Interesting Survivor.
“In the village of Rolvenden, in the Weald of Kent, there is living an old woman named Moon, who was present at the battles of Quatre Bras and Waterloo. Her father, a col.-sergt. of the 3rd batt. Rifle Brigade, served throughout the Peninsular war, and took part in the battles of Badajoz, Salamanca, and other conflicts. He died of wounds received at Waterloo some months after the battle and before he had received his pension. Mrs. Moon was born in the Peninsula, her mother doing work for the forces when operating there. Though Mrs. Moon is now infirm, her intellect is clear and her memory good.”—Morning Post, 27th March, 1899.
Note by the Editor.—Mrs. Barbara Moon d. at Rolvenden in Oct., 1903. It was stated in an obituary notice that she was four years old at the time of the battle of Waterloo and rode in a waggon over the field on the evening of 18th June, 1815.
The Last British Eye-Witness of Waterloo.
Elizabeth Watkins, of Norwich, born 31st Jan., 1810, at Beaminster, near Bridport. Her father, one Daniel Gale, was pressed into the King’s service just before Waterloo. Gale’s wife and child followed him to Brussels and were in the women’s camp near the field of Waterloo. The child remembers cutting up lint—saw many dead, and some stirring incidents of the battle. (Notes and Queries, 5th Dec., 1903). A portrait of Elizabeth Watkins recently appeared in The Sphere.
An Eye-Witness of Waterloo.
From a Correspondent.
In a small cottage at the little village of Chapelle, within eye-shot of the meeting-place of Wellington and Blücher after the most tremendous and fateful struggle in the world’s history, there was living on June 18, 1815, a little girl, Thérèse Roland, thirteen years of age, who witnessed all that took place on that historic day. Eighty-nine years later she is still living there, a widow now, with her two sons of eighty and seventy-eight, herself a bowed and wrinkled old dame of 103 years. This aged peasant, with faculties still clear and memory unimpaired, is probably the only living witness of the death-blow dealt to all Napoleon’s hopes on that midsummer day, which moulded the future history of an entire continent, and altered the balance of power of the entire world.