Srn,—When the gallant Marshal of seventy-three summers met Wellington at
the farm of La Belle Alliance, he suggested its name as the one most suitable for the great victory just completed. The Iron Duke, with characteristic raideur, re- fused the proposal of his deliverer, the veteran past-master of European war, who had fought for the great Frederick nine years before Arthur Wellesley was born. Yet surely any brother-in-arms not eaten up with his own arrogance would have hailed so fit a phrase ! No wonder, with such a beginning
between such men and such nations, historic sincerity became henceforward impossible ; and to-day the average British account of Waterloo is much further from the facts than the Emperor William's Teutonic bluntness. Our only con- temporary history which gave them fairly and squarely was the last volume of Russell's " Modern Europe " :—" General Billow emerged from a wood with two brigades Bliicher soon after advanced these veteran com- manders arrived at a critical time, when the French were on the point of prevailing." Lord Acton, reviewing Ropes's "Napoleon," confirms this view, quoting the sight seen by Colonel Reiche when he came upon the scene and was told by Muffling and Scharnhorst that the French were gaining the day. A glance at Alison's Atlas, Plate II., of Waterloo shows how the capture of La Haye Sainte and most of Hougoumont had crippled the British position. Three of the commonest delusions about Waterloo are :-
(1) That Napoleon had the finest army he ever commanded. Nothing is more false. The men mistrusted their officers, the officers mistrusted the future. Every department was hopelessly short of capable leaders ; and as for the Marshals whom he had relied on for his former triumphs, he now lacked Massena, Lannes, Baronet, Marmont, Murat, Ber- thier, to take but six. As for the Old Guard of Austerlitz, Jena, and Wagram, it had died in Russia, and especially at Vilna; while those of his men who were not "Marie Louises" had either been cowed in Prussian fortresses or Russian prisons, or broken at Vittoria or after Leipsic. His cavalry were undisciplined and badly led, their horses untrained and half starved.
(2) That Wellington, as he declared, had an " infamous army," the worst he ever commanded. It is true that the Americans can lay unction to their souls from the fact that the best regiments we had at Waterloo were those they had just so severely repulsed at New Orleans. Henceforth their pride in -Waterloo is that "des vainquears des vainquenrs du monde." Yet men of the Rifle Brigade, of the King's Own, and of the 44th Regiment were . not troops that even Wellington could justly decry. It is true that of his sixty- eight thousand troops, only twenty-four thousand were English ; but the German Legion, the Hanoverians, and the Brunswic,kers were as good.
(3) That (as Sir William Fraser considered) Wellington, un- assured of Blucher's aid, would have declined the battle. Whether Wellington could have declined battle without losing Brussels or the campaign is a problem for experts ; but he had certainly no right to count on Blucher for the 18th. Wellington had half promised to help Billeher at Ligny, but found himself unable to do so, though pinned by an inferior general and a smaller army than his own. After Ligny, Wellington might hope for a juncture with Blucher, but he could not reasonably expect sufficient of the Prussian Army to extricate him. Blucher himself was likely enough to turn up,—in fact, Napoleon told Gourgaud that this cerveau brdli would have rushed to Wellington, if only with two battalions."
—I am, Sir, &c., HENRY FOL.TAMBE HALL.
P.S.—Mr. Lang once affected a lively interest in Napoleon because he had shot a publisher. Having sought in vain through our public and national library catalogues for two years for an English work possessed by the Bibliotheque Nationale, I have a warmer sympathy with the Prussian officer who was told in 1815 by Blucher in Paris that " all the books in the Bibliotheque are prisoners of war. They are in ranks and files. Take as many home with you as you like."
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