Waterloo Days

Amidst this uproar I soon found out our côcher, but, to my utter consternation, he vehemently swore, "that he would neither go himself, nor let his horses go; no, not to save the King of Holland himself; for that the French were just at hand, and that they would take his horses, and murder him: " and neither entreaties, nor bribes, nor arguments, nor persuasions, had the smallest effect upon him; he remained inexorable, and so did numbers of the fraternity. While my brother, who had now come down stairs, was vainly and angrily expostulating with him, I inquired on all sides, and of all people, if there was no possibility of procuring other horses. The good-natured garçon of the house exclaimed, "That if there were horses to be had in Brussels, I should have them;" and away he ran in quest of them, while I continued my fruitless inquiries. In a little while he returned disappointed and unsuccessful, exclaiming, with a face of horror that I shall never forget, "Il n'y a pas un seul cheval, et les François sont tout près de la ville." At this moment in rushed Mr. H., in an agony of terror, panting, breathless, and exhausted, crying to us "that his carriage was ready, that they could carry one of us, and that we must come away instantly." It was to no purpose both he and I implored my sister to accompany them, but she was inflexible. Nothing could induce her to go without us, and, finding she was immoveable, Mr. H. ran off with the good-natured intention of taking Lady W., since we refused to go singly. With incredible expedition, one English carriage after another drove off at full speed, and we were left to our fate. Of the rapid approach of the enemy we could not entertain the smallest doubt. To say I was frightened is nothing: I honestly confess I never knew what terror was before. Never shall I forget the horror of those moments. Our own immediate danger, and all the dreadful list of uncertain, undefined evils to which we might be exposed, in the power of those merciless savages; the anxiety, the distress, and despair of our friends at home, joined to the dreadful idea that the English army had been overwhelmed by numbers, defeated, perhaps cut to pieces, agonised my mind with feelings which it is impossible to describe. Escape seemed, however, impossible: like Richard, I would have gladly given my kingdom (if I had had one) for a horse, or at least for a pair; but no horses were to be had, neither for love, money, nor kingdoms.

In the midst of this state of terror and suspense, I suddenly beheld Major Wylie. If an angel had descended from heaven I could not have welcomed him with more transport. Hope revived: and, springing forward to meet him, I exclaimed: "Oh! Major Wylie, is it true?" His countenance inspired little comfort; he looked pale, and struck with horror and consternation. "God forbid!" he exclaimed: "I hope not. I do not believe it; but I am going to inquire, and I will come back to you immediately." He wrung my hand, and hurried away. In the mean time I flew up-stairs to collect all our things, and bundle them together, to be ready for instant departure, if we should be able to procure horses. Never was packing more expeditiously performed: I am certain it did not occupy anything like three minutes. With the help of the valet de place, I crammed them all together, wet and dry, into the travelling-bags, trunks, and portmanteaus, without the smallest ceremony.

Every minute seemed to be an age, till at last Major Wylie returned with the blessed assurance that it was a false alarm; "that for the present, at least, we were in no danger." It is quite impossible to give the smallest idea of the transport we felt when we found that the enemy were not at hand, that our army was not defeated, and that we ourselves were not in the power of the French. I never can forget the ecstasy of that moment – the bliss of that deliverance, and the inexpressible comfort of those feelings of safety which we now enjoyed. No fabled spirit, emerging from the dark and dismal regions of Pluto to the brightness and beauty of the Elysian Fields, could feel more transporting joy than we did when "the spectre forms of terror" fled, and we felt secure from every danger. From two English gentlemen, and lastly from Lord C., we received a confirmation of these happy tidings. The alarm had been raised by those dastardly Belgians whom we had seen scampering through the town, and who had most probably been terrified by the same foraging party of the enemy which, as we were afterwards told, had come up even to the gates of the city, insolently summoning it to surrender. They were supposed to have come from the side of the Prussians; and, knowing the defenceless state of Brussels, amused themselves with this bravado. Their appearance had confirmed the alarm beyond all doubt, and given rise to the dreadful cry that the French were seizing on the gates of the town. The panic had indeed been dreadful, but it was now happily over.

