ORIGINAL LETTER

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21900, 19 December 1945, Page 6

ORIGINAL LETTER

DUKE OF WELLINGTON BATTLE OF WATERLOO (P.A.) WELLINGTON, Dec. 19. An original unpublished letter from the hand of the Duke of Wellington written on the field a few hours befoie the battle began was produced and read by M. Armand Gazel, the new Minister for France, at a civic reception tendered to him yesterday. M. Gazel was speaking of the great virtue of perseverance. “Your noble city,” he said, ‘has a younger history and has been spared the horrors of war and enemy occupation, but she has something in common with Paris and that is the perseverance of its citizens.” To illustrate his point, M. Gazel showed to the Mayor, Mr. W. Appleton, the letter, which wa s written in French and wa s dated “At Waterloo, this eighteenth day of June, three o’clock in the morning”—just two hours before the beginning of the battle. After speaking of the fighting of the previous days, the Duke of Wellington wrote: “The enemy may outflank us through Hall (a small town not far from the farm of Hougoumont on the Duke of Wellington’s right flank). If this happens I pray Your Royal Highness go back to Antwerp to take quarters there and to tell His Majesty Louis the Eighteenth that I pray him to cross from Ghent to Antwerp. 1 also pray Your Royal Highness to send to Antwerp all the magazines which are not absolutely necessary for you at the moment.” ‘The Duke of Wellington knew that an outflanking attack on his right would be most dangerous for him,” commented M. Gazel. Napoleon thought the same for a while, but did not persevere and lost everything.