Every plan I have seen makes it much too irregular, rough ground; it is all undulating, smooth ups and downs, so gradual that you must look some time before you discover all the irregularity there is. Hougoumont[110] is the only interesting point, and that by having an air of peace and retirement about it most opposite to what took place in it.
It is a respectable, picturesque farmhouse, with pretty trees and sweet fields all around it; the ravages are not repaired and many of the trees cut down. We left our carriages in the road and walked all over the British position, and henceforward I shall have a clearer idea, not only of Waterloo, but of what a military position and military plan is like.
At La Belle Alliance we sat upon a bench where Lord Wellington and Blücher perhaps met, and drank to their healths in Vin de Bordeaux. In spite of the corn, there are still bits of leather caps and bullets and bones scattered about in the fields, and you are pestered with children innumerable with relics of all sorts. We had heard magnificent accounts on our road here of all that was to be done on the field, balls, fêtes, sham fights, processions, and I do not know what, but they have all dwindled to a dinner given here to the Belgian soldiers and a Mass to be said for the souls of the[264] dead to-morrow. However, we saw what we wished as we wished, and the impression is perhaps clearer than if it had been disturbed and mixed with other sights.
And now, being near 12, and I having walked about 8 miles, and been up since 6, must go to bed, though I feel neither sleepy nor tired.
To Lucy Stanley.
June 24, 1816.
...Away with me to Waterloo!
We arrived at Brussels on the evening of the 17th, and at seven o'clock started for the scene of action. From Brussels a paved road, with a carriage track on each side, passes for nine miles to the village of Waterloo.
The Forest (of Soignies) is, without exception, one of the most cut-throat-looking spots I ever beheld, ... and for some days after the battle deserters and stragglers, chiefly Prussians, took up their abode in this appropriate place, and sallying forth, robbed, plundered, and often shot those who were unfortunate enough to travel alone or in small defenceless parties.
After traversing this gloomy avenue for about four miles, the first symptoms of war met our eyes in the shape of a dead horse, whose ribs glared like a cheval-de-frise from a tumulus of mud. If the ghosts of the dead haunt these sepulchral groves, we must have passed through an army of spirits, as[265] our driver, who had visited the scene three days after the battle, described the last four miles as a continued pavement of men and horses dying and dead.