FOOTNOTES:
[1] In the Register of the Convent of the Friars Minors in Poictiers, there appear the names of the knights and great men buried there after this battle. Among these we find, the Constable of France, the Bishop of Chalons, the Viscount of Chauvigny, the Lords of Mailly, of Rademonde, of Rochecheruire, of Chaumont, of Hes, of Corbon, and a great number of knights. In the church of the Frères Prescheurs there were buried the Duke of Bourbon, the Marshal de Clermont, the Viscount de Rochechouart, the Lord de la Fayette, the Viscount d’Aumale, the Lord St. Gildart, and more than fifty knights.
[2] The rocket consisted of an iron tube, about two foot long, and three inches in diameter, attached to a bamboo cane of fifteen or twenty feet in length. The tube is filled with combustible matter; and this dreadful missile entering the head of a column, passes through a man’s body, and instantly resumes its original force; thus destroying or wounding twenty men, independent of innumerable lacerations caused by the serpentine motion of the long bamboo, which in its irresistible progress, splinters to atoms, when the iron tube assumes a rapid rotary motion, and buries itself in the earth.
[3] It is a curious and interesting literary fact, that Campbell wrote this in a foreign land, viz., at Ratisbon, on hearing of war being declared against Denmark. Some portion of it is said to have been previously roughly sketched out, owing to his admiration of the music of “Ye Gentlemen of England.” His splendid lyric, “The battle of the Baltic,” soon followed.
[4] Herod. 1. vii. c. 175, 177.
[5] Herod. 1. vii. c. 103, 132.
[6] Ibid. 1. viii. c. 116.
[7] Paus. 1. x. p. 645.
[8] Herod. 1. vii c. 207-231. Diod. 1. xi. p. 5-10.
[9] Plut. in Lacon. Apoph. p. 225.
[10] Ἀντεγραψε, μολων λαβε.
[11] Οτι πολλοι μεν ανθρωποι ειεν, ολιγοι δε ανδρες. Quod multi homines essent, pauci autem viri.
[12] When the Gauls 200 years after this, came to invade Greece, they possessed themselves of the Straits of Thermopylæ by means of the same by-path, which the Grecians had still neglected to secure. Pausan. 1. i. p. 7. et 8.
[13] Polyb. 1. iii. p. 231-238.
[14] Apparebat ferociter omnia ac præpropere acturum. Quoque pronior esset in sua vitia, agitare eum atque irritare Pœnus parat. Liv. 1. xxii. n. 3.
[15] Napier, vol. v. p. 132.
[16] A French writer tells us, that when he had dictated, at Paris, the bulletin of this battle, he finished, by exclaiming with a groan, “It was lost, and my glory with it!”
[17] Hist. Memoirs, book ix, p. 209.
[18] “Information which might be depended upon had made known the position of the Allies in all particulars.—Fleury, vol. ii, p. 161.
“To anticipate the Allies, and to commence hostilities before they were ready, it was necessary to take the field on the 15th June.”—Hist. Memoir, Book ix, p. 59.
“The period of the arrival of the English army from America was known. The Allied armies could not be in readiness to act simultaneously until July.”—Gourgaud’s Campaign, p. 29.
[19] Hist. Memoir, Book ix, p. 127.
[20] Gourgaud, p. 38; Fleury, vol. ii, p. 167.
[21] Junot, at Rolica and Vimiera; Victor at Talavera; Massena at Busaco; Ney, after Torres Vedras; Marmont at Salamanca; Jourdan at Vittoria; and Soult in the Pyrenees, Toulouse, &c. &c.
[22] History of the Restoration, vol. ii, p. 377, 388.
[23] Despatches, vol. viii, p. 168.
[24] O’Meara, vol. i, p. 464.
[25] Brialmont’s Wellington, vol. ii, p. 440.
[26] Gourgaud’s Waterloo, p. 96.
[27] The first French attack was repulsed about two o’clock: but Bonaparte renewed it five or six times, until about seven o’clock in the evening.—Austrian Account.
[28] Hist. Memoir, book ix, p. 143.
[29] Lamartine, b. xxv, § 34.
[30] Gourgaud’s Campaign of Waterloo, p. 97.
[31] [Page 151]. This attack on the centre was made at one o’clock, and La Haye Sainte was not evacuated by the English till six in the evening. Of what occurred in the five hours which intervened the French accounts are ominously silent.
[32] Fleury, vol. ii, p. 217.
[33] At St. Helena, he told O’Meara, “When the English advanced, I had not a single corps of cavalry in reserve to resist them. Hence the English attack succeeded, and all was lost,”—O’Meara, vol. i, p. 465.
[34] “It was noon, the troops of General Bulow were stationary beyond the extreme right: they appeared to form and wait for their artillery.”—Hist. Mem. b. ix, p. 150.
[35] The Austrian account says “About five o’clock, the first cannon-shot of the Prussian army was fired from the heights of Aguiers.”
[36] Gourgaud’s Campaign of 1815, p. 113.
[37] They are described, both in Count Drouet’s speech and in “Book ix,” as “sixteen battalions.” If the battalions consisted of 600 men, this would give a total of 9600.
[38] Vol. ii, p. 192.
[39] Colonel Lemonnier de Lafosse: Memoirs, p. 385.
[40] Reille had commanded the second corps, D’Erlon the first—each of which had consisted of about 20,000 men! Can there be a more striking proof of the utter dissolution of the French army, than this fact, narrated by a French officer?
[41] Fleury de Chaboulon, vol. ii, pp. 203, 206, 218.
[42] The modesty,—the singular abstinence from a boast or a vaunt,—which is perceptible in this exclamation, is wonderfully characteristic of the man. The same quietness of manner distinguished him through life; and it contrasts strongly with the constant strut and proud assumption of Napoleon.
[43] Hist. Memoir, book ix, p. 203.
[44] I cannot conclude this article on Waterloo without inserting the following: Many years ago a prize poem on the Duke of Wellington was announced at one of the English Universities, I forget which. The gainer took for his subject the life of Napoleon, and finished an elaborate description of that great commander, in the following couplet, which gained him the prize:
“So great a man, the world scarce ever knew,
Bent to thy Genius, Chief of Waterloo.”
J. D. B.
[45] “Mitraille,” grape shot, with scraps of metal, and all sorts of small missiles.