WATERLOO.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 160, 8 July 1899, Page 3 (Supplement)

WATERLOO.

A FRENCHMAN'S DESCRIPTION OF

THE ROUT,

"Waterloo," the concluding volume of Henry Houssaye's great work "LSI 11815— Waterloo," has now beeu published. It confines itself to the single episode of Waterloo. Here Is Houssaye"a description of the flight of Napoleon's army: —

Beyond the Genappe the pursuit was hurried. There was no longer any ordered troop to form the rear-guard. Tl.c Prussian sabres cut with Impunity to right and loft In the distracted crowd.

The highway, tho adjacent roads, the fields as far as the eye could see were black with soldiers—unmounted cuirassiers, lancers, or foundered horses; foot soldiers who had thrown away their guns and haversacks; men wounded,bleeding; men whose arms or logs had been amputated, and who had been jolted out of the crowded ambulances ten minutes after thoy had left the surgeon's hands; officers without authority, as demoralised as their men, thinking only of themselves and of their own safety.

When the sound of the Prussian trumpets drew nearer, with the gallop of horses and the savage clamour of the pursuers, from the frighted crowd the cry went up:—

"They come! They come! Run!"

And under the lash of fear cavalry and Infantry, officers and men—the whole and the maimed—ran with incredible rapidity.

AN ENORMOUS MORGUE.

However hardened, however insensible to feeling the soldiers were, either from habit, owing to their conditions, or from familiarity with the sight of death, all the fugitives were seized by horror when they passed the Quatre Bras. The men killed in the conflict of June 10 had not been buried, and there they lay—between three and four thousand corpses—stark naked (the Belgian peasants had stripped them even of their shirts); they covered all the ground between the road and the woods of Bossu.

It was an enormous morgue. Now white in the moonlight, now drowned in shadow by the veil of clouds, the dead, m those rapid movements of light, seemed to stir their stiff bodies and contract their faceslivid, pale as ashes.

"We thought," said a grenadier of (he guard, "that they wore spectres who begged of us for sepulture."

NAPOLEON WEEPS FOR HIS LOST ARMY.

During the struggle and the rout the Emperor waited for his troops at Quatre Bras. He had stopped in a clearing of the wood of Bossu by a fire kindled by some grenadiers of the guard. A wounded officer, fleeing along the road, recognised the Emperor by the firelight.

Napoleon stood with his arms crossed upon his breast, motionless as v statue, his fixed eyes turned towards .Vaf.tloo. No news had been received from Grouchy; they thought that he must be seriously menaced. The Emperor ordered Soult to send Grouchy a despatch informing him that the army had retreated, and telling him to fall back upon Brasse-Sambre.

Soldiers of all branches cf die service passed Quatre Bras, running along the road and across the fields. Commandant Baudus, passing on the road with other fugitives, saw the little group of the Imperial staff hovering about the camp fire; he approached them.

The Emperor asked him If he had not seen some corps which was not ♦mtireiy disorganised. Not far from Quatre Bras Braudus had passed the Fifth Lancers, commanded by Colonel Jacqueminot; the men of this regiment were still marching in order, and so Baudus told the Emperor.

"Go, quick!" said the Emperor. "Tell him to stop at Quatre Bras. Even now he is late, and the enemy, finding that point occupied, will probably stop."

Baudus set out at a gallop, but met by the fire of men stationed in the first houses, of the public square of the village^ ,he went back to the Emperor and begged him to recede, "since his position was no longer covered by any one." As he said these words he looked at the Emperor. Napoleon was silently weeping for his lost army. Upon his mournful face, white with the pallid tint of wax, there was no longer anything of life but tears.