During this same attack, a French officer, whose horse had been shot under him, seized the regimental colour of the 32d, which was carried at the moment by lieutenant Belcher: a struggle ensued; the Frenchman was in the act of drawing his sword, when he received a thrust in the breast from a sergeant’s halbert, and instantly after, notwithstanding the major (Toole) called out, (alas! too late,) “Save the brave fellow!” he was shot by a man named Lacey, and fell dead at lieutenant Belcher’s feet. This officer and lieutenant-colonel Brown, both of the 32d and actors in this scene, revisited the spot in 1845. They related all that took place on this part of our line during the day, and further told me, that in collecting their wounded on the morning after the battle, they found, near where the Hanoverian monument now stands, a most beautiful young lady who had been shot dead in the costume of an officer of the French hussars[33]. [Illustration: (Sir Thomas Picton)] It was during this gallant and eminently successful repulse of the enemy, that the brave Picton fell[34]: he was struck by a musket-ball in the right temple, and died immediately. His last words were, “Charge! charge! Hurrah!” His life had been spent in fighting the battles of his country: his end was suited to his stormy career; and although he had attained the meridian of military glory, no one of the many that fell that day was so lamented, as no one had been so admired and loved by the British army. His renown had attracted the notice of Napoleon, who on the morning of the battle inquired, “Where is Picton’s division?” His desire to know this might be attributed to his thinking, that, as they had been so roughly handled and had lost so many men at Quatre-Bras, their _morale_ was shaken and they might be easily overpowered. It appears that Picton had been wounded on the 16th, at Quatre-Bras; but it was not discovered till his body was laid out on the 19th, at Brussels. He was succeeded in the command of the division by sir James Kempt; colonel Belson, of the 28th, taking command of the brigade. The 95th rifles were soon in the midst of the broken French infantry, over which the two cavalries had ridden; they took a vast number of prisoners and sent them to the rear. The rifles then reoccupied the knoll and sand-pit, and Baring’s gallant Germans the little garden and orchard of La Haye-Sainte, from whence the enemy had been driven.