wounded, but as it is an important rule in battle to transmit prisoners of rank to headquarters, he was detained till several questions were put to him by the emperor, and, as I was informed, with great politeness. 1st. "Is lord Wellington himself in the field?"-Answer." He is."

2d." What is the state of the spirits of the English troops ?"-Ans. "As determined as ever."

3d. "Where are the Prussians?"-Ans. "It is believed they are at hand."

Buonaparte was observed to look thoughtful. He, however, politely dismissed the officer, to have his wounds taken care of.

The British keeping their defensive position, the entire French army, as the assailants, naturally found themselves very considerably advanced on the plain; an advance which Buonaparte falsely called occupying the British line. This very advance was their ruin. The British artillery now played from their higher ground upon the whole French army, with the exception of the reserve of guard, old and young; and every opportunity of attack was seized by the British, both infantry and cavalry. "The combat deepened," and fresh spirits rushed "to glory or the grave." It was now the tug of battle: the impetuosity-the high spiritthe "stern joy" of first onset-was gone by; now was come the murderous strain of of the mighty armies, the poise and balance of the day.

"The affair is kept up," (se sautient) says the "Relation"-" not a foot on either side is yielded; new columns are advanced; charges are renewed; three times the position is on the point of being forced; and three times, after prodigies of valour, the French are stopped short."

Nothing can be more descriptive than what follows of the reaction, the languor, which succeed over-excitement, the depression of baulked enthusiasm.

"Hesitation appeared in the French army, and marked uneasiness (de vives inquiétudes), Some dismounted batteries retired, multitudes of wounded separate from the columns, and spread alarm for the issue of battle. Profound silence had succeeded to the acclamations and cries of joy of the soldiers, sure

of being led to victory. At the moment all the troops, with the exception of the infantry of the guard, were engaged, and exposed to a fire the most murderous. The action continued with the same violence, but led to no result."

"It was near seven o'clock. Buonaparte, who till that moment had remained on the ridge which he had chosen, and from which he saw well all that passed, contemplated with a look of ferocity the hideous prospect of so frightful a butchery. The more the obstacles multiplied, the more he became obstinate. He was indignant at the unforeseen difficulties, and, far from having fears to devote an army, whose confidence in him had no bounds, he persevered in sending on fresh troops, with orders to march forward, to charge with the bayonet, to sweep away.Several times he was told, from different points, that the affair was against him, that the troops appeared shaken; en avant,' repondit il, en avant,-forward, forward."

Another British officer was brought prisoner at this rare juncture; and witnessed the unexpected demeanour of this hitherto idolized man, in the presence of an enemy so new to him. He raved and stormed, and, regardless of witnesses, threw away in a mo ment the character founded on fifteen years of miracles. A British officer witnessed this suicide of Napoleon's fame. It was, it may be believed, delightful to this officer, to hear the answer given to Buonaparte's general wholesale commands, to destroy and break, and sweep away the English. "Sire, il est impossible." Yet at the very moment he was sending off estaffettes with dispatches; and, true to the last gasp of his political existence, and to that policy which has itself roused the vengeance of united Europe, he repeated several times, avec distraction, Qu'il n'oublie pas de dire partout que la victoire est à moi." Several officers near him expressed their wonder, by saying, “Il a perdu la tête." How different this melancholy scene of the fury of disappointed oppression, from the calm he displayed at Jena! when he played the unruffled god, far above the passions of the war below, and its vulgar risks; on a safe eminence, waving his baton, and columns of the enemy disap

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peared! It is indeed time that this mummery, this serenity of triumphant profligacy, should be exposed in all its hollow worthlessness and naked deformity.

The Prussians appeared. From the ground on which we stood, the wood seemed about three miles off, from which they began to debouche about seven o'clock in the evening. Lacoste witnessed the information repeatedly brought to Buonaparte, and heard his perse. vering assertion, that it was the corps of marshal Grouchy. This, however, was not his real belief; for, instead of waiting for it, he immediately resolved to throw his last stake, before the possible Prussians might arrive. The old and middle guard were now ordered forward, as the last column of attack. It was led by Ney, as he himself narrates, in mournful silence, to make a last desperate effort on the British centre and left: he well knowing all the time that the battle was already lost, and could not be retrieved by a mere reserve, if the whole army had failed to make any impression on the British position.

