A continued sheet of corn or fallowed fields occupy the whole plain. The crops are indifferent and the reason assigned is curious. The whole being trampled down last year, became the food of mice, which in consequence repaired thither from all quarters and increased and multiplied to such a degree that the soil is quite infested by them.
Upon the heights where the British squares received the shock of the French Cavalry, we found an English officer's cocked hat, much injured apparently by a cannon shot, with its oilskin rotting away, and showing by its texture, shape, and quality that it had been manufactured by a fashionable hatter, and most probably graced the wearer's head in Bond Street and St. James's. Wherever we went we were surrounded by boys and beggars offering Eagles from Frenchmen's helmets, cockades, pistols, swords, cuirasses, and other fragments.
At Brussels they gave the Belgian troops a dinner in a long, shady avenue, which was more[270] than they deserved, and in the evening the Town was illuminated. In the Newspaper I daresay there will be a splendid account of it, but it was a wretched display in the proportion of one tallow candle to 50 windows stuck up to glimmer and go out without the slightest taste or regularity.
From Brussels we started in a nice open Barouche Landau on Thursday, the 20th. We again crossed the Field of Waterloo and proceeded towards Genappes, a road along which we jogged merrily and peaceably, but which had last year on this same day been one continued scene of carnage and confusion: Prussians cutting off French heads, arms and legs by hundreds; Englishmen in the rear going in chase, cheering the Prussians and urging them in pursuit; the French, exhausted with fatigue and vexation, making off in all directions with the utmost speed.
At Genappes we changed horses in the very courtyard where Napoleon's carriage was taken ... and were shown the spot where the Brunswick Hussars cut down the French General as a retaliation for the life of the Duke. The Postmaster told us what he could, which was not much; the only curious part was that in his narrative he never called the Highland Regiments "Les Écossais," but "Les Sans Culottes." The setting sun found us all covered with dust, rather tired and very hungry, and driving up, with some misgivings from what we had heard and from what we saw, to our Inn at Charleroi. "This is an abominable-looking house,"[271] said Donald. "Oh, jump out before we drive in and ask what we can get to eat." "Well, Donald, what success?" we all cried like young birds upon the return of the old one to the gaping, craving mouths in their nest. "The Landlady says she has nothing at all in the house, but if you will come in thinks something may be killed which will suffice for supper." This was a bad prospect....
We three went on in quest of better accommodation, and drove first to enquire at the Post House. The first question the Postmaster asked was, What could induce us to come to a place from which there was no exit? We told him we wished to go to Maubeuge. Had you seen his shoulders elevate themselves above his ears. "To Maubeuge! Why, it is utterly impossible." "Well, then," we said, "to Mons." "Le chemin est éxecrable." "To Phillippe ville." "Encore plus mauvais." As a proof of which he told us that a government courier had two days before insisted upon being forwarded thither, that they had sent him off at 2 in the morning, to insure him time before daylight, that at 9 in the morning he was brought back, having proceeded with the utmost difficulty 2 leagues, and then being deposited in a rut by the fracture of his carriage. After a great deal of pro and con it was agreed that with more horses and great caution and stock of patience the road to Mons should be attempted, and we were directed to "Le Grand Monarque," a good name for these times, applicable to Buonaparte or Louis XVIII.[272]
It was worth while to lose our way and encounter these unexpected difficulties for the amusement the landlady afforded us. We seemed almost at the end of the world. I am sure we felt so, for the people were so odd. Dinner she promised, and in half an hour proved by a procession of half a dozen capital dishes how wonderfully these people understand the art of cookery, in a place which in England would be considered upon a par with the "Eagle and Child."[115] We asked her about the road in hopes of hearing a more satisfactory account. With a nod and a shrug, and an enlargement of the mouth and projection of lip, she replied, "Messieurs, je ne voudrais pas être un oiseau de mauvais augure, mais, pour les chemins il faut avouer qu'ils sont effroyables."
I will venture to say such a "oiseau" as our speaker has never before been seen or heard of by any naturalist or ornithologist. Her figure and cloak were both inimitable. She gave such a tragi-comic account of her sufferings last year, during the time of the retreat, and in 1814 when the Russians were there, that while she laughed with one eye and cried with the other, we were almost inclined to do the same. She had been pillaged by a French officer in a manner which surpassed any idea we could have formed of French oppression and barbarity. At one time the Cossacks caught her, and on some dispute about a horse, 4 of them took her each by an arm and leg and laying her upon her[273] "Ventre" flat as a pancake, a fifth cracked his knout (whip) most fearfully over her head, and prepared himself to apply the said whip upon our poor landlady. By good fortune an officer rescued her from their clutches, but she shivered like a jelly when she described her feelings in her awkward position, like a boat upon the shore bottom upwards. Then she told us how her husband died of fright, or something very near it. Her account of him was capital, "Il étoit," said she, "un bon papa du temps passé," by which perhaps you may imagine she was young and handsome. She was very old and as ugly as Hecate.