On the 18th of June 1815, I left Ghent at noon by the Brussels gate; I was going to finish my walk alone on the high-road. I had taken Cæsar's Commentaries with me, and I strolled slowly along, immersed in my reading. I was more than a league from the town, when I thought I heard a dull rumbling: I stopped, looked up at the sky, which was fairly laden with clouds, taking counsel with myself whether I should continue to walk on, or go back towards Ghent for fear of a storm. I listened; I heard nothing more save the cry of a moor-hen in the rushes and the sound of a village-clock. I pursued my way: I had not taken thirty steps before the rumbling began again, now short, now long and at irregular intervals; sometimes it was perceptible only through a trembling of the air, which communicated itself to the ground over those immense plains, so distant was it. Those detonations, less extensive, less undulating, less connected than those of thunder, gave rise in my mind to the idea of a battle. I found myself in front of a poplar planted at the corner of a hop-field. I crossed the road and leant erect against the trunk of the tree, my face turned in the direction of Brussels. A southerly wind springing up carried to me more distinctly the sound of artillery. That great battle, nameless as yet, of which I listened to the echoes at the foot of a poplar, and of which a village clock had just rung out the unknown funerals, was the Battle of Waterloo!
A silent and solitary hearer of the formidable judgment of the destinies, I should have been less moved if I had found myself in the fray: the peril, the fire, the press of Death would have left me no time for meditation; but, alone under a tree, in the fields of Ghent, like the shepherd of the flocks which passed around me, I was overwhelmed by the weight of my reflexions: what was that battle? Was it decisive? Was Napoleon there in person? Were lots being cast upon the world, as upon Christ's vesture? In the event of success or reverse for one side or the other, what would be the consequence for the nations: liberty or slavery? But what blood was flowing! Was not each sound that reached my ear the last sigh of a Frenchman? Was it a new Crécy, a new Poitiers, a new Agincourt, in which France's most implacable enemies were about to revel? If they triumphed, was not our glory lost? If Napoleon won the day, what became of our liberty? Although a success on Napoleon's side opened up to me an eternal exile, the mother-land at that moment gained the mastery in my heart; my prayers were for the oppressor of France, if, while saving our honour, he was to snatch us from foreign domination.
Was Wellington triumphing? Then the Legitimacy would re-enter Paris behind those red uniforms which had just renewed their die in the blood of the French! Then the royalty would have as state-carriages at its coronation the ambulance-waggons filled with our maimed grenadiers! What manner of restoration would it be, accomplished under such auspices?... That is but a very small portion of the ideas that tormented me. Each gun-shot gave me a shock and doubled the beating of my heart. At a few leagues from an immense catastrophe, I did not see it, I could not touch the huge funeral monument growing minute by minute at Waterloo, even as from the shore of Bulak, on the bank of the Nile, I had vainly stretched out my hands towards the Pyramids.
No traveller appeared; a few women in the fields, peacefully weeding rows of vegetables, did not seem to hear the noise to which I was listening. But see, a courier came riding up: I left the foot of my tree and placed myself in the middle of the road; I stopped the courier and questioned him. He belonged to the Duc de Berry and came from Alost:
"Bonaparte entered Brussels yesterday (17 June), after a sanguinary combat. The battle was to have recommenced to-day (18 June). They think the Allies have suffered a decisive defeat, and the order is given to retreat."
The courier continued his road.
I followed him, hastening my steps: I was passed by the carriage of a merchant who was fleeing post with his family; he confirmed the courier's story.
Confusion at Ghent.
All was in confusion when I returned to Ghent: they were closing the gates of the city; only the wickets remained half-open; ill-armed civilians and a few soldiers in depot were keeping sentry. I went to the King's.
Monsieur had just arrived by a circuitous route: he had left Brussels upon the false news that Bonaparte was about to enter it and that a first lost battle left no hope of winning a second. They were saying that, as the Prussians had not formed their lines, the English had been crushed.