That afternoon, in going across the field of Solferino, I heard a curious story of the battle, 24 June 1859:—Nugent was a Field Marshal in the Austrian army. He was past eighty, and was merely a spectator, having no command; but he wore his uniform. He was watching the battle from an outlying point, and the French either saw him or heard that he was there. They argued that an officer of that rank would not be there, unless there was a force behind him; and for a time this held them back from attacking the Austrian left.
Ten years had removed all traces of the battle except the monuments and graves; but on going over the field of Gravelotte on 7 August 1875, just five years after the battle, 18 August 1870, I saw several patches of barren ground, and I was told that these marked the position of the ambulances, the surgeons having used things that afterwards sterilized the soil. And thereupon my father said that he saw patches of wheat of an unusual colour on the field of Waterloo five-and-twenty years after the battle, and he was told that these were places where horses had been killed in masses, when the cavalry charged the squares.
In a letter of 18 September 1851 my father says:—“I visited the scenes of Bonaparte’s early victories in Italy: Rivoli, Roveredo, etc.... All the towns on the Adige bear mementoes of him in the cannon balls yet sticking into the houses, the inhabitants never having taken the trouble to extract them.”
He notes in his diary, Liège, 30 July 1839:—“There was an old gentleman in the diligence with me, whom I discovered to have known Napoleon. He was returning from his house at Brussels to his country house, but lived in Paris for many years in Napoleon’s reign, and left on his abdication. He met him daily, and was Auditeur du Conseil d’État, at the meetings of which Napoleon generally presided. He said the likenesses of Napoleon were generally good, but it was impossible to give any idea by painting of the expression of his eyes—they were piercing, and he said ‘you could not look at him: his glance would read your very heart.’ He was pleasant when in good humour, but that was not always the case. He would always have an answer instantly on asking a question, and if a person did not know what he was asked, he must answer and say so without a moment’s delay.”
Napoleon was brought into Torbay on the Bellerophon in July 1815. There were strict orders from the Admiralty that nobody should come on board; but my grandfather managed it somehow, and there saw Napoleon walking up and down the deck. My grandfather was not impressed by Napoleon’s appearance, and used to tell me that “Boney was a poor-looking creature after all.” I imagine that “Boney” was not looking quite his best just then.
In a box here I found a portion of a human skull, and written on it “The skull of a Turk, one of those put to death at Joppa by that fellow Buonaparte.” That was when he shot the soldiers who had surrendered there, 10 March 1799. This relic was brought home by George Renner Hillier (born 1776, died 1865) who was then a lieutenant on the Alliance, and took part in the defence of Acre, 18 March to 21 May 1799. The box came to me as his executor’s executor; but I did not know what it contained. In another box I found a note of his that Buonaparte had sent a message to Jerusalem that he was coming there as soon as he had taken Acre, and the first French soldier that fell in the attack should be buried in the Holy Sepulchre.
After finding that skull, I had hopes of finding the keys of Flushing church, as my father told me that he had seen them at this Captain Hillier’s house; but I was disappointed. He acquired them in this way:—In the Walcheren expedition he was “appointed by Sir Richard Strachan to make the last signal on the island, with strict orders to secure the said signal at the top of the church in a manner it could not be hauled down by the enemy before the rear guard was embarked.” The written instructions were in this box:—“Blake, Flushing Roads, December 23rd 1809. As soon as the day breaks you are to show the two balls on the steeple of Flushing, being the signal for the rear guard to embark and the flotilla to withdraw, and you are to come off with the army.” He did not see how he could stop the enemy hauling the signal down as soon as they reached the church, but he thought he might delay them for some minutes, if he locked up all the doors, and brought the keys away with him.
During that war a good many French naval officers were sent to Dartmoor as prisoners; and the gravestones of some of them may be seen in Moreton churchyard, looking strangely out of place there with their French inscriptions. These officers were very popular down here; and I have been told that nobody, however poor, ever claimed the guinea reward that was offered for information of their going out of bounds.
In a letter to my father, 9 December 1839, my grandfather says:—“Your account of the French soldiers would not please a Frenchman.... I remember, when staying at Exeter, I saw a whole regiment of young fellows that had been taken prisoners: the eldest did not appear to exceed twenty-one: they were the most ugly and dirty set of fellows I ever saw, and very short: you could scarcely pick such a set from all our regiments.”
My father mentions in his diary, Nantes, 19 August 1847, that he had been talking to an old gentleman of over eighty, who had known Nantes since 1789. “In speaking of the horrible revolutionary scenes enacted at Nantes, he said that the most violent fanatics, who carried out the Butcheries and Noyades there,