But, panic-struck and disorganised, the French resistance was short and feeble. The Prussian cannon thundered in their rear, the British bayonet was flashing in their front, and unable to stand the terror of the charge, they broke and fled. A dreadful and indiscriminate carnage ensued. The great road was choked with equipages, and cumbered with the dead and dying; while the fields, as far as the eye could reach, were covered with a host of helpless fugitives. Courage and discipline were forgotten; and Napoleon’s army of yesterday was now a splendid wreck—a terror-stricken multitude! His own words best describe it—“It was a total rout!”
On a surface of two square miles, it was ascertained that fifty thousand men and horses were lying! The luxurious crop of ripe grain which had covered the field of battle was reduced to litter, and beaten into the earth; and the surface, trodden down by the cavalry, and furrowed deeply by the cannon wheels, strewn with many a relict of the fight. Helmets and cuirasses, shattered firearms and broken swords; all the variety of military ornaments; lancer caps and Highland bonnets; uniforms of every colour, plume and pennon; musical instruments, the apparatus of artillery, drums, bugles;—but good God! why dwell on the harrowing picture of “a foughten field”?—each and every ruinous display bore mute testimony to the misery of such a battle.
Could the melancholy appearance of this scene of death be heightened, it would be by witnessing the researches of the living, amid its desolation, for the objects of their love. Mothers and wives and children for days were occupied in that mournful duty; and the confusion of the corpses, friend and foe intermingled as they were, often rendered the attempt at recognising individuals difficult, and, in some cases, impossible.
In many places the dead lay four deep upon each other, marking the spot some British square had occupied, when exposed for hours to the murderous fire of a French battery. Outside, lancer and cuirassier were scattered thickly on the earth. Madly attempting to force the serried bayonets of the British, they had fallen in the bootless essay, by the musketry of the inner files. Farther on, you traced the spot where the cavalry of France and Britain had encountered. Chasseur and hussar were intermingled; and the heavy Norman horse of the Imperial Guard were interspersed with the grey chargers which had carried Albion’s chivalry. Here the Highlander and tirailleur lay, side by side together; and the heavy dragoon, with “green Erin’s” badge upon his helmet, was grappling in death with the Polish lancer.
Never had France sent a finer army to the field—and never had any been so signally defeated. Complete as the déroute at Vittoria had appeared, it fell infinitely short of that sustained at Waterloo. Tired of slaughtering unresisting foes, the British, early in the night, abandoned the pursuit of the broken battalions and halted. But the Prussians, untamed by previous exertion, continued to follow the fugitives with increased activity, and nothing could surpass the unrelenting animosity of their pursuit. Plunder was sacrificed to revenge, and the memory of former defeat and past oppression produced a dreadful retaliation, and deadened every impulse of humanity. The vœ victis was pronounced, and thousands besides those who perished in the field fell that night by Prussian lance and sabre.
What Napoleon’s feelings were when he witnessed the overthrow of his guard, the failure of his last hope, the death-blow to his political existence, cannot be described, but may be easily imagined. Turning to an aide-de-camp, with a face livid with rage and despair, he muttered in a tremulous voice—“A present c’est fini! sauvons nous”; and turning his horse, he rode hastily off towards Charleroi, attended by his guide and staff.
In whatever point of view Waterloo is considered, whether as a battle, a victory, or an event, in all these, every occurrence of the last century yields, and more particularly in the magnitude of results. No doubt the successes of Wellington in Spain were, in a great degree, primary causes of Napoleon’s downfall; but still, the victory of Waterloo consummated efforts made for years before in vain to achieve the freedom of the Continent, and wrought the final ruin of him, through whose unhallowed ambition a world had been so long convulsed.
As a battle, the merits of the field of Waterloo have been freely examined, and very indifferently adjudicated. Those who were best competent to decide, have pronounced this battle as that upon which Wellington might securely rest his fame, while others, admitting the extent of the victory, ascribe the result rather to fortunate accident than military skill.
Never was a falser statement hazarded. The success attendant on the day of Waterloo can be referred only to the admirable system of resistance in the general, and an enduring valour, rarely equalled and never surpassed, in the soldiers whom he commanded. Chance, at Waterloo, had no effect upon results; Wellington’s surest game was to act only on the defensive; his arrangements with Blucher for mutual support being thoroughly matured, he knew that before night the Prussians must be upon the field. Bad weather and bad roads, with the conflagration of a town in the line of march, which, to save the Prussian tumbrils from explosion, required a circuitous movement—all these, while they protracted the struggle for several hours beyond what might have been reasonably computed, only go to prove that Wellington, in accepting battle, under a well-founded belief that he should be supported in four hours, when single-handed he maintained the combat and resolutely held his ground during a space of eight, had left nothing dependent upon accident, but, providing for the worst contingencies, had formed his calculations with admirable skill.
The allied loss[15] was enormous, but it fell infinitely short of that sustained by Napoleon’s army. Of the latter nothing like an accurate return was ever made; but from the most correct estimates by French and British officers, upwards of five-and-twenty thousand men were rendered hors de combat; while multitudes were sabred in the flight, or perished on the roads from sheer fatigue, and in deserted villages for want of sustenance and surgical relief.