and 3d under Liutenant-General Sir Charles Alten, came up, and were also immediately engaged. The enemy was now driven from his ground, and obliged to retire to the position which he had occupied the night before, and where he had some difficulty in maintaining himself, until the darkness put an end to the combat. The troops of the Duke of Brunswick distinguished themselves very much on the afternoon of the 16th; and His Serene Highness was unfortunately killed at the head of his brave hussars.

The enemy had many advantages over the handful of British troops that were in the field this day. Few of our guns, and none of our cavalry, came up till late in the evening; and independent of the four divisions of cavalry which Ney had under his command, his infantry more than outnumbered the British. Ney has stated, that the removal of the 1st corps from under his command by Buonaparte, was the cause of his want of success; and certainly had he been able to bring his two corps, and all his cavalry, against the 5th division, which was engaged singly for nearly two hours, he would in all probability have overwhelmed that division. But after the first and third divisions had come up, I am inclined to think that his success would have been doubtful, even with his whole force.

June 18th, 1815.

At day-light on the morning of the 17th, the army having come up, the Duke of Wellington showed his whole force, and in a manner challenged the enemy to fight; but as they did not seem inclined to accept the challenge, and as he had learned in the course of the morning that Marshal Blucher had continued his retrograde movement upon Gembloux, where the 4th corps of his army, under General Bulow, had joined him, and that he had decided on concentrating his whole force in the environs of Wavre, still more in the rear; the Duke determined also to retire upon the position in front of the village of Waterloo. The movements

intended by the two Commanders, were mutually communicated to each other; and the Duke, in stating his arrangements to the Field-Marshal, added, that it was his intention to defend the position which he had chosen, and requested, if the enemy should attack next day, that he (Field-Marshal Blucher) would support him with two divisions of his army., Blucher replied, that he was ready to support the British army with his whole force; stating at the same time, that it was his opinion, should Buonaparte not attack, that they ought to attack him next day with their united armies.

About eleven o'clock on the forenoon of the 17th, orders were given for the infantry to move to the rear, while the cavalry and some light troops took up a position in front. The enemy remained quietly on the ground he had occupied the preceding night, in front of the British line. Buonaparte, who had left about twenty thousand infantry, and General Pajol's division of cavalry, under the orders of Marshal Grouchy, to watch the motions of the Prussian army, proceeded with the remainder of his force to the position which the troops under Marshal Ney occupied; but before his arrangements were completed, and his orders given for his army to advance, our infantry had nearly finished their march, and were about to take up their ground in the new position. His troops advanced in strong columns of attack; but when they reached the heights above the village of Frasnes, Buonaparte found, to his great surprise, that the British army had retreated, and that the troops against which his columns were advancing, were nothing more than a strong rear-guard, which fell back as his troops advanced. He ordered his cavalry immediately to advance in pursuit, and his columns of infantry continued their march in the direction of Brussels. Buonaparte, who was with his advance, kept his cavalry up with our rear-guard during the whole of the day. The French army, when it found no enemy to oppose its progress during the day, is said to have believed, with its usual levity, that the greater part of the British force was destroyed, and that the remainder were flying to the ships at Antwerp and Ostend.

The position which the British army now took up, had been

chosen with great judgment, from its proximity to the extensive forest of Soignies. The village of Waterloo lies upon the great road from Brussels to Charleroi, embosomed in the forest; and a few scattered houses extend to another small village called Mont-Saint-John: about a quarter of a mile in front of this latter village, there is a rising ground which crosses the great road already mentioned, and extends from a farm-house called Ter-la-Haye on the left, to the village of Merbe-le-Braine on the right, crossing also the road from Brussels to Nivelles, which diverges from the road to Charleroi at the village of Mont-Saint-John. It was on this rising ground that the Allied army, commanded by Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington, or more properly the first corps of that army, took up its position on the evening of the 17th of June. The 2d corps under the command of Lord Hill, (with the exception of the 4th division and the troops of the Netherlands, under Prince Frederick of Orange, who were left to guard an important position at Halle) was placed in reserve on the right of the position, and in front of the village of Merbe-le-Braine, with its right resting on Braine-la-Leud. The infantry bivouacked a little under the ridge of the rising ground, and the cavalry in the hollow ground in rear of the infantry. Excepting a few round shot which the enemy occasionally fired while our troops were deploying into their position, nothing of any moment occurred during that afternoon or the whole of the night.

It had rained almost incessantly during the greater part of the 17th, and the weather was very tempestuous during the night. The ground afforded no cover for the troops; so that generals, officers, and men, were equally exposed to the rain, which fell in torrents. Buonaparte slept at the farm-house of Caillou near Planchenois; and his army halted in the neighbourhood of Genappe. The Duke of Wellington slept at a small public house in the village of Waterloo.

This night, which was dreadful to the soldier, must have been still more so to the wretched inhabitants of the country which the armies occupied; obliged to abandon their humble dwellings in despair, they had fled to the deep recesses of the fores for

security, and in the hope of saving their lives. The rich crops of grain, which were fast hastening to maturity, were trodden under foot, or eaten up by the cavalry, and the helpless farmer saw the labour of a whole year destroyed in a single day; houses of all kinds were destroyed or burnt to ashes; and the inhabitants, herding in the forest, must have felt uncertain even of their own fate, should chance have conducted any of the plundering banditti to their lonely retreat.

The French officers who have written the account of the battle of Waterloo, assure us, that Buonaparte as well as his army believed that the Duke of Wellington had continued his retreat during the night; and it is said, he expressed himself as quite delighted when he found, on the morning of the 18th, that our troops still occupied the ground they had taken up the night before. Afraid, as it would seem, that we might still steal away, the most pressing orders were sent to hasten up his columns from the rear, that he might commence the attack which was to annihilate us.

As soon as day-light appeared on the morning of the 18th, the British army could perceive, from its position, immense masses of the enemy moving in every direction, and by two o'clock the whole of his force appeared to be collected on the heights and in the ravines which ran parallel with the British position.

The French army, when concentrated in front of our position, consisted of four corps of infantry including the Guard, and three corps of cavalry; and if the report of a staff officer of that army is to be credited, it presented an effective grand total of one hundred and twenty thousand men.

A little to the left of the road from Brussels to Nivelles and in the hollow ground in front of the British line, there is a gentleman's country-house with its appendages, called Hougomont. (For a more detailed account of the splendid achievement which the British infantry performed in the defence of this never-to-be-forgotten spot, vide article following this―(page 25.) A walled garden, with a considerable orchard, and several acres of wood, surround the house, and extend for a considerable way into the plain. The