Thus the road between Waterloo and Brussels was one long uninterrupted charnel-house: the smell, the whole way through the forest, was extremely offensive, and in some places scarcely bearable. Deep stagnant pools of red putrid water, mingled with mortal remains, betrayed the spot where the bodies of men and horses had mingled together in death. We passed a large cross on the left side of the road, which had been erected in ancient times to mark the place where one human being had been murdered. How many had now sunk around it in agony, and breathed, unnoticed and unpitied, their dying groans! It was surrounded by many a fresh-made, melancholy mound, which had served for the soldier's humble grave; but no monument points out to future times the bloody spot where they expired; no cross stands to implore from the passenger the tribute of a tear, or call forth a pious prayer for the repose of the departed spirits who here perished for their country!
The melancholy vestiges of death and destruction became more frequent, the pools of putrid water more deep, and the smell more offensive, as we approached Waterloo, which is situated at the distance of about three leagues, or scarcely nine miles, from Brussels. Before we left the forest, the Church of Waterloo appeared in view, at the end of the avenue of trees. It is a singular building, much in the form of a Chinese temple, and built of red brick. On leaving the wood, we passed the trampled and deep-marked bivouac, where the heavy baggage-waggons, tilted carts, and tumbrils had been stationed during the battle, and from which they had taken flight with such precipitation.
Even here cannon-balls had lodged in the trees, but had passed over the roofs of the cottages. We entered the village which has given its name to the most glorious battle ever recorded in the annals of history. It was the Headquarters of the British army on the nights preceding and following the battle. It was here the dispositions for the action were made on Saturday afternoon. It was here on Monday morning the dispatches were written, which perhaps contain the most brief and unassuming account a conqueror ever penned, of the most glorious victory that a conqueror ever won.[22] Waterloo consists of a sort of long, irregular street of whitewashed cottages, through which the road runs. Some of them are detached, and some built in rows. A small house, with a neat, little, square flower-garden before it, on the right hand, was pointed out to us as the quarters of Lord Uxbridge, and the place where he remained after the amputation of his leg, until well enough to bear removal. His name, and those of "His Grace the Duke of Wellington," "His Royal Highness the Prince of Orange," and other pompous titles, were written on the doors of these little thatched cottages. We also read the lamented names of Sir Thomas Picton, Sir Alexander Gordon, Sir William de Lancey, and Sir William Ponsonby, who had slept there the night before the battle, and many others who now sleep in the bed of honour. Volumes of sermons and homilies upon the instability of human life could not have spoken such affecting and convincing eloquence to our hearts as the sight of these names, thus traced in chalk, which had been more durable than the lives of these gallant men.
After leaving Waterloo, the ground rises: the wood, which had opened, again surrounded us, though in a more straggling and irregular manner—and it was not till we arrived at the little village of Mont St. Jean, more than a mile beyond Waterloo, that we finally quitted the shade of the forest, and entered upon the open field where the battle had been fought. During the whole of the action the rear of the left wing of our army rested upon this little village, from which the French named the battle. We gazed with particular interest at a farm-house, at the farthest extremity of the village nearest the field, on the left side of the road,—with its walls and gates and roofs still bearing the vestiges of the cannon-balls that had pierced them. Every part of this house and offices was filled with wounded British officers; and here our friend Major L. was conveyed in excruciating agony, upon an old blanket, supported by the bayonets of four of his soldiers.
On the right we saw at some distance the church of Braine la Leude, which was in the rear of the extremity of the right wing of our army. From the top of the steeple of this church the battle might have been seen more distinctly than from any other place, if any one had possessed coolness and hardihood sufficient to have stood the calm spectator of such a scene; and if some cannon-ball had not stopped his observations by carrying off his head.
Alighting from the carriage, which we sent back to the barrière of Mont St. Jean, we walked past the place where the beaten down corn, and the whole appearance of the ground, would alone have been sufficient to have indicated that it had been the bivouac of the British army on the tempestuous night before the battle, when, after marching and fighting all day beneath a burning sun, they lay all night in this swampy piece of ground, under torrents of rain. We rapidly hurried on, until our progress was arrested by a long line of immense fresh-made graves. We suddenly stopped—we stood rooted to the spot—we gazed around us in silence; for the emotions that at this moment swelled our hearts were too deep for utterance—we felt that we stood on the field of battle!
"And these, then, are the graves of the brave!" at length mournfully exclaimed one of the party, after a silence of some minutes, hastily wiping away some "natural tears." "Look how they extend all along in front of this broken, beaten-down hedge—what tremendous slaughter!" "This is, or rather was," said an officer who was our conductor, "the hedge of La Haye Sainte;[23] the ground in front of it, and the narrow lane that runs behind it, were occupied by Sir Thomas Picton's division, which formed the left wing of the army; and it was in leading forward his men to a glorious and successful charge against a furious attack made by an immense force of the enemy, that this gallant and lamented officer fell. He was shot through the head, and died instantly, without uttering a word or a groan!" We gazed at the opposite height, or rather bank, upon which the French army was posted. We thought of the feelings with which our gallant soldiers must have viewed it, before the action commenced, when it was covered with the innumerable legions of France, ranged in arms against them. The solemn and portentous stillness which precedes the bursting of the tempest, is nothing to the awful sublimity of a moment such as this. The threatening columns of that immense army, which their valour had destroyed and scattered, were then ready to pour down upon them. The cannon taken in the action, which now stood in the field before us under the guard of a single British soldier, were then turned against them.
The field-pieces taken by the Prussians in the pursuit were not here. But 130 pieces of cannon belonging to the British, and taken by them on the field of battle, still remained here. We went to examine them; they were beautiful pieces of ordnance, inscribed with very whimsical names, and some of them with the revolutionary words of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité! Our own artillery, which was admirably served, had been principally placed in two lines upon the ridge of the gentle slope on which our army was stationed. About four o'clock in the afternoon the first line of guns advanced, and the second took the place which the first had before occupied; it was also placed upon every little eminence over the field, and it did great execution amongst the enemy's ranks.[24]
The ground occupied by Sir Thomas Picton's division, on the left of the road from Brussels, is lower than any other part of the British position. It is divided from the more elevated ridge where the French were posted by a very gentle declivity. To the right the ground rises, and the hollow irregularly increases, until at Château Hougoumont it becomes a sort of small dell or ravine, and the banks are both high and steep. But the ground occupied by the French is uniformly higher, and decidedly a stronger position than ours.
Nothing struck me with more surprise than the confined space in which this tremendous battle had been fought; and this, perhaps, in some measure contributed to its sanguinary result. The space which divided the two armies from the farm-house of La Haye Sainte, which was occupied by our troops, to La Belle Alliance, which was occupied by theirs, would, I think, scarcely measure three furlongs. Not more than half a mile could have intervened between the main body of the French and English armies; and from the extremity of the right to that of the left wing of our army, I should suppose to be little more than a mile.