left wing, the village of Ligny; the third corps, at Point du Jour.

"On the 16th, in the forenoon, he advanced his columns beyond Charleroi, and soon commenced an attack upon Prince Blücher,―against whom he directed his chief force. His strength was estimated at 120,000 foot and 22,000 cavalry. It consisted of the first, second, third, and fourth corps of the French army, the Guards, and the reserves.

enemy.

"The fourth Prussian corps, which was cantoned in the neighbourhood of Liege, had found it impossible to join the others. The Prussian army was, therefore, far inferior in strength to the However, it was a considerable mass, and all depended on maintaining the ground with this, in order to give the more remote corps, as well of the Duke of Wellington as of the Prussian army, time to come up. Prince Blücher, intimately persuaded how important this was, resolved to accept the battle, notwithstanding the superiority of the enemy. About three o'clock in the afternoon, large masses of the enemy attacked the village of St. Amand. After a resistance, which cost the enemy very dear, it was taken; recovered again by the Prussian troops, again taken by the enemy; stormed, for the third time, by the Prussians, and, at last, each party remained in possession of one half of it, so that the part called Little St. Amand, and La Haye, remained in the occupation of the Prussian army. It was now five o'clock. The enemy directed his attacks against the village of Ligny, when a combat began that was still more murderous than the former. The village lies on the rivulet Ligny; the enemy had his artillery upon the heights on the further bank; that of the Prussians was planted on the heights upon the hither bank. Amidst alternate attempts to take it from each other, one of the most bloody conflicts recorded in history continued here for four hours. Prince Blücher, in person, sword in hand, continually led his troops again to the combat. The battle was at last undecided; the village remained here, also, half in the possession of each party. Thus the day declined; it was between eight and nine in the evening when the enemy brought forward his masses of cavalry to attain his object, namely, to cut off the communication of the Prussians with the English army. This induced Field-marshal Blücher to withdraw his army by way of Tilly to Wavre, in order to join the fourth corps of the Prussian army, and to form an immediate junction with the Duke of Wellington.

"The English army had been engaged, on this day, with Marshal Ney and the French cavalry, under General Kellerman, and on that side also the battle had been extremely bloody. The Duke of Wellington had been able to bring up only a part of his troops. However, the enemy had gained no ground, and, at nine o'clock in the morning of the 17th, the Duke was still on the field

of battle, and regulated his movement to join with the Prussian army in such a manner that his army was, on the 18th, at Waterloo.

"The momentary interruption of the communication between the two Allied armies was the cause that the movement of the Prussian army upon Wavre was not known to the Duke till the 17th, in the morning. By this battle of Blücher's, the Duke of Wellington had gained time to collect his army; and on the 17th, in the forenoon, it stood at Les Quatre Bras. At ten o'clock he put it in motion, and made it take up a position with the right wing upon Braine-la-Leud, and the left upon La Haye. The enemy, on his side, followed the same evening, with large masses, to within a cannon-shot of the camp.

"In this position, the Duke was induced not to decline the battle if Prince Blücher would approach nearer to him. Prince Blücher accepted the proposal, in case the enemy, as it was to be expected, should fall with all his forces on the Duke of Wellington. He resolved, in this case, to march his army by the way of St. Lambert, into the enemy's flank and rear. Early in the morning of the 18th, the fourth corps marched for this purpose through Wavre. It arrived at half-past eleven at St. Lambert, and was followed by the second, and then by the first corps.

"As the third corps was on the point of following, it was attacked close to Wavre by a corps of the enemy, which Buonaparte had detached thither to observe the Prussian army. Prince Blücher left General Thielmann with the third corps to oppose it, and keeping his mind constantly fixed on the grand object, turned all the rest against the mass of the enemy.

"Towards eleven o'clock the enemy developed from La Belle Alliance his attacks upon Mont Saint Jean, which was the most important point of Wellington's position, and was occupied by 1000 infantry. A massy wall was raised there as a defence, and two successive violent attacks of the enemy, each with six battalions of infantry, were repulsed. Now Buonaparte advanced his cavalry, and undertook a general attack on the Duke's whole line. This also was repulsed. But the smoke of the cannon and musketry was for a long time prevented from rising by a heavy tempestuous air, and concealed the approach of the columns of infantry, which were all directed against the centre. Fresh attacks of cavalry were designed to employ the English infantry till the French came up, and no infantry less practised and less cool than the English could have resisted such attacks.

"The first French attack of this description was repulsed about two o'clock; but Buonaparte renewed it five or six times till about seven o'clock, with equal courage. The English cavalry,

This is surely a mistake for Hougomont?

of the King's Household Troops, led on by Lord Uxbridge, made, about six o'clock, some very brilliant attacks, and cut to pieces two battalions of the Old Guard, into whose masses they penetrated.

"About this time the extraordinary loss of men, and the necessity of bringing the reserves into the line, made the situation of the Duke of Wellington critical. Prince Blücher, however, had advanced with the fourth corps over Lasne and Aguiers, and about five o'clock, his first cannon-shot was fired from the heights of Aguiers. He extended his left wing towards the chaussée of Genappe, in order to make his movement quite decisive. Buonaparte, upon this, threw some masses of his infantry upon La Haye, Papelotte, and Frichermont, of which he made himself master; by which the armies of Blücher and Wellington were separated.

