Waterloo Days: The narrative of an Englishwoman resident at Brussels in June 1815Eaton, Charlotte A. (Charlotte Anne)
History
Waterloo Days: The narrative of an Englishwoman resident at Brussels in June 1815
Eaton, Charlotte A. (Charlotte Anne)
Waterloo, Battle of, Waterloo, Belgium, 1815
For four days and nights some of these unfortunate men were exposed
to the beams of the sun by day, and to the dews by night; for
notwithstanding the most praiseworthy and indefatigable exertions, the
last of the wounded were not removed from the field until the Thursday
after the battle; and if we consider that there were at least 8000
British, besides the Belgic, Brunswick, and Prussian wounded soldiers,
and an incalculable number of wounded French--we shall find cause for
surprise and admiration, that they could be removed in so short a time.
Their conveyance, too, was rendered extremely difficult, as well as
inconceivably painful to the poor sufferers, by the dreadful and almost
impassable state of the roads.
The Belgic peasantry showed the most active and attentive humanity to
these poor wounded men. They brought them the best food they could
procure; they gave them water to drink--they ministered to all their
wants--complied with all their wishes--and treated them as if they had
been their own children.
An officer, with whom we are well acquainted, went over the field on
the morning of the battle, and examined the ghastly heaps of dead in
search of the body of a near relation; and after all the corpses were
buried or burnt--in the same melancholy and fruitless search, many an
Englishwoman, whom this day of glory had bereft of husband or son,
wandered over this fatal field, wildly calling upon the names of those
who were now no more. The very day before we visited it, the widow
and the sister of a brave and lamented British officer had been here,
harrowing up the souls of the beholders with their wild lamentations,
vainly demanding where the remains of him they loved reposed, and
accusing Heaven for denying them the consolation of weeping over
his grave. I was myself, afterwards, a sorrowful witness of the
dreadful effects of the unrestrained indulgence of this passionate and
heart-breaking grief. In the instance to which I allude, sorrow had
nearly driven reason from her seat, and melancholy verged upon madness.
I have forced myself to dwell upon these scenes of horror, with
whatever pain to my own feelings, because in this favoured country,
which the mercy of Heaven has hitherto preserved from being the theatre
of war, and from experiencing the calamities which have visited other
nations, I have sometimes thought that the blessings of that exemption
are but imperfectly felt, and that the sufferings and the dangers of
those whose valour and whose blood have been its security and glory,
are but faintly understood, and coldly commiserated. I wished that
those who had suffered in the cause of their country should be repaid
by her gratitude, and that she should learn more justly to estimate
"the price of victory." But it is impossible for me to describe, or for
imagination to conceive, the horrors of Waterloo!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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