The Picton warriors, with the gallant Kempt at their head (for Picton was no more), were to meet and confound this last effort of rage and despair.

We left the station of Buonaparte, and in imagination, as we proceeded, attended the sullen march of this column to the point of its destined defeat. The whole French army had been premonished of the movement of the old guard; and new and desperate efforts were called for. All eyes were fixed on the old guard, which had never before failed. New efforts were made, in a surprising degree, by this inflammable volatile soldiery. The flame of honour burned, however, much more steadily in the British army. Great efforts in their enemies, as usual, produced still greater in them, and not an inch of ground was gained by the assailants. The track of ground over which the guard moved, and over which they fled, was still, when we passed it, covered by their spoil, and marked by horses' feet, cannon wheels, and the deeper furrows of balls and bombs. Ponsonby fell here.

As usual, the artillery of the guard poured its iron shower, and the cavalry followed with its desperate charge. It is in vain for Buo

naparte to say that his old guard were not beaten, or that the cry to which he attributes his defeat, his defeat," the old guard are driven back,” was not true. The bold movement of Picton, with his favourite Highlanders, was tried by his brave successor; and the boasted cavalry of the old imperial guard were charged and routed by the Scottish bayonet! We stood with exquisite national feelings here. From this point, as lord Wellington's dispatch states, commenced that final and fatal recoil, which determined him to give the order for a general attack by the whole army. The infantry of Kempt's division rushed down the slope, in pursuit of their advantage. An immense mass of the grenadiers of the guard stood yet unbroken in their front. The greys once more appeared; and, impatient to support their countrymen, leapt their horses, almost one by one, through the hedge, hardly waiting to form, but galloped down in the middle of the Highlanders, cheering," Scotland for ever!" The watchword excited a phrenzy of ardour, and the old guard fled before them. Ney, by his own account, dismounted, escaped on foot, from what he calls this terrible battle; a worse fate than that of the noble Picton, whose whose "life blood stained a spotless shield," when he fell, and

"With his back to the ground, and his feet to the foe, Leaving in battle no blot on his name,

"Look'd proudly to heaven, from the death-bed of fame."

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 ground seemed quite cut to pieces with the marks of the struggling exertions of horses' feet. The well known 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 pluines of Scotland.

A loud cheer, we were informed by our officer, now ran along the whole British line. He was much struck by observing the sun shine out at that monent, after having been some hours under cloud In an instant the

whole was on the forward move. The British foot guards had destroyed a column of the old guard, in their own front, near Hougoumont, The enemy were already in irretrievable rout. The feeble attempt, made in despair, by Buonaparte, with the young guard, is not worth mentioning: the "Relation" says, they turned with the torrent.

The anxieties of the British chief were now over. They had been almost too much to be borne. Often, it is said, he had prayed in agony, for the Prussians or the night! When their guns commenced, it is described by officers who heard it, as something like a yell of rapture, with which he called out, "There goes old Blucher at last," and, unable to bear up any longer, burst into tears. Fifteen hundred of his friends lay on the ground about him; and before him was the spectacle of his powerful enemy, who were within a hair's breadth of destroying him, in full rout and ruin-and the world delivered! The moment was too overpowering, the feeling was too big for any heart to contain. In an instant the great Napoleon and France were levelled in the dust-Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, Wagram, " fell like stars from the firmament cast,"-" the star of Peace" arose--Its enemies were a mass of panic and impotency-" The meteor flag of England" was burning terrific, and had consigned to insulted injured Prussia, a ripened harvest of revenge.

