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rider; baggage was thrown off, and carried away by the peasants, to be cut open and plundered. Great sums of money were in this way lost: and clothes and other property spread over the fields. An English Officer, who had lost a foot, and was carried on his servant’s back came and begged to be taken into the boat. He was known to my friend, who, although the passengers, intent on self-preservation opposed it, by absolute force obtained his admission. At Mechline, they found it very difficult to obtain admission into a house; and the difficulty was increased when the people were told that the lady was ill. Most providentially they procured a carriage to Antwerp next day. On their arrival there, they heard an altercation between their coachman and a woman on the top, whom he had taken up, and would not let down till she paid a franc. They found this poor woman to be the widow, newly so made, of a soldier killed at Quatre Bras; and the mother of a child which she had the day before seen crushed to death by a waggon wheel! Many of the wounded were travelling the same road, some had lost a hand or an arm; thousands were on foot; and all sorts of carriages and horses crowded the road, and increased the danger. The scene was beyond description horrible: but a feeling of terror and self-preservation much diminished the concern for the sufferers. — This is very common in the horrors of war. The persons crushed in the flight to Antwerp, were thrown into the ditches. The confusion was dreadful: yet no one had seen a single Frenchman!
What then must have been the feelings of the poor gardener at Hougomont, at the time he was obliged to remain close prisoner in his garden, in the midst of the carnage, because, (as he candidly avowed), when the battle was begun he could not venture
