Paris in 1815

18 June 1815

Battle of Waterloo

NOTES.

Note 2, page 5, line last.
The Victory of Victories.
The battle of Waterloo has been called, on high poetic autho-
rity, another Cannae. It was so, just as much as England was.

64

NOTES.

on the pure authority of the men of blood in France, another
Carthage J and just as much as the British soldiery were a
band of desperate and half savage mercenaries, and the Duke
of Wellington a crafty and cruel slave of a sanguinary power,
engaged in a war of ambition, and resolved on nothing short
of the total ruin of its rival. History will probably judge other-
wise, and the name of the soldiers of Waterloo and their leader
be appealed to from generation to generation, whenever men are
to be awakened to great actions by the memory of the most
gallant and the most generous of patriots and of warriors.

To those who may, like the writer, incline to think that a
more glorious age is about to rise upon the world, and that
Waterloo was the thunderstorm which was to give the last
clearing to the air before that perfect vision, it assumes a loftier
character than its mortal triumph. It seems to bear the fea-
tures of a grand, immediate interposition of superior power.
Where, to effect a great purpose, a number of accidents seem
to be forced together, we naturally believe in the control of a
higher hand ; where those accidents, in the first instance, thwart
all our aspirations, and yet are eventually seen to have advanced
us to a more complete success than all our aspirations dared to
dream, the conjecture becomes almost conviction. The final
overthrow of the French empire, which was atheistic, jacobin,
and revolutionary to its latest hour 3 and the utter disgrace of
Napoleon, the concentrated spirit of the revolution, were at
least the results of the battle of Waterloo. They may appear
to have been its providential objects. Had human judgnients
been previously consulted they would probably have drawn a
different plan of the battle. The Prussians would have at once

NOTES.

NOTES.

NOTES.

If the French army, the authors of so much misery to
Europe, were to have been finally punished, it was done by the
battle of Waterloo, For the first time since the accession of
Napoleon, their force was exclusively French j and it was
trampled like a mire of blood. There has been no instance for
those thousand years of such total destruction of an army. The
flower of France, and the leading strength of the rebellion, was
the imperial guard. It was reserved for the last and most
complete sacrifice of the day.

If this battle had been intended to raise the military fame of
England to its highest rank, its purpose was done. Twenty-
five thousand Englishmen, more encumbered than assisted by
their young auxiliaries, fought three times their number of the
most experienced troops of the world ; displayed an unrivalled
strength of passive fortitude during a day of furious assaults,
and, when they were at length let loose^ rushed upon the enemy,
like lions upon a sheepfold.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

NARRATIVE of a RESIDENCE in BELGIUM during the
Campai^ of 1815, and of a Visit to the Field of Waterloo. By aa
Englishwoman. 8vo. lO*. 6d.

The COMFORTS of OLD AGE, with Biographical Illus-
trations. By Sir Thomas Bernard, Bart. Second Edition, small 8vo.