It was a strange night in Brussels, that night of June 15, 1815. By eight o'clock the Duke has given orders for the troops to march at daybreak, for he knows that Napoleon has crossed the frontier. Then he goes to the ball to wait for another despatch. At eleven o'clock, when the dancing is in full swing, the message reaches him. He hastens the march by two hours, and the bugles begin to sound all over the town. 'One could hear,' says General Brialmont, 'in the ballroom the rolling of cannon and the steady tramp of the regiments marching towards the forest of Soignies.' The Duke is in bed and asleep by two o'clock; but many of his officers dance on till it is time to rush off to their regiments. It would be useless to repeat the story of the next three days. It has been told a hundred times. The clear, refreshing dawn; the soldiers gathering from their billets; the partings; the regiments marching off, the Black Watch and the 92nd Highlanders with the bagpipes playing before them, through the park and the Place Royale, and passing away up the Rue de Namur and along the road beyond, to where the soft light of early morning is beginning to shine among the glades of Soignies; the sound of heavy firing on the 16th; the silence on the 17th, with the news that Blucher has lost the day at Ligny, and that Wellington is falling back from Quatre Bras; the carts and material of the army moving slowly up the Rue de Namur all day long; the awful suspense of the 18th, when no one can rest. 'We walked about nearly all the morning,' says Lady de Ros, 'being unable to sit still, hearing the firing, and not knowing what was happening.' About three o'clock the observant Mr. Creevy went for a stroll beyond the ramparts. 'I walked about two miles out of the town,' he writes, 'towards the army, and a most curious, busy scene it was, with every kind of thing upon the road, the Sunday population of Brussels being all out in the suburbs of the Porte Namur, sitting about tables drinking beer and making merry, as if races or other sports were going on, instead of the great pitched battle which was then fighting.' It was an hour or so after this that the Cumberland Hussars came galloping through the Porte de Namur, down the street and across the Place Royale, shouting that the French were coming, and raised such a panic. It was not till late at night that the truth was known.