[31] This statement too is confirmed by Marshal Ney, who said, "that Buonaparte had entirely disappeared before the end of the battle." Let it be remembered that Ney's letter was written exactly a week after the battle, while Napoleon was still emperor, and still in Paris, and, if his statement was not true, a thousand witnesses could have contradicted it.
[32] The Duke himself reverentially said afterwards, "The finger of God was upon me."
[33] It was near seven o'clock when this circumstance happened. The Prussians had not appeared. The regiments which he led to the charge were the 71st, the 52nd, and the 95th. He also repeatedly rallied the Belgic regiments, and sometimes vainly exerted himself to make them face the enemy.
[34] [See Appendix, D.]
[35] It was with a heart saddened by feelings which did him honour, that the Duke of Wellington returned from the battle. The letters which he wrote to the relations of the distinguished officers who had fallen, prove how truly he felt what he sorrowfully said, that "there is nothing more melancholy than a victory—except a defeat." I cannot resist inserting the following simple and affecting extract from one of his letters, written on the morning after the battle. "I cannot express to you," he writes, "the regret and sorrow with which I look around me, and contemplate the losses which I have sustained. They have quite broken me down. The glory resulting from such actions, so dearly bought, is no consolation to me."
The extract in the text is taken "From Circumstantial Details Relative to the Battle of Waterloo," which was written by the author to explain "A Panoramic Sketch of the Field of Battle," by her sister, both of which were published by J. Booth, London, in August, 1815, for the benefit of the Waterloo Fund.
[36] It is on the left of the road in going towards Waterloo, behind the farm-house of La Haye Sainte. But this tree, which ought to have been for ever sacred, has been CUT DOWN!!!
[37] Some soldiers' wives were, however, actuated by better motives, and, like the matrons of Hensberg, in times of old, seemed to think their best treasures were their husbands. Many of them rushed forward and carried their wounded husbands off the field at the hazard of their own lives. The wife of a sergeant in the 28th was severely wounded in two places by a shell, which struck her as she was carrying off her wounded husband. This anecdote was related to me by an eye-witness of the circumstance. The woman (respecting whom I inquired since my return to England) has, I understand, been allowed a pension from Chelsea Hospital. I heard of several similar instances of heroic conjugal affection; and I myself saw one poor woman, the wife of a private in the 27th, whose leg was dreadfully fractured by a musket-ball in rescuing her husband. When struck by the ball she fell to the ground with her husband, who was supposed to be mortally wounded, but she still refused to leave him, and they were removed together to the rear, and afterwards sent to Antwerp. The poor man survived the amputation of both his arms, and is still alive. The woman, who was then in a state of pregnancy, has, since her return to this country, given birth to a child, to which the Duke of York stood godfather.