"Prince Blücher had, however, at an earlier period, directed the first corps from St. Lambert, over Ohain, to strengthen the Duke's left wing; and the head of this corps reached La Haye about seven o'clock, took this village without much resistance, advanced in masses, and restored the communication with the fourth corps, upon which it advanced, along with it, against La Belle Alliance, in order to disengage the Duke of Wellington, who was still occupied by a heavy fire of musketry along his whole line, and had been obliged to withdraw his artillery into the second position. When the enemy saw himself taken in the rear a flight commenced, which soon became a total rout, when the two Allied armies charged the enemy on all sides. Fieldmarshal Blücher, who was the nearest to Genappe, undertook the pursuit of the enemy, as the two commanders met at La Belle Alliance about nine in the evening.

"About eleven at night Prince Blücher reached Genappe. The enemy made a fruitless attempt to maintain himself therehe was instantly overthrown. Prince Blücher made his army march the whole night, in order incessantly to break all the enemy's masses that were still together. When the courier came away on the 19th, 300 cannon and powder-waggons were already taken, as well as Buonaparte's field equipage.

"Thus, by the aid of Providence, by the unanimity and bravery of the two Allied armies, and by the talents of their generals, was obtained one of the greatest and most decisive victories recorded in history.

"The loss of the Allies on these bloody days of the 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th of June, may amount to 30,000 men killed and wounded. Among the superior officers of the English army killed were the Duke of Brunswick-Oels, Generals Picton, Ponsonby, and Fuller; the Duke's aides-de-camp, the Colonels Gordon and Canning; wounded, the Quarter-master General of the army, De Lancey, General Sir E. Barnes, the Prince Royal of

the Netherlands, Lord Fitzroy Somerset, the Hereditary Prince of Nassau-Weilburg (slightly); and of the Duke of Wellington's suite, the Austrian general, Baron Vincent, the Russian general, Count Pozzo di Borgo, and almost all the Duke's aides-de-camp.

"The loss of the Prussian army on the 18th is not mentioned, no reports having been made. On the 15th and 16th there were among the killed, Colonel Von Thieman; wounded, Generals Von Holzendorf and Juergass; and of the suite of Prince Blücher the English Colonel Hardinge, and several aides-de-camp. On the 16th the Prince's horse fell under him, pierced with balls, at the moment of an attack of cavalry, a part of which rode over him. The contusions thereby occasioned, in the thigh and shoulders, did not however, hinder him from leading on his troops in person in the battle of the 18th.

"On the 19th, the Field-marshal had his head-quarters already at Charleroi, and was pursuing the enemy with his accustomed ardour.

"Several French generals and officers came over after the battle, and their number was increasing every moment."

SPANISH ACCOUNT.

General Miguel Alava, in quality of Minister Plenipotentiary to the King of the Netherlands from the King of Spain, having shared the dangers of the battle by the side of the Duke of Wellington, has addressed his Court, under the date of the 20th of June, from Brussels, giving an account of the battles of Quatre Bras and Waterloo.

The following is a copy of his despatch to Don Pedro Cevallos, Principal Secretary of State to Ferdinand VII.* :—

Supplement to the Madrid Gazette of Thursday, 13th July, 1815.

"Lieutenant-general of the Royal armies, Don Miguel de Alava, Minister Plenipotentiary of His Majesty in Holland, has addressed to his Excellency Don Pedro Cevallos, First Secretary of State, the following letter:

"Most Excellent Sir,

"The short space of time that has intervened between the departure of the last post and the victory of the 18th, has not allowed me to write to your Excellency so diffusely as I could have wished; and although the army is, at this moment, on the

*First published in this work as a translation of the whole "Gazette," and which, in other accounts, is only given in part.

point of marching, and I also am going to set out for the Hague, to deliver my credentials, which I did not receive till this morning; nevertheless, I will give your Excellency some details respecting this important event, which, possibly, may bring us to the end of the war much sooner than we had any reason to expect.

"I informed your Excellency, under date of the 16th inst., that Buonaparte, marching from Maubeuge and Philippeville, had attacked the Prussian posts on the Sambre, and that, after driving them from Charleroi, he had entered the city on that 15th.

6

"On the 16th, the Duke of Wellington ordered his army to assemble on the point of Quatre Bras, where the roads cross from Namur to Nivelles, and from Brussels to Charleroi; and he himself proceeded to the same point at seven in the morning.

"On his arrival he found the Hereditary Prince of Orange, with a division of his own army, holding the enemy in check, till the other divisions of the army were collected.

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"By this time the British division, under General Picton, had arrived, with which the Duke kept up an unequal contest with more than 30,000 of the enemy, without losing an inch of ground. The British Guards, several regiments of infantry, and the Scottish Brigade, covered themselves with glory on this day, and Lord Wellington told me, on the following day, that he never saw his troops behave better during the number of years he had commanded them.

"The French Cuirassiers likewise suffered much on their part, for, confiding in their breastplates, they approached the British squares so near, that they killed officers of the 42d Regiment with their swords; but those valiant men, without flinching, kept up so strong a fire, that the whole ground was covered with the Cuirassiers and their horses.

"In the meantime the troops kept coming up, and the night put an end to the contest in this quarter.

"During this time, Buonaparte was fighting, with the remainder of his forces, against Marshal Blücher, with whom he had commenced a bloody action at five in the afternoon, from which time, till nine in the evening, he was constantly repulsed by the Prussians, with great loss on both sides. But at that moment he made his cavalry charge with so much vigour, that they broke the Prussian line of infantry, and introduced disorder and confusion throughout.

"Whether it was that Buonaparte did not perceive this incident, or that he had experienced a great loss, or, what is more probable, that Marshal Blücher had re-established the battle, the fact is that he derived no advantage whatever from this accident, and that he left him quiet during the whole of the night of the 16th.