No incident of particular interest occurred in our route, and we found ourselves on the 3d of June in safety in Brussels, where we remained in garrison until that great battle which decided the fate of Europe, and sent the French Emperor to his lonely home on the barren rock of St. Helena. CHAPTER VI. Brief Summary of Events for Four Years preceding the Battle of Waterloo--Author’s Narrative resumed at that Period--Preparation of Troops for the Battle--Skirmishing preceding its Commencement --Reception of the News at Brussels--Departure of the English for the Field of Battle--Disposition of the Forces--Attack upon Hougomont--Progress of the Battle--Arrival of the Prussian Reinforcements--Charge of the Old Guard--Flight of the French. These four years thus spent to me were days of quiet, unmarked by aught that would interest my readers; but four years more eventful, more fraught with heavy consequences of good or ill to Europe, have seldom--perhaps never--been numbered in her eventful history. The victorious banners of France were waving on every battle-field on the continent. Wagram and Jena, Austerlitz and Friedland, echoed back the glory of the conqueror’s name; and kings and emperors, in whose veins flowed the blood of the Cæsars, had esteemed it an honor to claim alliance with the plebeian child of Corsica. But the Russian bear and the English lion had not yet yielded to his claims; and, gathering his vast and victorious armies, he led them to face a sterner enemy and a more subtle foe than they had ever yet contested. Half a million of men, firm and confident in their own resources, had crossed the Niemen under Bonaparte’s approving eye. A few months later, and the remnant of that scattered army, in rags, wan and ghastly, staggered, like a band of spectres, over that same river. No human might had struck them down; but the ice of winter and the deep snows of the north, which the fur-clad Russian glories in, had been the signal of death to the light-hearted child of vine-clad France. He who had left France at the head of such glorious armies had returned to his capital alone with his own brave heart and iron courage, to find there that the arms and gold of the allies had done their work.