The mind has scarcely buoyancy sufficient to allot to England a pinnacle of glory high enough for this crisis. The account is too complex, as well as too vast, to allow at one grasp, a view of all its elements. One feature is in prominent and brilliant light-the steadiness of England for five and twenty years, concentrated into a focus at Waterloo, to which eternal justice denied not the vic

"The nations hunt, all mark thee for a prey, "They swarm around thee, but thou stand'st at bay, "Undaunted still, tho' wearied and perplex'd. "Once Chatham sav'd thee-Who shall save thee next?"

A noble proof occurred, in the evening of the battle, of the generous candour of the brave Prussians themselves, on the question of British ascendency. A regiment of light dragoons overtook a corps of Prussian cavalry in the pursuit. The latter instantly formed line to give the British the lead; and, as they passed to take the compliment, the Prussian trumpets sounded "God save the King," with loud huzzas! There are some junctures in human affairs which are almost too much for the feelings.

We saw the extreme left; the well defended post of the brave men who had "whetted their swords on Brunswick's tomb." Their conduct in the battle was not surpassed even by that of the British. They had lost their gallant prince two days before, and mourning, which their uniform is, still worn for the aged duke, who died of his wounds and a broken heart after the day of Jena, well became the double vengeance which was claimed from them at Waterloo; and honourably they paid the debt.

the

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There is no better witness to the entire rout of the French army than the author of Relation." "The army now quit spontaneously, and at the same instant, its ground, and scatter like a torrent; the cannoneers abandon their guns, the soldiers of the train cut the traces of their horses, the infantry, the cavalry, all the arms, are mingled and confounded, presenting now only an unformed mass, which nothing could arrest, and which was intent on saving itself by the road and across the fields. A vast number of carriages in park, along the sides of the road, followed the movement with precipitation, crowded to the road, and encumbered it to such a degree that not a wheel could move. No point of direction had been given, and no word of command could now be heard. The generals, and other chiefs, lost in the crowd, and carried along with it, were separated from their troops. There was no longer a single battalion to rally upon: since nothing had been provided to insure a reasonable retreat, how was it possible to resist

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a derout so complete, of which no idea could have been formed, and which was, till then unheard-of in the French army, already visited by so many disasters.

"The guard, that immoveable phalanx, which in the greatest catastrophes had been the rallying point of the army, and its rampart; the guard, in fine, the terror of the enemy, was overthrown (terrasée), and fled dispersed with the multitude! Every one saved himself as he best could (au hazard),

&c."

I found myself on the field, nearly half an hour after the rest of our party, with imagination even yet unsatisfied, and associations as active as ever. I was now alone on the silent scene; with a distant view of some poor peasant still patiently plying the trade of relic hunting. It was the grave of 20,000 men, who little more than a month before, had descended in the magnificent arena, full of life and hope. It is impossible to describe the sort of feeling resulting from the idea of the vast charnel house around.

All about lay the melancholy remains of the clothes, accoutrements, books, and letters of the dead. The two last, after the interment, were spread over the field, like the rubbish of a stationer's shop.

One moment more, on the probable spot where lord Wellington took refuge in a

square for a considerable time, with the French cuirassiers on the outside, and I left the field, prouder of the name of Briton, than on any moment of self gratulation, on the same score, during my life.

On joining my friends, I found one of them had bought a cuirass and brace of beautiful pistols, of very considerable value, which the poor woman who sold them had found in the cloak case of a French general. She paid a compliment to England, the sincerity of which she proved by the act with which it was accompanied. We happened to have no other coin but guineas to pay the purchase. The price was three. When she saw the coins she refused them; not because she thought them bad money, but because she had never seen them before. We assured her that in Brussels she could, at the time, exchange them for twenty-six francs each. She still hesitated, and urged her poverty if we should deceive her. All at once, however, she took the money, adding, “Eh bien! Vous êtes Anglais, et les Anglais ne trompent jamais.'

