[Footnote 12: The surgeon, when about to rub him with some liquid, was asked by him what it was, and being told that it was spirits, "Ah," said he, "the thing is of no use externally!" and snatching the glass from the hand of his attendant, he drank it off.] [Footnote 13: Against all expectation to aid an ally who on the previous day had against all expectation been unable to give him aid, evinced at once magnanimity, sense, and good feeling.--_Clausewitz_.] [Footnote 14: A Prussian battery, that on its way from Namur turned back on receiving news of this disaster and was taken by the French, is said to have chiefly led to the commission of this immense blunder by Napoleon.] [Footnote 15: The Hanoverian legion again covered itself with glory by the steadiness with which it opposed the enemy. It lost three thousand five hundred men, the Dutch eight thousand; the German troops consequently lost collectively as many as the English, whose loss was computed at eleven or twelve thousand men. The Prussians, whose loss at Ligny and Waterloo exceeded that of their allies, behaved with even greater gallantry.] [Footnote 16: The French were extremely affronted on account of this communication being made in German instead of French, and even at the present day German historians are generally struck with deeper astonishment at this sample of Blücher's bold spirit than at any other.] [Footnote 17: Ney, "the bravest of the brave," who dishonored his bravery by the basest treachery, met with an equally melancholy fate. Immediately after having, for instance, kissed the gouty fingers of Louis XVIII. and boasting that he would imprison Napoleon within an iron cage, he went over to the latter. He was sentenced to death and shot, after vainly imploring the allied monarchs and personally petitioning Wellington for mercy.--Alexander Berthier, prince of Neufchatel, Napoleon's chief confidant, had, even before the outbreak of war, thrown himself out of a window in a fit of hypochondriasis and been killed.] [Footnote 18: Talleyrand begged Count von der Goltz to use his influence for its preservation with Blücher, who replied to his entreaties, "I will blow up the bridge, and should very much like to have Talleyrand sitting upon it at the time!" An attempt to blow it up was actually made, but failed.]