“My host and my maid carried my small package, and I arrived before eight in the Rue d’Assault. We set off for the wharf on foot, not a fiacre or chaise being procurable. Mr. and Mrs. Boyd, five or six of their family, a governess, and I believe some servants, with bearers of our baggage, made our party.... When we had got about a third part of the way, a heavy rumbling sound made us stop to listen. It was approaching nearer and nearer, and we soon found that we were followed by innumerable carriages, and a multitude of persons.... “Arrived at the wharf, Mr. Boyd pointed out to us our barge, which seemed fully ready for departure; but the crowd, already come and still coming, so incommoded us, that Mr. Boyd desired we would enter a large inn, and wait till he could speak with the master, and arrange our luggage and places. We went, therefore, into a spacious room and ordered breakfast, when the room was entered by a body of military men of all sorts; but we were suffered to keep our ground till Mr. Boyd came to inform us that we must all decamp!... “He conducted us not to the barge, not to the wharf, but to the road back to Brussels; telling us, in an accent of depression, that he feared all was lost—that Bonaparte was advancing—that his point was decidedly Brussels—and that the Duke of Wellington had sent orders that all the magazines, the artillery, and the warlike stores of every description, and all the wounded, the maimed, and the sick, should be immediately removed to Antwerp. For this purpose he had issued directions that every barge, every boat, should be seized for the use of the army; and that everything of value should be conveyed away, the hospitals emptied, and Brussels evacuated. “If this intelligence filled us with the most fearful alarm, how much more affrighting still was the sound of cannon which next assailed our ears! The dread reverberation became louder and louder as we proceeded.... “Yet, strange to relate! on re-entering the city, all seemed quiet and tranquil as usual! and though it was in this imminent and immediate danger of being invested, and perhaps pillaged, I saw no outward mark of distress or disturbance, or even of hurry or curiosity. “Having re-lodged us in the Rue d’Assault, Mr. Boyd tried to find some land carriage for our removal. But not only every chaise had been taken, and every diligence secured; the cabriolets, the calèches, nay, the waggons and the carts, and every species of caravan, had been seized for military service. And, after the utmost efforts he could make, in every kind of way, he told us we must wait the chances of the day, for that there was no possibility of escape from Brussels, either by land or water....