e was
everywhere during the battle; and it was the mercy of Heaven
that protected him, when all his staff had been killed or
wounded round him. I asked him, among many other questions,
if he had seen Buonaparte; he said, "No; but at one time,
from the repeated shouts of _Vive l'Empereur_, I thought he
must be near." This was when John de Costar placed him in
the hollow way. I think, so near as I can judge, there may
at that time have been a quarter of a mile between these two
great generals.

The fate of the French, after this day of decisive appeal,
has been severe enough. There were never people {p.057}
more mortified, more subdued, and apparently more broken in
spirit. They submit with sad civility to the extortions of
the Prussians and the Russians, and avenge themselves at the
expense of the English, whom they charge three prices for
everything, because they are the only people who pay at all.
They are in the right, however, to enforce discipline and
good order, which not only maintains the national character
in the mean time, but will prevent the army from suffering
by habits of indulgence. I question if the Prussians will
soon regain their discipline and habits of hardihood. At
present their powers of eating and drinking, which are
really something preternatural, are exerted to the very
utmost. A thin Prussian boy, whom I sometimes see, eats in
one day as much as three English ploughmen. At daybreak he
roars for chocolate and eggs; about nine he breakfasts more
solemnly, _a la fourchette_, when, besides all the usual
apparatus of an English _dejeuner_, he eats a world of
cutlets, oysters, fruit, etc., and drinks a glass of brandy
and a bottle of champagne. His dinner might serve Gargantua,
at which he gets himself about three parts drunk--a
circumstance which does not prevent the charge upon cold
meat, with tea and chocolate, about six o'clock; and
concluding the whole with an immense supper. Positively the
appetite of this lad reminds one of the Eastern tale of a
man taken out of the sea by a ship's crew, who, in return,
ate up all the provisions of the vessel. He was, I think,
flown away with by a roc; but from what quarter of the
heavens the French are to look for deliverance from these
devourers, I cannot pre