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their panic flight. A slight attempt was made to halt at the village of Genappe, but there and at Charleroi, and wherever else the terrified fugitives attempted to pause, a cannon-shot or two, or the mere sound of a Prussian drum or trumpet, was sufficient to put them again to the rout.

The English remained on the field of battle and the villages adjacent. Be it not forgotten, that, after such attention to their wounded companions, as the moment permitted, they carried their succours to the disabled French, without deigning to remember that the defenceless and groaning wretches who encumbered the field of battle in heaps, were the same men who had displayed the most relentless cruelty on every temporary advantage which they obtained during this brief campaign. They erected huts over them to protect them from the weather, brought them water, and shared with them their refreshments -showing in this the upright nobleness of their own dispositions, and giving the most vivid testimony of their deserving that victory with which Providence had crowned them-a victory as unparalleled in its consequences, as the battle itself was in its length, obstinacy, and importance. Adieu! my dear Major. Excuse a long letter, which contains much which you may have heard better told, mixed with some things with which you are probably not yet acquainted. The details which I have ventured to put into writing, are most of them from the authority of officers high in command upon that memorable day, and I may therefore be allowed to hope that even repetitions will be pardoned, for the sake of giving more authenticity to the facts which I have narrated. Yours, etc. PAUL.

LETTER IX.

PAUL TO HIS SISTER MARGARET.

English Visitors to Waterloo-De Coster, Bonaparte's Guide-Appearance of the Field of Battle-Livrets of the French Soldiers-German Prayer-books-Letters -Gentle Shepherd-Quack Advertisements-Crops trampled down-Houses and Hamlets ruinous-Claim of Damages-Hougoumont-Relics taken by Visitors-Number slain in the Battle-Plunder obtained by the Peasants-Sale of Relics of the Battle-MS. of French Songs-Romance of Dunois-The Troubadour-Cupid's Choice-Reflections suggested by these Poems-Chanson-Romance du Troubadour-Chanson de la Folie.

I SHOULD NOW, my dear sister, give you some description of the celebrated field of Waterloo. But although I visited it with unusual advantages, it is necessary that I should recollect how many descrip

tions have already appeared of this celebrated scene of the greatest event of modern times, and that I must not weary your patience with a twice-told tale. Such and so numerous have been the visits of English families and tourists, as to enrich the peasants of the vicinity by the consequences of an event which menaced them with total ruin. The good old Flemish housewife, who keeps the principal cabaret at Waterloo, even when I was there, had learnt the value of her situation, and charged three prices for our coffee, because she could gratify us by showing the very bed in which the Grand Lord slept the night preceding the action.* To what extremities she may have since proceeded in taxing English curiosity, it is difficult to conjecture. To say truth, the honest Flemings were at first altogether at a loss to comprehend the eagerness and enthusiasm by which their English visitors were influenced in their pilgrimages to this classic spot. Their country has been long the scene of military operations, in which the inhabitants themselves have seldom felt much personal interest. With them a battle fought and won is a battle forgotten, and the peasant resumes his ordinary labours after the armies have left his district, with as little interest in recollecting the conflict, as if it had been a thunder-storm which had passed away. You may conceive, therefore, the great surprise with which these honest pococurantes viewed the number of British travellers of every possible description who hastened to visit the field of Waterloo.

I was early in making my pilgrimage, yet there were half a dozen of parties upon the ground at the same time with that to which I belonged. Honest John de Coster, the Flemish peasant, whom Bonaparte has made immortal by pressing into his service as a guide, was the person in most general request, and he repeated with great accuracy the same simple tale to all who desired to hear him. I questioned him long and particularly, but I cannot pretend to have extracted any information in addition to what has been long ago very accurately published in the newspapers. For I presume you would be little interested in knowing, that, upon this memorable occasion, the ex-emperor rode a dappled horse, and wore a grey surtout with a green uniform coat; and, in memory of his party's badge, as I suppose, a violet-coloured waistcoat, and pantaloons of the same. It was, however, with no little emotion that I walked with De Coster

[The Duke of Wellington's cook, a Frenchman, who had been with him during most of the Peninsular campaigns, exhibited, on the 18th of June, a confidence in his Grace's fortune, which ought to be recorded. While the battle was raging, successive fugitives, in passing the little auberge in the village of Waterloo, where this man was busy in his vocation, gave him impatient warning that he had better pack up and secure his retreat, for that assuredly his master would want no dinner at Waterloo that day. The cook's answer was always, "Monseigneur n'a rien dit." He continued to work among his pots and pans as usual, and the Duke found an excellent dinner, of thirty covers, ready when he reached, late in the evening, the humble roof where he had fixed his headquarters.)

80

APPEARANCE Of the field of battle.

from one place to another, making him show me, as nearly as possible, the precise stations which had been successively occupied by the fallen monarch on that eventful day. The first was at the farm of Rossum, near to that of La Belle Alliance, from which he had witnessed the unsuccessful attack upon Hougoumont. He remained there till about four o'clock, and then removed into the cottage of De Coster, where he continued until he descended into the ravine or hollow way. There was a deep and inexpressible feeling of awe in the reflection, that the last of these positions was the identical place from which he, who had so long held the highest place in Europe, beheld his hopes crushed and his power destroyed. To recollect, that within a short month, the man whose name had been the terror of Europe, stood on the very ground which I now occupied, that right opposite was placed that commander whom the event of the day hailed "Vainqueur du Vainqueur de la terre "—that the landscape, now solitary and peaceful around me, presented so lately a scene of such horrid magnificence-that the very individual who was now at my side, had then stood by that of Napoleon, and witnessed every change in his countenance, from hope to anxiety, from anxiety to fear and to despair,to recollect all this, oppressed me with sensations which I find it impossible to describe. The scene seemed to have shifted so rapidly, that even while I stood on the very stage where it was exhibited, I felt an inclination to doubt the reality of what had passed.