Major Wylie again attempted to go to the Place Royale, but he was instantly surrounded by a clamorous multitude, who, knowing him by his dress to be an aide-de-camp of the Duke, angrily exclaimed, "What is the reason that nothing is done for our security? Are we to be left here abandoned to the enemy? Are we to be given up to the French in this way? Why is not the City Guard ordered out to defend the town?" (The City Guard to defend the town from the French!) We could not help laughing at the idea of the excellent defence the City Guard of Brussels would make against the French army. But the frightened and enraged Belgians could not be pacified, and they beset poor Major Wylie so unmercifully that he was fain to retreat again within the Hôtel de Flandre.

He told us that the battle of yesterday had been severe, and most obstinately contested. The French, whose superiority of force was so great as to surpass all computation, had borne down with dreadful impetuosity upon our little army. "During all his campaigns, and all the bloody battles of the Peninsula," Major Wylie said, "he had never seen so terrible an onset, nor so desperate an engagement. The British, formed into impenetrable squares, received the French cavalry with their bayonets; drove them back again and again; stood firm beneath the fire of their tremendous artillery; and, after many hours' hard fighting, completely repulsed the enemy, and remained masters of the field of battle." Our cavalry had come up in the evening, but too late to take any part in the action. A French general and colonel had come over to the British during the battle, crying "Vive le Roi!" Their names I heard, but they have since escaped my memory:11 indeed, the names of men who were base enough treacherously to desert the cause even of a rebel and a tyrant in the hour of danger, which they had openly espoused, ought only to be stamped with everlasting infamy. These men must have been doubly traitors, first to Louis XVIII., and then to Napoleon Buonaparte.

The French were commanded by Marshal Ney,12 who, with three divisions of infantry, a strong corps of cavalry (under the command of General Kellerman), and a powerful artillery, could make no impression on one division of British infantry, without any cavalry, and with very little artillery. It was but too true that the greatest part of the brave Highlanders, both men and officers, were amongst the killed and wounded. They fought like heroes, and like heroes they fell – an honour to their country: and on many a Highland hill, and through many a Lowland valley, long will the deeds of these brave men be fondly remembered, and their fate deeply deplored! The 28th had particularly distinguished themselves, and gallantly repulsed the French in every attack. Our friend Major Llewellyn was safe; and I scarcely knew whether the assurance of his safety, or that he and Sir Philip Belson had been in time for the battle, gave me the most heartfelt pleasure. Our loss had been severe, but that of the enemy much greater; but though our loss was less in actual numbers, it was much more important to us than that which the enemy had sustained was to them. From their great superiority of force, the killed and wounded fell proportionably heavier on our small army, while theirs was scarcely felt among their tremendous hosts.

When Major Wylie came away, about half-past four in the morning, the Duke had made every disposition for battle, in the full expectation that a general engagement would take place this day.13 "The Prussians had fought like lions," Major Wylie said; not, however, like British lions, for it was but too true that they had been defeated and repulsed, though we could scarcely at the time give entire credit to this disagreeable news. Waggon-loads of Prussians now began to arrive. Belgic soldiers, covered with dust and blood, and faint with fatigue and pain, came on foot into the town. The moment in which I first saw some of these unfortunate people was, I think, one of the most painful I ever experienced, and soon, very soon, they arrived in numbers. At every jolt of the slow waggons upon the rough pavement we seemed to feel the excruciating pain which they must suffer. Sick to the very heart with horror, I re-entered the hotel, and, in answer to something Major Wylie said to me, I could only exclaim that the wounded were coming in. "Good God! how pale you look! For God's sake do not be alarmed," said the good-natured Major Wylie, compassionately laying his hand upon my arm; "I do assure you there is nothing to fear. The wounded must come here at any rate – it has nothing to do with a defeat." Long familiarised himself to such scenes, they now made no impression upon him, and it never occurred to him to imagine that we could be shocked by seeing anything so common as waggons filled with wounded soldiers. He thought it was the victory or the approach of the French that I feared.

