species.

Eloquence has vainly exhausted itself in enumerating his merits and services; but words are powerless to speak his praises. They are felt in the hearts of the people of England. Never did a chieftain, a conqueror, a hero, descend to the tomb so universally honoured and lamented. All ranks, all ages, all parties, unite in one unanimous sense of sorrow and bereavement. Every man seems to feel that he, personally, has lost a benefactor, a protector – almost a parent. And as the light of the sun is not missed until it is withdrawn, so even his value was not perhaps fully felt until he was lost.

But he is gone! "Quenched is that light which was the leading star to guide every Briton on the path of duty and honour."39 His name is surrounded by a pure halo of glory – not that ordinary vulgar glory which is the meed of the mere conqueror. No! the "hero of a hundred fights," who never knew defeat, sought not, valued not such glory; nay, more, he despised it; he never even named "its very name."40 His watchword was Duty, and the path of duty, honour, and patriotism, he trod. What a striking contrast did his career present to that of Napoleon, who sought that vain, false glory, through fields of fire and carnage, crushing the nations beneath his iron yoke, to aggrandise his selfish ambition, and reign the despot of a devastated world! How striking is the fact, that at the very time when, by the mysterious decree of Providence, a Buonaparte was sent to desolate and enslave the world, a Wellesley was given to save and deliver it! – the one, the Destroyer; the other, the Preserver. They seemed like the Incarnate Principles of Evil and of Good; but the Good triumphed: the conqueror and deliverer of distracted and bleeding Europe became its Pacificator; and through long years of peace and prosperity the nations which he saved from tyranny and ruin, have had reason to bless the name of Wellington.

Will it yet be permitted to one British heart – simply "An Englishwoman," who witnessed the most eventful scenes of his glorious campaigns, and proudly watched from first to last his high unblemished career – to offer, with the deepest veneration, a humble tribute of high and holy admiration upon the tomb of that hero whom, through life, her heart has worshipped.

The One True Hero! unequalled in the annals of history – unsurpassed even in the creations of Romance; He, who never headed the battalions of his countrymen except in a just and righteous cause, and never once failed to lead them on to victory and honour; He, who was not only the "Victor of Victors," the greatest of Conquerors, but also the greatest Pacificator the world ever saw – for he used the triumphs of War only to obtain the blessings of Peace; – He, whose first thought in victory was mercy, whose first care was to ensure, not the spoils, but the protection of the vanquished; – He, who, when he sheathed his conquering sword, consecrated the powers of his mighty genius, his mind, and life, to the welfare of his country; who worked her weal through evil report and good report, unmoved by the cabals of Faction, the intrigues of Power, and the slanders of Malignity; – He, whose Spirit, whilst he lived, was our Shield and Buckler, our Stay and Support; his counsels our best resource; his name our tower of strength; and his very existence our surest defence.

Alas, for England! Woe! woe to our country! The grave has closed over him; but his sacred ashes shall still guard our land. Around his honoured tomb every British heart will rally to rout and vanquish the hostile foe who dares to set foot on British ground. Every heart will be roused, every arm raised to repel the insult. His name shall be our everlasting panoply of defence; his life, his example, his memory, shall live in our hearts, and to the latest posterity England's proudest boast shall be the name of Wellington.

APPENDIX

A. (p. 44).

The desertion of General Bourmont did not take place during the Battle of Quatre Bras, but on the day before. He and his Staff joined the Prussian General Ziethen as the French were advancing on Charleroi, on June 15. The mistake, however, is hardly the writer's fault, as Sir F. Head, the English authority for the statement, misprints the date. (See Hooper's Waterloo, p. 68.)

B. (p. 93).

The decisive part which the Prussian army played in the Battle of Waterloo is often overlooked, as it is here. Readers must bear in mind that the junction of the two armies of the Allies was preconcerted by Wellington and Blücher, and that the battle would not have been fought under other circumstances. It is true that the Prussian advance from Wavre, whence it had retreated after the Battle of Ligny on the 16th, was delayed, whereby an undue strain was placed upon and nobly borne by the English infantry, but the first Prussian corps under Bülow was known to be approaching by three o'clock. Their advance on the village of Planchenoit, on the light of the French position, caused Napoleon to detach to his right 16,000 French troops, out of the 72,000 with which he began the battle, and at last engaged his attention so far as that he left Ney to conduct the attack upon Wellington's army. Though it may be true, as Mrs. Eaton states, that the Prussians did not "make their appearance" (i. e. to the British troops) till seven o'clock (p. 130), they were nevertheless in conflict with the French for some hours before, and considerably modified their attack on Wellington's position.

C. (p. 145).

The allegations of cowardice brought against Napoleon at the time, and frequently repeated, do not meet with the slightest support from accurate historians. It is almost certain that when Wellington, on the 17th, withdrew his army from Quatre Bras to the position in which he accepted battle on the following day, Napoleon was with the head of the French column which followed up the retreat, and was within cannon shot of the British artillery and of Lord Uxbridge, who commanded the cavalry.

At the close of the Battle of Waterloo he showed no lack of courage. "During the attack of the Imperial Guard he had ridden as far as the orchard of La Haye Sainte; when the Guard recoiled he had rallied them; when the 52nd and other regiments of the brigade pursued so promptly he had gradually fallen back with the steadier masses of the fugitives, surrounded by the truly dévourés of those days, the veterans of the Guard." —Hooper, p. 238.

It was only when the Prussians, almost fresh upon the field, undertook the pursuit, that he diverged from the press and rapidly made his way to Charleroi, where he obtained a carriage.

D. (p. 148).

The celebrated order of Wellington to the Guards is perhaps, in its popular form, not quite authentic. When towards the close of the battle Ney, unhorsed, was leading the column of the Old Guard up the slope of the British position, behind the crest of which the British infantry was lying, Wellington said, "Up, Guards, and make ready!" they "sprang to their feet within fifty yards of the astonished French, and poured in a volley which struck the column like a bolt of iron … and when the Duke cried, 'Charge!' and the British Guards dashed forward with a cheer, Ney's veterans broke and fled." —Hooper, p. 231. The approach of cavalry caused the British to retreat to their position on the hill, but in the meantime the second column of the French Guard had been routed by a bold and skilful charge of the 52nd Regiment, followed up by cavalry, whilst the Prussians were successfully pushing back the right wing of the French. Then the English leader saw that his time, at last, was come. To quote again Mr. Hooper's stirring description: "On the ridge near the Guards, his figure standing out amidst the smoke against the bright north-western sky, Wellington was seen to raise his hat with a noble gesture, the signal for the wasted line of heroes to sweep like a dark wave from their coveted position, and roll out their lines and columns over the plain. With a pealing cheer, the whole line advanced just as the sun was sinking, and the Duke, sternly glad, but self-possessed, rode off into the thick of the fight, attended by only one officer, almost the last of the splendid squadron which careered around him in the morning." – P. 234.