Waterloo Days

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.

We now learnt that the battle had been even more desperate, and the victory more glorious and decisive, than Lord Wellington's concise and modest bulletin had led us to imagine. The French had not "retreated," they had been completely routed, and put to flight; they had not merely "been defeated," they were no longer an army. They had fled in every direction from the field, pursued by the victorious British and by the Prussians, who had not come up till just at the close of the battle.19 The whole of their artillery, ammunition, and baggage, their caissons, all the matériel of their army had been taken. Of 130,000 Frenchmen who had marched yesterday morning to battle, flushed with all the hopes and confidence of victory, no trace, no vestige now remained; they were all swept away; they were scattered by the whirlwind of war over the face of the earth. Yesterday their proud hosts had spread terror and dismay through nations, and struck consternation into every heart, except those of the brave band of warriors who opposed them. To-day the greater part of them slept in death, the rest were fugitives or captives. It was an awful and tremendous lesson. They were gone with all their imperfections on their heads, – their hopes, their purposes, their plans, their passions, and their crimes, were at rest for ever! And their leader, who had sported away the lives of thousands, with feelings untouched by remorse; who had impiously presumed to defy the powers of God and man; and whose insatiate ambition the world itself seemed too small to contain – where was he now? – an outcast and a wanderer, hunted, pursued, beset on all sides, and at a loss where to lay his head!

It was with a heart pierced with anguish that I wept for the brave who had fallen; that I felt in the bitterness of sorrow, that not even the proud triumph of my country's glory could console me for the gallant hearts that were lost to her for ever!

"How many mothers shall lament their sons;How many widows weep their husbands slain! —Ye dames of Albion! ev'n for you I mourn:Who sadly sitting on the sea-beat shore,Long look for lords who never shall return!"

It was twelve o'clock before our friends left us, and then, worn out with fatigue of body and mind, for the first time during four nights, I enjoyed the blessing of some hours of undisturbed repose, in spite of the bonfires, the acclamations, the noisy rejoicings, and the songs, more patriotic than melodious, which resounded in my ears. Last night the streets were filled with the cries of horror and alarm, to-night they resounded with the shouts of exultation and joy; and it was with feelings of deep and fervent thanksgiving to Heaven that I laid my wearied head upon the pillow, and sank to sleep with the blessed consciousness that we should not this night be disturbed by the dreadful alarms of war.

Nothing on retrospection seemed to me so extraordinary as the shortness of time in which these wonderful events had happened. I could scarcely convince myself that they had actually been comprised in the short space of three days – so long did it seem to be! Yet in that brief space how many gallant spirits had death arrested in their glorious career of honour and immortality – how many hearts had grief rendered desolate! In these eventful days the fates of empires and of kings had been decided, and the trembling nations of Europe freed from the vengeance and the yoke of the tyranny which menaced them with subjugation.

If the passage of time were to be computed by the succession of events, rather than by moments, we should indeed have lived a lifetime! an age! for it was "eternity of thought." Every thing that had happened, even immediately before these events, seemed like the faintly-remembered traces of a dream, or the fading and distant images of long past years. It seemed as if at once

"From the tablet of my memoryWere wiped away all trivial fond records,All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,That youth and observation copied there;And this remembrance all alone remain'd,Within the book and volume of my brain,Unmixed with baser matter."

Yes! the days, the months, the years of my future life may pass away and be forgotten, and all the changes that mark them fade like a morning dream; but the minutest circumstance of these eventful days must be remembered "while Memory holds her seat;" for such moments and such feelings in life can never return more.

A fortnight elapsed, which we passed in making the tour of Holland; in gliding along its slow canals, visiting its populous cities, gazing at its splendid palaces, yawning over its green ditches, wondering at its great dykes, its prodigious sluices, and its innumerable windmills; admiring its clean houses, laughing at the humours of its fairs, and falling fast asleep in its churches.

