One thousand were literally sabred, ridden down, or cut to pieces, two thousand taken prisoners, with two eagles, one by a sergeant of the Greys, and all the drums and colours; a catastrophe which scarcely occupied five minutes' time, and which Napoleon beheld from his post near La Belle Alliance with sensations which may easily be conceived, for these troops were the flower of his numerous army.
This was about half-past four in the afternoon, and over the whole plain of Waterloo the battle was yet raging with as much fury as ever.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE SISTER OF CHARITY.
"O woman! in our hours of ease
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light quivering aspen made;
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!"
Marmion.
When Ronald again became conscious that he was yet in the land of the living, he found himself in a waggon, the uneasy jolting of which occasioned him great agony. It was driven by two sturdy Flemish peasants, clad in blue blouses and red caps, as he could perceive by the light of the moon: they sang merrily some uncouth song, and appeared to be in a happy state of intoxication.
The Flemings were driving furiously, at a rate which threatened every moment to overturn the vehicle, and it was incessantly bumped against a wall on one side of the highway, or a high foot-path which bordered the other. Ronald often implored and commanded them to drive slower, but they heeded him no more than the wind. However, they were compelled to slacken their speed on approaching Waterloo, where, in a short time, they were brought to a halt altogether, the road being completely choked up with the wounded,—thousands upon thousands of whom were on their way to Brussels on foot, a few on horseback, and many in waggons. It was now midnight, as the toll of a distant church clock announced. A horrible medley filled the air around the place where Stuart's waggon stopped. The cries of the wounded were piercing. In their agony, strong men were screaming like women, and the appeals for water from their parched tongues were piteous in the extreme. Some of them were men who had been wounded on the 16th at Quatre Bras, but hundreds of the sufferers who were maimed on that occasion, perished under the fury of the next day's storm in the forest of Soignies, whither they had fled for shelter on the temporary advance of Napoleon.
The highway was as much crowded as the field with dead and dying, and the waggons of the train, the baggage-carts, the commissariat caissons, &c., were every moment increasing in number, all pressing to get along the choked up road. The hubbub was increased by foreign and British cavalry, and mounted officers riding, some to the front and some to the rear, as their duty led them, and threatening to sabre any one who opposed their passage. Oaths, threats, and execrations, in English, French, Belgic, and German, resounded every where. It was a medley of horror and confusion, such as few men have ever looked upon.
The boors who drove the waggon in which Stuart lay, abandoned it and left him to his fate. He was utterly heedless of what it might be. He had never felt so weary of life, when suffering under any disaster, as he did at that moment; and he sincerely envied the dead who lay around him. The pain of his bruised side was intense, and he would gladly have given mountains of gold, if he had them, for a single drop of water to moisten his parched and swollen tongue, His head felt hot and heavy, but there was no one near to raise it.
He sunk again into a stupor, and all that passed during the remainder of that dismal night seemed like a dream. He was still sensible of acute pain, but the jolting of the rumbling waggon, when again in motion, seemed like the motion of a ship at sea, and he thought himself once more in the Bay of Biscay, on board the Diana of London.