ge shown by the Danes. "The French
and Spanish fight well," he said, "but they could not have stood for an
hour such a fire as the Danes sustained for four hours."

KING-MAKING WATERLOO

"Last noon beheld them full of lusty life,
Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay,
The midnight brought the signal-sound of strife;
The morn the marshalling in arms--the day
Battle's magnificently stern array!
The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which when rent
The earth is cover'd thick with other clay,
Which her own clay shall cover, heap'd and pent,
Rider and horse--friend, foe--in one red burial blent!"
--BYRON.

"I look upon Salamanca, Vittoria, and Waterloo as my three best
battles--those which had great and permanent consequences. Salamanca
relieved the whole south of Spain, changed all the prospects of the
war, and was felt even in Prussia. Vittoria freed the Peninsula
altogether, broke off the armistice at Dresden, and thus led to Leipsic
and the deliverance of Europe; and Waterloo did more than any other
battle I know of towards the true object of all battles--the peace of
the world."--WELLINGTON, _Conversation with Croker_.

On June 18, 1815, the grey light of a Sunday morning was breaking over
a shallow valley lying between parallel ridges of low hills some twelve
miles to the south of Brussels. All night the rain had fallen
furiously, and still the fog hung low, and driving showers swept over
plain and hill as from the church spires of half-a-dozen tiny villages
the matin bells began to ring. For centuries those bells had called
the villagers to prayers; to-day, as the wave of sound stole through
the misty air it was the signal for the awakening of two mighty armies
to the greatest battle of modern times.

More ink has, perhaps, been shed about Waterloo than about any other
battle known to history, and still the story bristles with conundrums,
questions of fact, and problems in strategy, about which the experts
still wage, with pen and diagram, strife almost as furious as that
which was waged with lance and sword, with bayonet and musket, more
than eighty years ago on the actual slopes of Mont St. Jean. It is
still, for example, a matter of debate whether, when Wellington first
resolved to fight at Waterloo, he had any express promise from Bluecher
to join him on that field. Did Wellington, for example, ride over
alone to Bluecher's headquarters on the night before Water