The French loss was infinitely greater; it is but a moderate estimate to place it at six thousand men. Indeed, no contests, sanguinary as most of them had been during the Peninsular campaigns, were attended with greater loss of life, and those well accustomed to view a battlefield expressed astonishment at the slaughter the limited spaces on which the repeated struggles had occurred exhibited at the close of every succeeding engagement. Soult, defeated in the presence of thousands of his countrymen, and with every advantage locality could confer, had no apology to offer for the failure of his attacks, and if any additional mortification were necessary, the defection of the regiments of Nassau-Usingen and Frankfort would have completed it. A Frankfort officer now made his way to the outposts of our fourth division in the centre of the allies, and announced the intended defection, requiring a general officer’s word of honour that they should be well received and sent to Germany. No general being on the spot, Colonel Bradford gave his word; means were immediately taken to apprise the battalions, and they came over in a body, thirteen hundred men, the French not discovering their intention till just when it was too late to frustrate it. The winter had now set in with severity, and ended all military movements for a season. “During this period of mutual repose,” says Batty, “the French officers and ours soon became intimate; we used to meet at a narrow part of the river, and talk over the campaign. They would never believe, or pretended not to believe, the reverse of Napoleon in Germany; and when we received the news of the Orange Boven affair in Holland, they said that it was impossible to convince them. One of our officers took ‘The Star’ newspaper, rolled a stone up in it, and attempted to throw it across the river; unfortunately the stone went through it, and it fell into the water; the French officer very quietly said, in tolerably good English, ‘Your good news is very soon damped.’ “During the campaign we had often experienced the most gentlemanly conduct from the French officers. A day or two before the battle, when we were upon our alarm-post, at break of day, a fine hare was seen playing in a cornfield between the outposts; a brace of greyhounds were very soon unslipped, when, after an exciting course, poor puss was killed within the French lines. The officer to which the dogs belonged, bowing to the French officer, called off the dogs, but the Frenchman politely sent the hare, with a message and his compliments, saying that we required it more than they did.”