there is now not a living soul, and over all hovers the stillness of the grave.

"In Ligny 2000 dead were buried. Here fought the Westphalian and Berg regiments. Ligny is a village built of stone and thatched with straw, on a small stream which flows through flat meadows. In the village are several farm-houses, inclosed with walls and gates. Every farm-house the Prussians had converted into a fortress. The French endeavoured to penetrate through the village by means of superior numbers. Four times were they driven out. At last they set on fire the farm-houses in the upper end of the village with their howitzers; but the Prussians still kept their ground at the lower end. A whole company of Westphalian troops fell in the court-yard at the church; on the terrace before the church lay 50 dead.

"In the evening the French surrounded the village. The Prussians retired half a league; the position was lost; and it is imcomprehensible why the French did not follow up the advantage they had obtained, and again attack the Prussians in the night.

"This was on the 16th. The same day a French column marched by the high road of Charleroi to Brussels.

"At Quatre Bras they found the Duke of Brunswick and the Prince of Orange. Here the battle was as hot as at Ligny. The Duke let himself be carried away by his ardour into the fire of small arms; a musket-ball went through his bridle-hand, and entered the belly: the liver was penetrated; he fell, and breathed his last in ten minutes. His sufferings were short.

"At the inn by the cross-roads at Quatre Bras the contest was the hottest. Here are the most graves. The wounded reeled into the inn-yard, leaned against the walls, and then sank down. There are still the traces of the blood on the walls, as it spouted forth from the wounds with departing life.

"Where the battle was, the fields are completely trodden down for a circuit of about a league. On both sides of the highroad, ways are made about 100 feet broad, and you can still follow the march of the battalions in all directions through the fine fields of maize.

"On the 18th, the battle was renewed four leagues nearer Brussels, on both sides of the high-road. The spot is a plain, sprinkled with hillocks. The diameter of the field of battle may be about a league and a half. Buonaparte placed himself near the farm-house of Mont St. Jean, on a rising ground, whence he could overlook the whole. Beside him was one Lacoste, a Walloon, who now lives near the hamlet of Belle Alliance, and who was employed as a guide. This man told me as follows: When the Prussians came out of the wood of Fritschermont, Buonaparte observed them with his glass, and asked one of his adjutants who

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they were. The latter, upon looking through his glass, replied, They are the Prussian colours.' That moment his face assumed a chalky whiteness, as if the ghost of the sainted Queen of Prussia had appeared to him, whom he persecuted to death. He said nothing, but merely once shook his head.'

"When he saw that the battle was lost, he rode off with his general staff and the above guide. He had told Lacoste that he wished to be conducted by a by-road to Charleroi.

"Genappe is an open market-town, a league and a half from the field of battle, through which runs the Dyle, a small stream. At the lower end of Genappe lies an iron forge, which it drives. A quarter of a mile lower lies the village of Ways, at which there is a bridge. An officer had arrived at Genappe about five in the afternoon, with orders to withdraw the baggage. He had already considered the battle as lost, because the reserves had been brought into the fire. When the flight became almost universal, the military waggons were driven sixteen a-breast on the causeway. In the narrow Genappe they were wedged in together, and Lacoste relates that it took an hour and a half to get through them. It was half-past twelve at night before they got out of the town, with 150 horses of the staff. I asked him why he did not take Buonaparte by the bridge of Ways, where nobody passed; he replied, I was not aware of this road.'

"Thus with all the maps of the war dépôt, with all the engineer geographers, who with their repeating circles can set off the geographical position of places even to a second, Buonaparte, with a large staff, here depended on the ignorance of a peasant, who did not know that there was a bridge over the Dyle at Ways. People talk a great deal of military skill and military science, while often in decisive moments the whole depends upon the knowledge of a very common man.

"In the village of Planchenoit, the fourth of a league from Belle Alliance, the Guards were posted. The principal house in the village is nearly burnt down. It is inhabited by a very intelligent farmer of the name of Bernhard. He, like the others, had fled on the day of battle; but witnessed, on an opposite height, the combat between Bulow and the French reserve, and could give a very good description of it. He carried me to the key of the position opposite Fritschermont. He told me that the peasant who guided Bulow's army resolved not to come out of the wood at Fritschermont, but to descend into the valley lower down, and to penetrate by Planchenoit, nearly in the rear of the French reserves. 6 Then,' said he, we shall take them all.' The period was truly most critical when the Prussians came to the attack. Wellington was hard pressed, all his reserves were already in action, he was already compelled to withdraw some of his artillery, and a countryman from the vicinity of Braine-la

Leud told me that he saw some of the army (as he expressed it) en débandage. Buonaparte was probably only waiting for the moment when, with his Guards, he could decide the day. We shudder when we reflect, that at this important moment all depended on the local knowledge of a single peasant. Had he guided wrong, had he led them into the hollow way through which the cannon could not pass, had Bulow's army come upan hour later, the scale had probably descended on the other side. Had Buonaparte been victorious, and advanced to the Rhine, the French nation would have been intoxicated with victory, and with what they call the national glory, and a levy en masse would have been effected throughout all France.

"How great soever the number of killed and wounded in a battle may be, yet, as compared with the amount of the armies engaged, it may generally be pronounced moderate. However murderous our artillery are, yet their operation is inconsiderable, as relative to the great number of rounds. At the battle of Leipsic, probably only about one in the hundred of cannon and cartridge balls fired took effect. The battle of Waterloo was more sanguinary from the smallness of the field of battle; probably every sixth man fell in it.

"The disorder of a battle generally first originates with the runaways, who fly from an impression that all is lost, and who bawl this out to others, in order to excuse their own flight. Although the Prussian army, on the 16th, retreated only half a league from Ligny, yet shoals of fugitives passed through Liege and Aix-la-Chapelle, spreading universal alarm. I fell in with some of them twenty-five leagues from the field of battle; they asserted that the French were within a mile of Brussels, and their light troops already in the suburbs. On the 18th, so early as five in the afternoon, French runaways came to the inn at Quatre Bras, who had fled from the field, even at the time when circumstances seemed very favourable to them.

"The idea of being cut off operates very strongly upon men; should it get possession of the mass, then all order is lost, and the army destroys itself. Hence may be explained the great defeat of the French on the 18th. In Genappe there was nothing but pellmell confusion, and they suffered themselves to be cut down like cattle. In Genappe, 800 lay on the spot. General Duhesme, who commanded the rear guard, was cut down by a Brunswick hussar at the gate of an inn. The Duke fell yesterday, and thou shalt also bite the dust:' so saying, the black hussar cut him down. The fury of the Brunswickers no longer knew any bounds. Wellington's army consisted chiefly of young regiments, and very many of whom were quite youths. What supported them, was the confidence which they had in the talents of their General.

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