Again, however, he strongly recommended us to set off immediately. If the army should have to retreat, and fall back upon Brussels, which, considering the immense force of the enemy, he said, was not improbable, the confusion in Brussels would be dreadful, and escape impossible. The French might even take the town, and then our situation would be horrible indeed. Of the prudence and wisdom of this advice there could be no doubt. We had experienced the utter impracticability of getting away in the moment of danger; we knew not how soon that moment might return. Had we ourselves possessed the means of escape, like Mr. and Mrs. H. and others, who had horses of their own, nothing could have induced us to have left Brussels to the last; but to remain exposed to incessant alarm and to imminent danger, in an open town, which before night might be in possession of a merciless enemy, whose formidable armies were threatening it in two separate divisions, at the distance of a very few leagues, seemed certainly little less than madness. With extreme reluctance we at last determined to set out for Antwerp. The Wilsons, though they had carriage-horses, were on the point of setting off; the carriages of Lady F.S. and Lady C. were also at their doors, the trunks and imperiales were tying on with the utmost dispatch, though they had at all times the means of escape within their power.

Our faithless côcher now declared he was willing to go with us, as the French, he said, were not yet come – and to Antwerp accordingly we consented to repair. We had had no breakfast all this time, nor would it ever have occurred to us to procure any, had not the sight of Major Wylie's breakfast-tray reminded us of our own famishing state. We swallowed some coffee and bread, sitting on one of the window-seats of the staircase of the Hôtel de Flandre, and then with great regret set off, casting "many a longing, lingering look behind," with feelings of anxiety so deep and overwhelming for the fate and success of our army, that it engrossed all our faculties. Upon the event of the impending battle, which we fully believed this very day was to decide, depended not only the present as well as the future peace and security of Belgium and of Europe; but, what I confess was to us even yet more dear, the safety and the glory of our gallant army. Absorbed in these reflections, as we slowly made our way out of the town, we witnessed many a melancholy sight; crowds of afflicted people were assembled round their poor wounded countrymen who had been brought in from the field. One soldier was dying at the door of his own house: the sobs and lamentations of some of the crowd who were collected round him, and the grief marked on their countenances, proclaimed them to be near relations of the unfortunate sufferer. Quite in the suburbs, some poor people were hanging over the insensible corpses of two soldiers who had died of their wounds. The streets were crowded so as to be scarcely passable: carriages were driving past each other as fast as the horses could go. All Brussels seemed to be running away; and the only competition appeared to be who should run the fastest. The road was thronged with people on horseback and on foot flying from the battle, while scattered parties of troops, British, Belgic, Hanoverian, Nassau, and Prussian, were hurrying to the scene of action. A great number of Prussian Lancers, with their black mustachios, high caps, long pikes, and little horses, were pushing forwards to the field. Long trains of commissariat waggons were rolling along with a deafening clatter; overturned carts, and the remains of broken wheels, were lying in the ditches. By the wayside, and beneath the shade of some tall trees, there was a large rude sort of encampment, consisting of men and women, horses and waggons, amongst which universal uproar seemed to prevail. I could have fancied them a Tartar settlement in the act of suddenly decamping at the approach of some horde of savage enemies. Farther on, parks of artillery were drawn up in the peaceful verdant meadows. Droves of oxen were going up to be slaughtered for the army, and the poor beasts, amazed at the horrid objects and noises which they encountered, took fright, and ran about in every direction except the right one, entirely blocking up the road, where confusion reigned unbounded: while the barking of the dogs, the blows and halloos of the drivers, the curses of the soldiers, and the vexation of the passengers, only served to increase the turbulence of the unruly cattle. The canal, by the side of which the road is carried, was covered with boats, and trackschuyts, and côches d'eau, and vessels of every description, and presented a scene of tumult and confusion scarcely inferior to that upon land.

