“This was the reply of the first in command. In 1833, the writer of this letter dined at lord Palmerston’s; on his right sat lord Hill. As his Lordship lived near the author, he offered to set him down. When alone in the carriage with lord Hill, remembering what sir Walter had affirmed of the Duke’s confidence, he said, ‘Was there any part of the day at Waterloo, my lord, you ever desponded as to the result?’—‘Desponded!’ replied lord Hill, ‘never: there never was the least panic; we had gained rather than lost ground, by the evening. No, there was not a moment I had the least doubt of the result.’”
In conclusion, and as a final answer to the depreciators of British valour, we offer them the speech of the celebrated Ney, uttered in the Chamber of Peers four days after the battle, and which is, perhaps, of the French accounts the most worthy of attention, and too remarkable to be omitted on the present occasion.
When the peers were assembled, Carnot gave them a flaming account of Grouchy’s admirable retreat from Wavre, at the head, the minister said, of sixty thousand men; of Soult’s success in collecting together twenty thousand of the old guard; of new levies from the interior, with two hundred pieces of cannon. Ney, highly incensed at these mischievous untruths, and keenly suffering from the injustice done to him in Napoleon’s bulletins, started up, and declared Carnot’s statement to be utterly false:
“Will they dare to assert,” exclaimed the exasperated marshal, “before eyewitnesses of the disastrous day of the 18th, that we have yet sixty thousand soldiers embodied? Grouchy cannot have under him above twenty or five-and-twenty thousand soldiers, at the utmost. Had he possessed a greater force, he might have covered the retreat, and the Emperor would still have been in command of an army on the frontiers. Not a man of the guard will ever rally more. I myself commanded them; I myself witnessed their total extermination, ere I left the field of battle: they are annihilated. The enemy are at Nivelles with eighty thousand men; they may, if they please, be at Paris in six days. There is no safety for France, but in instant propositions for peace[102].”
This speech opened the eyes of all Paris to the facts, and prepared the entry of the allies into France, almost without striking a blow. It was truly, like my pages, a voice from Waterloo and is the last testimony we shall present to the reader, in refutation of the tale, that we were beaten before the arrival of the Prussians. It was not against the latter that the devoted Ney led the Imperial guard, nor were they by the Prussians annihilated; they were defeated on no other spot but the allied position on the field of Waterloo.
FOOTNOTES:
[84] A large quantity of these proclamations was found amongst the Imperial baggage.
[85] Campagne et Bataille de Waterloo, par Achille de Vaulabelle, p. 95-96. Paris, 1845.