Grouchy’s corps d’armée, amounting to forty thousand men, when detached on the 17th by Napoleon to prevent a junction of the Prussians with the British, reached Gembloux immediately after Blucher’s rear-guard had quitted that place on its route to Wavre. At Baraque, early next morning, the French cavalry overtook the Prussians, attacked, and drove them back. At one o’clock a heavy cannonade was distinctly heard—and Girard urged Grouchy to leave a corps of observation in front of the Prussians, and march direct on Waterloo, while Vandamme, on the contrary, pressed the marshal to move at once on Brussels. Grouchy, however, was determined to obey the strict letter of his instructions, and made every effort to bring the Prussians to action. At six in the evening, one of many officers, despatched by Napoleon to order Grouchy to march to his assistance, succeeded in finding the marshal and delivered the order of the emperor. It was now six o’clock—and the marshal crossed the Dyle and moved rapidly towards Waterloo—but all there was lost; and at daybreak, on learning the fatal news, Grouchy abandoned his line of march, repassed the Dyle in four divisions, and joined the cavalry of Excelmans at Namur on the following morning. The marshal, for a time, held that town; while his rear-guard, commanded by Vandamme,[319] checked the Prussians—and then retiring by Dinant, he brought his corps safely to Paris after a march of eight days, and by a retreat that his enemies admitted to be conducted with admirable skill.
Meanwhile, Blucher, having masked the fortresses of Maubuge, Landrecy, and Phillipville, took possession of St. Quentin, while Zeithen advanced to Guise. On the 29th, he halted in front of the French position between St. Denis and Vincennes—having succeeded in gaining a day’s march on his indefatigable ally the Duke of Wellington.
On that evening Napoleon quitted the capital never to enter it again. Hostilities ceased immediately—the Bourbons were recalled, and placed upon the throne—and Europe, after years of anarchy and bloodshed, at last obtained repose—while he, “alike its wonder and its scourge,” was removed to a scene far distant from that which had witnessed his triumphs and his reverses—and within the narrow limits of a paltry island, that haughty spirit, for whom half Europe was too small, dragged out a gloomy existence, until death loosened the chain, and the grave closed upon the Captive of Saint Helena.
THE LATE INDIAN CAMPAIGNS
AGAINST
THE AFFGHANS, THE BILUCHIS,
AND
THE SIKHS.
1838 to 1846.
[THE
LATE INDIAN CAMPAIGNS],
&c.
PRELIMINARY REMARKS.[320]
Condition of Europe after the battle of Waterloo.—Necessity for peace.
A period of undisturbed repose succeeded that fearful interval in European history, extending from the murder of a weak and worthless monarch, to the deposition of the master spirit of the age, who had founded a blood-cemented throne on the ruins of a corrupt and licentious dynasty. From the revolutionary outbreak to the peace of Paris, the annals of these stormy times are but a continuous record of violence and slaughter—for the brief cessation of hostilities in 1801, was employed, on both sides, in active preparations to recommence a deadlier struggle—and France and England, like angry and exhausted duellists, rested only for the moment, until, with recruited strength, they might renew the game of death more furiously. As “time and the hour run through the longest day,” so national resources at last must find a limit—for if war be a sanguinary, it is also a most expensive pursuit. Save those of Britain and France, the European exchequers were exhausted—one country finding her marvellous resources in the honest supplies which flowed in from possessions on which a sun never sets[321]—the other, by adopting a nefarious policy of making war support war—or, in plain language, obliging the aggressed to find all for the aggressor that he might require. War cripples trade—and “the nation of shopkeepers,” as Napoleon contemptuously designated England, felt the monetary pressure heavily—and John Bull, when called upon again and again, growled as he unclosed his purse-strings—but he always came forward when money was required. The enormity of these demands, appeared only to elicit the boundless extent of the means upon which England could fall back—for in one year[322] the naval and military expenditure of the country exceeded the almost incredible total of forty-two millions sterling, without including immense subsidiatory outlays to friendly powers and foreign mercenaries.[323]