00 men and 96 guns, lazily attacking Thielmann's single corps at
Wavre, while Bluecher, with three divisions, was marching at speed to
fling himself on Napoleon's right flank at Waterloo. It is idle to
speculate on what would have happened to the British if the Prussians
had not made their movement on Napoleon's right flank. The assured
help of Bluecher was the condition upon which Wellington made his stand
at Waterloo; it was as much part of his calculations as the fighting
quality of his own infantry. A plain tale of British endurance and
valour is all that is offered here; and what a head of wood and heart
of stone any man of Anglo-Saxon race must have who can read such a tale
without a thrill of generous emotion!

Waterloo was for the French not so much a defeat as a rout. Napoleon's
army simply ceased to exist. The number of its slain is unknown, for
its records were destroyed. The killed and wounded in the British army
reached the tragical number of nearly 15,000. Probably not less than
between 30,000 and 40,000 slain or wounded human beings were scattered,
the night following the battle, over the two or three square miles
where the great fight had raged; and some of the wounded were lying
there still, uncared for, four days afterwards. It is said that for
years afterwards, as one looked over the waving wheat-fields in the
valley betwixt Mont St. Jean and La Belle Alliance, huge irregular
patches, where the corn grew rankest and was of deepest tint, marked
the gigantic graves where, in the silence and reconciliation of death,
slept Wellington's ruddy-faced infantry lads and the grizzled veterans
of the Old Guard. The deep cross-country road which covered
Wellington's front has practically disappeared; the Belgians have cut
away the banks to build up a huge pyramid, on the summit of which is
perched a Belgian lion, with tail erect, grinning defiance towards the
French frontier. A lion is not exactly the animal which best
represents the contribution the Belgian troops made to Waterloo.

But still the field keeps its main outlines. To the left lies
Planchenoit, where Wellington watched to see the white smoke of the
Prussian guns; opposite is the gentle slope down which D'Erlon's troops
marched to fling themselves on La Haye Sainte; and under the
spectator's feet, a little to his left as he stands on the summit of
the monument, is the ground over which Life Guards and Inniskillings
and Scots Greys galloped