We found the Dutch a plain, plodding, pains-taking, well-meaning, money-getting, matter-of-fact people; very dull and drowsy, and slow and stupid; little addicted to talking, but very much given to smoking; but withal pious and charitable, and just and equitable; with no wit, but some humour; with little fancy, genius, or invention – but much patience, perseverance, and punctuality. They make excellent merchants, but very bad companions. What Buonaparte once in his ignorance said of the English, is truly applicable to the Dutch, – "They are a nation of shopkeepers;" and they used to remind me very much of a whole people of Quakers. In dress, in manners, in appearance, and in habits of life, they precisely resemble that worthy sect; and like them, in all these points they are perfectly stationary. It is singular enough that in all matters of taste and fashion, in which other nations are continually varying, the Dutch have stood stock still for at least two centuries; and in political opinions and institutions, which it requires years, and even ages, to alter in other countries, the Dutch have veered about without ceasing. They have literally changed their form of government much oftener than the cut of their coats. They have had Stadtholders, and Revolutions, and Republics, and Despotisms, and Tyrants, and limited Monarchies; and new Dynasties and old; and the "New Code Napoleon," – and the newer Code of King William: and they have changed from the side of England to that of France, and from France to that of England, – and from the House of Orange to Buonaparte, and from Buonaparte to the House of Orange, with a rapidity and versatility which even their volatile neighbours, the French, could not equal.

But while their government, their laws, their sovereigns, and their institutions, have undergone every possible transformation – the fashion of their caps and bonnets, their hats and shoebuckles, remains unchanged; and they have adhered, with the most scrupulous exactitude, to the same forms of politeness, the same hours, dresses, manners, and habits of life that were the fashion among the venerable Burgomasters in the days of good King William. Certainly if Solomon had ever lived in Holland he never would have said that "the fashion of this world passeth away," for there it lasts from generation to generation.

I should think that the Dutch are now very like what the English were in the times of the Puritans. They have a great deal of rigidity and vulgarity in their appearance, and of coarseness and grossièreté in their manners; and they are wholly destitute of vivacity, refinement, and "the grace that charms." I speak of the people at large; not of the Court nor of the courtly, who in every country are much the same, or at least fashioned upon one model; but, excepting the Court, there is no polite circle, no general good society. It is the rarest thing in the world to meet with a gentleman in Holland. The Dutch are equally devoid of that acquired good breeding which distinguishes the well educated English, and that native politeness and winning courtesy which is so irresistibly engaging among the French, and even the Belgic people.

I did not think anything could have roused the phlegmatic Dutch to such energy and vehement animation as they showed in their ardent attachment to the present government, and their detestation of their former tyrants. They are absolutely enthusiastic in their loyalty to the House of Orange; and their implacable and virulent hatred to the French surpasses all conception. They cannot be silent upon this subject; they cannot forget their past sufferings, and the tyranny and cruelty which they endured so long. They never utter their names without bitter execrations, and the very language is become unpopular. But the British they look upon with the highest respect and admiration, and treat them with a blunt, coarse, complimentary sort of kindness, which is flattering to our national pride.

The Dutch, however, allowed that Louis Buonaparte was a very well-intentioned, good-hearted man; but he was only a tool in the hands of the "Great Napoleon;" and, though he did not like to crush them, he had no power to mitigate the tyranny which bowed them to the earth. For Napoleon himself – his ministers, his soldiers, his edicts, and the system of plunder, oppression, and slavery which constituted his government – no words are strong enough to speak their abhorrence. They are now most completely an unanimous people. From the lowest beggar in the street to the king upon his throne, one common political feeling animates and inspires them.

The only people who grew rich during the reign of the French were the smugglers, and some of these men made astonishing fortunes by the sale of colonial produce, – chiefly coffee and tobacco; and English manufactures, which they introduced into the kingdom in great quantities, notwithstanding all the spies, soldiers, plans, penalties, and prohibitions of Buonaparte.

In the failure of taxes and contributions to satisfy his rapacity, he sequestrated a large portion of the funds destined for the annual repair of the dykes and sluices, which in consequence were fast falling to decay; so that had the French Government lasted much longer, Holland might have been no longer a country; it might physically, as well as politically, have ceased to exist, and a tide, even more destructive than the armies of France, have rolled over it and restored it again to the ocean.

Sometimes the faint reports of distant war roused us during our slumbering progress through this soporific country; and Dutch men and Dutch bonnets, and towns and palaces, and universities and museums, and tulips and hyacinths, and even "Orange Boven" itself, were entirely forgotten in the animating and overpowering interest of the triumphant progress of the British arms, – the final fall of the Usurper of France, – and the entrance of the Allied Army, led by the Duke of Wellington, into the gates of Paris.