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Updated: May 22, 2025
Napoleon, on coming up from Charleroi, about noon on the 16th, hesitated for a time whether Blucher at Ligny, or the English at Quatre-Bras, ought to form the main object of his attack. The Anglo-Belgian army was not yet concentrated the Prussian, with the exception of one division, was: and he at length resolved to give his own personal attention to the latter.
I set off instantly for the hotel, and just as I was going I met my Anglo-Belgian lawyer, who presented to me a large envelope addressed to myself in the handwriting of Alresca, and marked "private." The lawyer, who had been engaged in the sorting and examination of an enormous quantity of miscellaneous papers left by Alresca, informed me that he only discovered the package that very afternoon.
I visited the Anglo-Belgian Committee at its quarters in the Savoy Hotel, London, and told them of my twofold errand. They saw at once the point I made. America was sending large amounts of money and vast quantities of supplies to the Belgians on both sides of the line. What was being done in interned Belgium was well known.
I had two surprises, one greater and one less. In the first place, the Anglo-Belgian lawyer whom I had summoned informed me, after Alresca's papers had been examined and certain effects sealed in the presence of an official, that my friend had made a will, bearing a date immediately before our arrival in Bruges, leaving the whole of his property to me, and appointing me sole executor.
Such was his oration: and never was army more thoroughly imbued with the spirit of its chief. Blucher's army numbered at this time about 100,000 men, and, extending along the line of the Sambre and the Meuse, occupied Charleroi, Namur, Givet, and Liege. They communicated on their right with the left of the Anglo-Belgian army, under Wellington, whose headquarters were at Brussels.
"Never did the French army fight better than it did upon this occasion; it performed prodigies of valour; and the superiority of the troops, infantry, cavalry, and artillery, over the enemy opposed to them, was such, that had not Blucher arrived with his second corps of Prussians, the victory over the Anglo-Belgian army under Wellington would have been complete, though aided by Bulow's thirty thousand troops; that is to say, it would have been gained by sixty-nine thousand men opposed to nearly double their number; for the troops in the field commanded by Wellington, before Blucher's arrival, amounted to one hundred and twenty thousand men."
It is probable that this rearguard was deliberately sacrificed to enable the Anglo-Belgian army to make good its retreat. The fate of Antwerp shows what might have happened to Paris had the Germans been able to bring up their great siege guns to the outer fortifications of the French capital and protect them while they performed their tremendous task of battering the defenses to pieces.
The little Anglo-Belgian had been more or less ill all the way over, and looked pale and wan, though still very pretty, as she stood with the rest, gazing at the crowd of faces, all of whose eyes were turned toward the steamer. Imogen, who had helped her to dress, remained protectingly by her side. "What shall you do if he doesn't happen to be there?" she asked, smitten with a sudden fear.
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