[39] Lord Lovaine's speech, November 12th.
[40] It is well known that the word "Glory" does not once occur in the multifarious dispatches of the Duke of Wellington.
APPENDIX.
A. (p. 44).
The desertion of General Bourmont did not take place during the Battle of Quatre Bras, but on the day before. He and his Staff joined the Prussian General Ziethen as the French were advancing on Charleroi, on June 15. The mistake, however, is hardly the writer's fault, as Sir F. Head, the English authority for the statement, misprints the date. (See Hooper's Waterloo, p. 68.)
B. (p. 93).
The decisive part which the Prussian army played in the Battle of Waterloo is often overlooked, as it is here. Readers must bear in mind that the junction of the two armies of the Allies was preconcerted by Wellington and Blücher, and that the battle would not have been fought under other circumstances. It is true that the Prussian advance from Wavre, whence it had retreated after the Battle of Ligny on the 16th, was delayed, whereby an undue strain was placed upon and nobly borne by the English infantry, but the first Prussian corps under Bülow was known to be approaching by three o'clock. Their advance on the village of Planchenoit, on the right of the French position, caused Napoleon to detach to his right 16,000 French troops, out of the 72,000 with which he began the battle, and at last engaged his attention so far as that he left Ney to conduct the attack upon Wellington's army. Though it may be true, as Mrs. Eaton states, that the Prussians did not "make their appearance" (i.e. to the British troops) till seven o'clock (p. 130), they were nevertheless in conflict with the French for some hours before, and considerably modified their attack on Wellington's position.
C. (p. 145).
The allegations of cowardice brought against Napoleon at the time, and frequently repeated, do not meet with the slightest support from accurate historians. It is almost certain that when Wellington, on the 17th, withdrew his army from Quatre Bras to the position in which he accepted battle on the following day, Napoleon was with the head of the French column which followed up the retreat, and was within cannon shot of the British artillery and of Lord Uxbridge, who commanded the cavalry.