For a nation of which such an impression prevailed so universally, as to have reached a poor Belgic peasant, was reserved, in the justification of the ways of Heaven to man, the victory of Waterloo. J. SIMPSON,

THE intelligence of Napoleon's arrival at Phillipeville was the signal of assemblage at that place, to all the fugitives who had been dispersed in so many directions. Confidence in the talents of their general, and attachment to his person, were the obvious motives

of their conduct, notwithstanding the late disaster. disaster. Under every circumstance, in the most abject distress, groaning beneath the most excruciating agonies, and on the verge of death, the French soldiers pronounced his name in accents of the most affecting enthu

siasm. A man in the hospital at Antwerp, who was seen a few days after the battle by an English traveller, tossed his own amputated arm in the air, with a feeble shout of "The Emperor for ever." Another, at the moment of the preparations to take off his leg, declared that there was something which would cure him on the spot, and save his limb and the operator's trouble. When asked to explain this wild remark, he said, "A sight of the Emperor." The amputation did not save him: he died in the surgeon's hands, and his last words, as he steadily looked on his own blood, were, that he would cheerfully shed the last drop in his veins for the great Napoleon. An individual in the same hospital was undergoing, with matchless steadiness, the extraction of a ball from his left side. In the middle of the operation he exclaimed," An inch deeper and you will find the Emperor!"

After passing some hours at Phillipeville, Napoleon continued his route to Mezieres, and at the approach of night arrived at Rocroi. His defeat was yet unknown at Paris. The dispatches of his aide-de-camp had alone arrived, and contained the most favourable representations. On the next day bulletins were received from the field of battle, stating that the English had been overthrown at every point, that the Prussians were dispersed, and that the columns of the French were advancing to Brussels. The delusion, however, was of short existence. On the afternoon of the 20th it began to be whispered that affairs had assumed a disastrous aspect. that the army had sustained a great and decisive defeat, that Jerome was wounded, the emperor killed, and Wellington and Blucher in full march for Paris. The people assembled to the number of 20,000 in the Thuilleries. Every arrival of travellers and couriers from the north weakened the hopes of Napoleon's partizans; and the entrance of the emperor himself within the gates of the capital was almost dreaded as the indication of some great and irretrievable misfortune. At nine o'clock three travelling chariots entered the court of the Palace d'Elysee. They were not immediately recognised by the crowd, and the gates were rapidly closed behind them. From the first descended ge

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neral Drouet, who advancing to a friend that stood by, squeezed him convulsively by the hand, and exclaimed, We are all ruined." The third carriage drew up, and prevented all further explanation. In the bottom lay a person, pale, exhausted, and his arm in a sling. As this person slowly alighted, Napoleon, who was behind him, pushed him along, threw him down on the steps of the palace, sprung forward, rushed up the stairs, and entered the apartments without speaking a word, or looking at a single person. His attendants hastened after him. As he approached the door of the saloon he suddenly stopped, cast a look of inexpressible anguish on Drouet, exclaimed, " Dishonoured! Disgraced!" and, hurrying into the apartment, threw himself upon a sofa, and covered his face with his hands. These were the first words he had spoken within the last twentyfour hours.

The night was far advanced-Maret sat in a corner of the room, with an alarmed countenance-Regnault stood before a table, making pencil-marks on a piece of paper before him-Buonaparte walked up and down, biting his nails and taking snuff. He stopped all at once. Where is the bulletin of Mount of St. Jean."

Regnault.-There it is, corrected.

Buonaparte.-Let us see. (Regnault began reading it.)

Buonaparte.-(During two-thirds of it), It was gained. When Regnault had finished, he said with a sigh-It is lost!

Buonaparte.-It is lost, and-my glory with it.

Regnault. You have fifty victories to oppose to one defeat.

Maret.-The defeat is decisive; the emperor is in the right.

Buonaparte.-They are not accustomed to conquer. They will abuse the victory.

Maret.-Those whose cowardice Wellington's bravery has made triumphant are more dangerous, and more your enemies, than the English and Prussians.

Regnault-The republicans will grieve; but they will try to profit by the circumstance.

Buonaparte.-They will do well; at least the glory and liberty of the country will rc