Battle of Waterloo (diary accounts)/Visit to the field of battle
VISIT TO THE FIELD OF BATTLE.
IN the course of the Monday, the news of the defeat of the French arrived; and on the following day my friend and his wife returned to Brussels. On the Wednesday he visited the field of Waterloo. His account of it is dreadfulǃ—The first thing which struck him at a distance, was the quantity of caps and hats strewed on the ground. It appeared as if the field had been covered with crows. When he came to the spot, the sight was truly shocking: At first there was a dreadful preponderance of British slain, which looked very ill; but more in advance, the revenge made itself dreadfully marked, for ten, French lay dead for one British. The field was so much covered with blood, that it appeared as if it had been completely flooded with it; dead horses seemed innumerable; — and the peasantry employed in burying the dead, generally stript the bodies first. Of Course these people got a vast booty, when they returned out of the neighbouring wood, after the battle; many of them some hundred pounds. A great quantity of cap plates, cuirasses &c. were taken by them and sold as relics.
We returned to the tree, and directed our steps westward, to go along the British line to the right. There was no difficulty in tracing the line by the graves of the brave men who had fallen where they were first posted. The survivors never quitted it, but to advance. The very ground was hallowed; but it was trode by us with respect and gratitude; the multitude below, so lately interred, occasioned a very impressive subject of reflection.
No one, who has not seen it, can imagine how touching it was to see, strewed around their graves, fragments of what the brave men wore or carried when they fell. Among the straw of the trodden down corn which still covered the field, lay caps, shoes, pieces of uniforms and shirts, tufts, cockades, feathers, ornamental horse-hair red and black, and what most struck us, great quantities of letters, and leaves of books. The latter were much too far defaced by rain and mud, to make it worth our while to lift any of them. In one letter, we could just make cut the words, so affecting in their circumstances, “My dear husband."
The tract over which the guard moved, and over which they fled, was still, when we passed it, covered with their spoil, and marked with horses' feet, cannon wheels, and the deeper furrows of balls and bombs. Ponsonby fell here.
A thousand French dead, alone, lay on this spot; and even yet it exhibited holsters, (one we observed which had been filled with blood) standard holders, pieces of bridles, straps, girths, &c. all denoting a tremendous conflict of cavalry; and the caps of the grenadiers of the French guard, lay yet in considerable numbers, with rags of their uniforms. Some more affecting remains were also there, pieces of tartan, and of black ostrich feathers: the plaids and plumes of Scotland.
Arduous and painful, indeed, must have been that struggle, in which upwards of 200,000 men on both sides, were engaged in the work of death for nine or ten hours.— We may readily conceive what a horrible thing it would be, to behold two columns of infantry charging one another in the greatest fury, with the bayonet, and occasionally pouring well-directed vollies of musketry into each others ranks; but such were the deadly visits of the cannon and cavalry on that dreadful day, that the author whom we have so largely quoted, was repeatedly assured by officers with whom he conversed, that these interludes of infantry battle were a kind of refreshment, after their toil with other arms. It need not then be wondered, that Marshal Ney, in his letter to the Duke of Otranto calls it a terrible battle, and the most frightful carnage ever he had witnessed; and that it was said of the Duke of Wellington, that often he had prayed in agony during the dreadful conflict, for the Prussians on the night.
But horrific as the spectacle of a field of battle must be, when covered with the dying and the dead; and the dreadful sufferings to which the actual combatants are necessarily exposed; there are other painful emotions — there are other evils attendant on a state of warfare, which humanity has cause to deplore. What, for instance, must the neighbouring inhabitants feel, who reside in a country immediately adjoining the seat of war? "How dreadful" says the judicious Hall, “to hold every thing at the mercy of an enemy and to receive life itself as a boon dependant on the sword? How boundless the fears which such a situation must inspire, where the issues of life and death are determined by no known laws, principles or customs: and no conjecture can be formed of our destiny except as far as it is dimly decyphered in characters of blood in the dictates of revenge, and the caprices of power. Conceive but for a moment the consternation which the approaches of an invading army would impress on the peaceful villagers in this neighbourhood. When you have placed yourselves, for an instant, in that situation, you will learn to sympathise with those unhappy countries which have sustained the ravages of arms. But how is it possible to give you an idea of these horrors? — Here you behold rich harvests, the bounty of heaven and the reward of industry, consumed in a moment, or trampled under foot; while famine and pestilence follow the steps of desolation —There the cottages of peasants given up to the flames; mothers expiring through fear, not for themselves, but their infants; the inhabitants flying with their helpless babes in all directions, miserable fugitives on their native soil!—In another part you witness opulent cities taken by storm; the streets, where no sounds were heard but those of peaceful mirth and contentment, filled on a sudden with slaughter and blood, resounding with the cries of the pursuing and the pursued; the palaces of nobles demolished, the houses of the rich pillaged, the chastity of virgins and of matrons violated; and every age, sex, and rank, mingled in promiscuous massacre and ruin."