It began to grow dark. The King sat on a chair near which a straw fire had been lit, as there was a strong wind. He was following the course of the battle through a field-glass. The Chancellor, who was similarly occupied, stood on a ridge, from which Sheridan also watched the spectacle. It was now possible to catch the flash of the bursting shells and the flames that were rising from the burning houses at Beaumont. The French continued to retire rapidly, and the combatants disappeared over the crest of the treeless height that closed the horizon to the left behind the wood over the burning village. The battle was won. It was growing dark when we returned towards Busancy, and when we reached it it was surrounded by hundreds of small fires that threw the silhouettes of men, horses, and baggage waggons into high relief. We got down at the house of a doctor who lived at the end of the main street, in which the King had also taken up his quarters. Those of our party who had been left behind at Grand Pré had arrived before us. I slept here on a straw mattress on the floor of an almost empty room, under a coverlet which had been brought from the hospital in the town by one of our soldiers. That, however, did not in the least prevent my sleeping the sleep of the just. On Wednesday, August the 31st, between 9 and 10 A.M., the King and the Chancellor drove out to visit the battle-field of the previous day. I was again permitted to accompany the Minister. At first we followed the road taken the day before through Bar de Busancy and Sommauthe. Between these two villages we passed some squadrons of Bavarian uhlans, who heartily cheered the King. Behind Sommauthe, which was full of wounded, we drove through a beautiful wood that lay between that village and Beaumont, where we arrived after 11 o’clock. King William and our Chancellor then got on horseback and rode to the right over the fields. I followed in the same direction on foot. The carriages went on to the town, where they were to wait for us. The Chancellor remarked that the French had not offered a particularly steady resistance yesterday, or shown much prudence in their arrangements. “At Beaumont a battery of heavy artillery surprised them in their camp in broad daylight. Horses were shot tethered, many of the dead are in their shirt-sleeves, and plates are still lying about with boiled potatoes, pots with half-cooked meat, and so forth.” During the drive the Chief came to speak of “people who have the King’s ear and abuse his good nature,” thinking in the first place of the “fat Borck, the holder of the King’s Privy Purse;” and afterwards referring to Count Bernstorff, our then Ambassador in London, who, when he gave up the Foreign Office in Berlin, “knew very well how to take care of himself.” In fact, “he was so long weighing the respective advantages of the two Embassies--London and Paris--that he delayed entering upon his duties much longer than was decent or proper.”