The losses have never been satisfactorily reckoned; but I have seen it stated, curiously, that of the redcoats 9,999 were actually killed there. The French loss for the four days’ campaign has been counted as 50,000; and you can tell off the survivors of both armies to-day, perhaps, on the fingers of _one_ hand. Every house in the neighbourhood was full of wounded. For three days, the doctors tell us, they were being brought in by the search parties, a sharp frost having congealed the wounds of many and so saved them, and lines of carts jolted the shrieking wretches over that dreadful causeway to Brussels in endless succession. [Illustration] At Hougoumont, where the orange-trees were in blossom, they flung three hundred bodies down a well: it was a simple method, saving time and trouble; but a dark tradition lingers that voices were heard afterwards, faintly imploring, from the cavernous depths. Wild strawberries hung their red clusters, and the little, blue forget-me-not peeped in the woods; birds of prey came croaking on the wing; and within twenty-four hours ten thousand horses had been flayed by the Flemish peasants, many of whom made fortunes by plunder! Men gathered jewelled decorations and crosses by handfuls: it was impossible to take three strides without treading on a sword, a broken musket, a carbine, or a corpse! Near La Haye Sainte they found a pretty French girl in hussar uniform, and the farm itself was encrusted with blood; tufts of hair adhered to the doorways, the yard presenting a sight never to be forgotten. A pole to which a scrap of torn silk clung was picked up under the body of Ensign Nettles: it was the King’s colour. The remains of three French brothers named Angelet were among the slain, and the history of one was most romantic. Wounded in some of the Napoleonic wars, where he had lost a leg, he was taunted by a lady with the fact that he could only talk of what he _had_ done for France--that he could _do_ no more. The brave fellow seized his crutches, limped after the army, and met his fate at Waterloo. Picton’s body--wounded at Quatre Bras, though none but his valet knew it--was taken to England, and by a strange coincidence was laid, at the Fountain Inn, Canterbury, on the very table at which he had dined, a fortnight before, on his way to join the army. Byng of the Guards said to Sir John Colborne in Paris: “How do your fellows like our getting the credit of what you did at Waterloo? I could not advance because our ammunition was all done.” The Foot Guards got their bearskins as a well-merited reward, only the Grenadier companies wearing them during the battle. The 52nd, for their great share in the closing scene, received--_nothing!_ and the Duke, when approached on the subject of that glaring injustice, said, “Oh, I know nothing of the services of particular regiments. There was glory enough for all!” * * * * *