Thus ended this stirring drama that began in March, 1815, and in which the Coldstream Guards participated to the fullest extent. During these eventful years, services were not only rendered to King and country, on the field of battle, at one of the most momentous crises of modern history; but duty was also zealously performed, in a less acknowledged sphere, when a war-like nation was induced, with much difficulty, to abate her military ardour, to renounce her menacing attitude, and to resume a pacific policy towards her neighbours. The years spent in France were useful to the British troops quartered there. It was a time when they had to be prepared for every emergency, when they had to cultivate amicable relations with a foreign people who resented deeply their presence among them, when their demeanour towards the inhabitants had to be both firm and conciliatory, and when their military efficiency and discipline could alone enable them to discharge the delicate duties with which they were entrusted. This chapter must not conclude without recording that, at the end of the occupation, the Duke of Wellington was created a Field-Marshal in the armies of Austria, Russia, and Prussia; and that his services to Europe, which could not be further rewarded by his own Sovereign, were acknowledged in simple language, which expressed the difficulties of the situation, and the Royal approbation at the manner in which they had been overcome. “The command of the army,” said Lord Bathurst, “composed of so many nations, and belonging to Sovereigns eminently distinguished for their military exploits, not stationed within any of their own dominions, but in temporary and partial occupation of a given district within the territories of a martial people, with whom His Majesty had so recently closed an almost uninterrupted warfare of more than twenty years' duration, presented difficulties of no ordinary magnitude, which could only be surmounted by no ordinary measure of judgment and discretion. In this command your Grace maintained the British army (divided for the relief of the inhabitants in separate and distant quarters) unimpaired in their discipline, and even improved in their condition. You preserved the several contingents composing the Allied army in the utmost harmony with each other, and in the best understanding with the authorities of the country which they occupied. You won so much upon the esteem and confidence of His Majesty’s Allies, that they all spontaneously applied for your arbitration of their respective claims upon France; and you impressed that Government with such a sense of your justice, impartiality, and exertions, that you had the gratification of receiving assurances from His Most Christian Majesty that, but for your intervention, that intricate negotiation could not have been satisfactorily concluded. Amidst, therefore, the signal