De Coster himself seems a sensible, shrewd peasant. He complained that the curiosity of the visitors who came to hear his tale, interfered a good deal with his ordinary and necessary occupations : I advised him to make each party,, who insisted upon seeing and questioning him, a regular charge of five francs, and assured him that if he did so, he would find that Bonaparte had kept his promise of making his fortune, though in a way he neither wished nor intended. Pere de Coster said he was obliged to me for the hint, and I dare say has not failed to profit by it.*

The field of battle plainly told the history of the fight, as soon as the positions of the hostile armies were pointed out. The extent was so limited, and the interval between them so easily seen and commanded, that the various manoeuvres could be traced with the eye upon the field itself, as upon a military plan of a foot square. All ghastly remains of the carnage had been either burned or buried, and the relics of the fray which yet remained were not in themselves of a very imposing kind. Bones of horses, quantities of old hats, rags of clothes, scraps of leather, and fragments of books and papers, strewed the ground in great profusion, especially where the action had been

A very minute narrative of Bonaparte's conduct during the whole day, taken down from the mouth of this peasant, forms a curious article in the Appendix.

most bloody. Among the last, those of most frequent occurrence were the military livrets, or memorandum-books of the French soldiers. I picked up one of these, which shows, by its order and arrangement, the strict discipline which at one time was maintained in the French army, when the soldier was obliged to enter in such an account-book, not only the state of his pay and equipments, but the occasions on which he served and distinguished himself, and the punishments, if any, which he had incurred. At the conclusion is a list of the duties of the private soldier, amongst which is that of knowing how to dress his victuals, and particularly to make good soup. The livret in my possession appears to have belonged to the Sieur Mallet, of the 2d battalion of the 8th regiment of the line: he had been in the service since the year 1791, until the 18th of June, 1815, which day probably closed his account, and with it all his earthly hopes and prospects. The fragments of German prayer-books were so numerous, that I have little doubt a large edition had been pressed into the military service of one or other party, to be used as cartridge-paper. Letters, and other papers, memorandums of business, or pledges of friendship and affection, lay scattered about on the field-few of them were now legible. A friend picked up a copy of The Gentle Shepherd where the Scotch regiments had been stationed; a circumstance which appeals strongly to our national feeling, from the contrast between the rustic scenes of the pastoral and that in which the owner of the volume had probably fallen. Quack advertisements were also to be found where English soldiers had fallen. Among the universal remedies announced by these empirics, there was none against the dangers of such a field.

Besides these fragments, the surface of the field showed evident marks of the battle. The tall crops of maize and rye* were trampled

*

-"Bat other harvest here,

Than that which peasant's scythe demands,
Was gather'd in by sterner hands,

With bayonet, blade, and spear.
No vulgar crop was theirs to reap,
No stinted harvest thin and cheap!
Heroes before each fatal sweep
Fell thick as ripen'd grain;
And ere the darkening of the day,
Piled high as autumn shocks, there lay
The ghastly harvest of the fray,

The corpses of the slain.

"Ay, look again-that line so black

And trampled marks the bivouack,!

Yon deep graved rats the artillery's track,
So often lost and won;

And close beside, the harden'd mud

Still shows where, fetlock-deep in blood,

The fierce dragoon, through battle's flood,

Dash'd the hot war-horse on,
These spots of excavation tell
The ravage of the bursting shell-

into a thick black paste, under the feet of men and horses-the ground was torn in many places by the explosion of shells, and in others strangely broken up and rutted by the wheels of the artillery. Such signs of violent and rapid motion recorded, that

Rank rush'd on rank, with squadron squadron closed,
The thunder ceased not, nor the fire reposed.

Yet, abstracting from our actual knowledge of the dreadful cause of such appearances, they reminded me not a little of those which are seen upon a common a few days after a great fair has been held there. These transitory memorials were in a rapid course of disappearing, for the plough was already at work in several parts of the field. There is, perhaps, more feeling than wisdom in the wish, yet I own I should have been better pleased, if, for one season at least, the field where, in imagination, the ploughshare was coming in frequent contact with the corpses of the gallant dead, had been suffered to remain fallow. But the corn which must soon wave there will be itself a temporary protection to their humble graves, while it will speedily remove from the face of nature the melancholy traces of the strife of man.

The houses and hamlets which were exposed to the line of fire have of course suffered very much, being perforated by cannon-balls in every direction. This was particularly the case at La Haye Sainte. The inhabitants of these peaceful cottages might then exclaim, in the words of our admired friend,

"Around them, in them, the loud battle clangs;
Within our very walls fierce spearmen push,
And weapon'd warriors cross their clashing blades.
Ah, woe is me! our warm and cheerful hearths,
And rushed floors, whereon our children play'd,
Are now the bloody lair of dying men!"*

There was not, indeed, a cottage in the vicinity but what, ere the eve of the fight, was crowded with the wounded, many of whom had only strength to creep to the next place of cover, that they might lay them down to die.

The village of Saint John, and others within the English position, had escaped with the demolition of the windows, and the breaches of the walls from without. The hamlets lying on the opposite heights, within the French line of bivouac, having been plundered to the bare

And feel'st thou not the tainted steam
That reeks against the suitry beam,
From yonder trenched mound?

The pestilential fumes declare
That Carnage has replenish'd there

Her garner-house profound."

SIR WALTER SCOTT's Poetical Works.]

[Joanna Baillie's Ethwald, a Tragedy, Part Second]

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