BRUSSELS
Rue de Namur.
On the 18th, Chateaubriand was taking a walk outside the town near the Brussels gate, when a courier from Alost rode up with a despatch from the Duc de Berri. 'Bonaparte,' it said, 'entered Brussels yesterday, 17 June, after a bloody battle. The battle was to begin again to-day. The Allies are said to have been completely defeated, and the order for retreat given.' All Ghent was in dismay. The Comte d'Artois arrived and confirmed the bad news. Many Belgians who had been in the French army immediately started to take service once more under Napoleon. Preparations were made for starting at once; but at one o'clock next morning a despatch came with the news of the victory. On June 22 the King left Ghent, to mount once more the throne which had been retained for him at such a cost.
The scene of the great battle is wonderfully little changed since then. The level of the ground at the centre of the ridge occupied by the Allies has been lowered by the removal of earth to make the Mound of the Belgian Lion; the tree under which the Duke of Wellington and his staff stood at intervals during the day is gone long since; a tramway runs past the farm of La Haye Sainte towards Quatre Bras and Charleroi; and a number of houses have been built on the road between Waterloo and Mont St. Jean. But the general aspect of the fields on which the fight took place remains the same. Down to the right, looking from Mont St. Jean, the château of Hougoumont, half destroyed by shot and fire, still remains as it was left after the battle, with its orchard walls and tall, dark trees. The farmhouse of La Haye Sainte, that scene of carnage, is still where it was, at the side of the road which leads down the incline, and then up from the narrow valley to La Belle Alliance, near which is now the monument of the Wounded Eagle, a memorial to the last combatants of the army which fought and lost with such matchless valour. Every yard of the ground is sacred. There is, in all the world, no spot where a Briton and a Frenchman can meet with more profound emotions of mutual respect than on the slopes near Mont St. Jean.
WATERLOO
The farm of La Belle Alliance and the mound surmounted by the Belgian lion.
Footnotes
[41]The street which leads from the Place de la Monnaie towards the Bourse.
[42] This fine house is now No. 63, Rue des Champs, the residence of the Comte de Bouisies, who married the daughter of Madame Borluut, a direct descendant of the Comte d'Hane of 1815.
[43] Reminiscences of Lady de Ros (Lady Georgina Lennox).