About three miles from Brussels, situated upon an eminence above the road, we passed the magnificent palace of Lacken. I shuddered as I looked up to its lofty dome, and recollected that Napoleon had made the boast that this very night he would sleep beneath its roof. Uncertain, as we then were, how the day that had risen might terminate, believing as we did that the eventful battle was even now begun which was to decide the fate of Europe, my heart swelled with the proud confidence, that unprepared, unconcentrated, outnumbered as they were; leagued with foreigners who could not be depended upon, and with allies who had been defeated, yet that under every disadvantage British valour would still be triumphant, as it had ever been in every contest, and at every period. Great numbers of wounded stragglers from the field were slowly and painfully wandering along the road, pale and faint from loss of blood, and with their heads, arms, and legs bound up with bloody bandages. We spoke to several of them, but they were all either Belgic or Prussian, and did not understand a word of French. Two of the most severely wounded we took upon our carriage and carried into Malines, where they told the côcher their friends lived. From him we learnt that they had been wounded in the battle yesterday morning. I saw – I am sorry to say – one young English gentleman, who was travelling quite alone in his own carriage, sternly order down two of these unfortunate wounded men from his carriage.

The wounded, however, whom we saw, were able to move. In time they would reach a place of safety and shelter; but, if even their sufferings were so great that the very sight of them was painful, what must be the state of those who were left bleeding on the field of the lost battle, deserted by the retreating Prussians, passed by, unpitied and unaided, by the advancing French, and abandoned to perish in sufferings from the bare idea of which humanity recoils!14 The day was unusually sultry; but if we felt the rays of the sun beneath which we journeyed to be so oppressive, what must be the situation of the poor unsheltered wounded, exposed to its fervid blaze in the open field, without even a drop of water to cool their thirst? What must be the sufferings of our own unfortunate men, above all, of those who were not only wounded but prisoners, and at the mercy of the merciless French? Never – never till this moment, had I any conception of the horrors of war! and they have left an impression on my mind which no time can efface. Dreadful, indeed, is the sight of pain and misery we have no power to relieve, but far more dreadful are the horrors imagination pictures of the scene of carnage; the agonies of the wounded and the dying on the field of battle, where even the dead who had fallen by the sword, in the prime of youth and health, are to be envied! – the thought was agony, and yet I could not banish it from my mind.

At a little inn, half-way to Malines, we got out of the carriage while the horses were eating their rye-bread, and the poor people of the village crowded around us with faces of the greatest consternation and distress, to inquire what had happened. They had heard such varying and contradictory reports that they knew not what to believe, but terror was the predominant feeling; and their horror of the approach of the French, which they were convinced would happen sooner or later, surpassed everything I could have imagined. In spite of all we could say to inspire confidence, and to convince them that the English had been, and would still be, victorious, and that the French would never again be masters of Belgium, their apprehensions completely overpowered their hopes; and their alarm and consternation were truly pitiable. I asked them why they feared the French so much? With one accord they immediately burst out into exclamations, that they would plunder and destroy everything, and rob and murder them; – that they were monsters, who had no pity, and would show no mercy: – "Oh! what will become of us! what will become of us!" was the universal cry of these poor affrighted peasants. They were anxious about the Duke of Brunswick, and when they heard that he had really fallen (which we had learnt from Major Wylie), their lamentations were great, and the certainty of his fate seemed to increase their despondency. He must have been a good prince whose fate could at such a moment be deplored. He had a country seat in the neighbourhood of Lacken, and he was consequently well known and much beloved in this part of the country. An officer in a dark military great coat, whom I took for a German, hearing me talk to some poor affrighted women with babies in their arms, whom I was endeavouring to reassure, asked me in French if I had come from Brussels, and what was the issue of yesterday's battle? I told him all the particulars I knew, and after some minutes' conversation, he said at last, with the air of a person paying a compliment, that he understood some of my countrymen had behaved most gallantly: "comme braves hommes," was his expression. "Some of my countrymen!" I indignantly exclaimed, feeling myself turn as red as fire at this foreigner's degrading and partial praise of the British army – "they all behaved most gallantly, they fought like heroes; how else should the French have been repulsed: and when did the English behave otherwise?" "The English! but you are not English surely, madame?" said the officer. "Oui, monsieur," said I, proudly, "je suis Anglaise." "Et moi aussi," said he, half laughing; and during the short time our conversation lasted, we condescended to make use of our mother-tongue. He proved to be an English officer going from Antwerp to join the army, and I took him for a German, chiefly I think because he accosted me in French, and because he did not look much like an Englishman. Why he took me for a Belgian, heaven only knows: it was not likely that a Belgic lady should be speaking in French to the Belgic people, rather than in the common language of the country.

