After wandering about for some time, uncertain which way to take, I at length reached the Charleroi road, now blocked by carriages and wagons conveying the wounded towards Brussels. Here I learned, for the first time, that we had gained the battle, and heard of the total annihilation of the French army, and the downfall of the Emperor. On arriving at the farm-house of Mont St. Jean, I found a number of officers, whose wounds prevented their accompanying the army in its forward movement. One of them, with whom I was slightly acquainted, informed me that General Dashwood had spent the greater part of the night upon the field in search of me and that my servant Mike was in a state of distraction at my absence that bordered on insanity. While he was speaking, a burst of laughter and the tones of a well-remembered voice behind attracted my attention.
“Made a very good thing of it, upon my life. A dressing-case,—not gold, you know, but silver-gilt,—a dozen knives with blood-stone handles, and a little coffee-pot, with the imperial arms,—not to speak of three hundred Naps in a green silk purse—Lord! it reminds me of the Peninsula. Do you know those Prussians are mere barbarians, haven’t a notion of civilized war. Bless your heart, my fellows in the Legion would have ransacked the whole coach, from the boot to the sword-case, in half the time they took to cut down the coachman.”
“The major, as I live!” said I. “How goes it, Major?”
“Eh, Charley! when did you turn up? Delighted see you. They told me you were badly wounded or killed or something of that kind. But I should have paid the little debt to your executors all the same.”
“All the same, no doubt, Major; but where, in Heaven’s name, did you fall upon that mine of pillage you have just been talking of?”
“In the Emperor’s carriage, to be sure, boy. While the duke was watching all day the advance of Ney’s column and keeping an anxious look-out for the Prussians, I sat in a window in this old farm-house, and never took my eye off the garden at Planchenoit. I saw the imperial carriage there in the morning; it was there also at noon; and they never put the horses to it till past seven in the evening. The roads were very heavy, and the crowd was great. I judged the pace couldn’t be a fast one; and with four of the Enniskilleners I charged it like a man. The Prussians, however, had the start of us; and if they hadn’t thought, from my seat on horseback and my general appearance, that I was Lord Uxbridge, I should have got but a younger son’s portion. However, I got in first, filled my pockets with a few little souvenirs of the Emperor, and then laying my hands upon what was readiest, got out in time to escape being shot; for two of Blucher’s hussars, thinking I must be the Emperor, fired at me through the window.”
“What an escape you had!”
“Hadn’t I though? Fortunate, too, my Enniskilleners saw the whole thing; for I intend to make the circumstance the ground of an application for a pension. Hark ye, Charley, don’t say anything about the coffee-pot and the knives. The duke, you know, has strange notions of his own on these matters. But isn’t that your fellow fighting his way yonder?”
“Tear and ages! don’t howld me—that’s himself,—devil a one else!”
This exclamation came from Mickey Free, who, with his dress torn and dishevelled, his eyes bloodshot and strained, was upsetting and elbowing all before him, as he made his way towards me through the crowd.