A party of Nassau troops, on their way to the army, were sitting drinking in some long Flemish waggons at the door of the inn. A Prussian hussar, whom we had passed on the road, arrived while we were there. The moment he dismounted from his horse he was assailed by the Nassau soldiers for news of the battle. While he was telling them his story, anxiety for intelligence made me draw as near as I durst. The loud voices of the soldiers, however, drowned the greater part of his recital, and their language was so barbarous that I could only make out that they were making a joke of Louis XVIII., and laughing at the idea of the fright he would be in, and saying, that he was so fat and unwieldy he would never be able to run away before Napoleon's long legs overtook him. The hussar, seeing me, I suppose, gazing at him very wistfully, respectfully took off his cap, which encouraged me to ask him if I had not misunderstood him, that I thought I had heard him say the French had beaten the Prussians. "No, madame," said he, with an air of great concern, "it is really so; the French have beaten the Prussians." "The French beat the Prussians!" I exclaimed: "Did you say, sir, that the French had beaten the Prussians? are you sure of it?" "Too sure, madame, for I was in the battle." I now perceived for the first time that he was slightly wounded; his long blue cloak, which nearly descended to his feet, had concealed it. He told us that, after a desperate engagement, the Prussians had been repulsed and compelled to retreat, and that the French were advancing in great force. We had repeatedly heard this at Brussels; but, unwilling to believe bad news, we had hoped it would prove false, and even yet we would gladly have taken refuge in incredulity.

The garçon of this inn, a fine youth, with a most engaging countenance, was in great anxiety and alarm at the approach of the French, and he implored us to tell him the whole truth; for if they should come, it would cost him his life, and he would fly to the end of the world to avoid them. We assured him that the French had been repulsed yesterday by the British, when our force was not half collected, and that, now that the cavalry and all the troops had joined the army, there could be no doubt that the English would be victorious. "Ah! je l'espère!" said the garçon; "mais ils sont terribles, ces François." We assured him that terrible as they were, they would never conquer the British and Belgic army, nor regain possession of Belgium. The garçon fervently prayed they never might: – "Mais, je ne sais quoi faire, moi," said this poor youth in his Belgic French, with a face of extreme perplexity, as we drove off.

Of the town of Malines I do not retain the smallest remembrance; but the consternation of the people with whom it was crowded, and their faces of terror and distress, I shall never forget. They were struck with universal dismay, and so thoroughly convinced that Napoleon would be victorious, that we might as well have talked to the winds as have told them that he would be defeated. They only shook their heads, and despondingly said: "Ah! he has so many soldiers, and he is so desperate – and he cares not how many thousands he sacrifices; he cares for nothing but his ambition: – Oh! he will be here, that is too certain." The garçon of this inn had been a conscript, and served two years in the French army. At the expiration of that period he had procured a substitute for one thousand florins, which money, I suspect, he had amassed by plunder. He was, however, a most intelligent man, and his hatred of the French, and of Napoleon in particular, was so strong, that he could not refrain from pouring out a most eloquent torrent of invective against him: "And throughout the whole of Belgium he is equally dreaded and detested in every place – except at Antwerp," added he, correcting himself; "there he has some adherents, for many people grew rich by the public works, and by making the docks, and building the ships, and supplying the arsenal; and many grew rich upon the distresses of the people – and therefore they wish for him back again." My brother observed that he had certainly done a great deal for Antwerp, and made great improvements, and he particularly mentioned the docks and the quays.