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Updated: May 13, 2025
In the streets every one demanded, "Will Blucher be able to advance?" and we were fully aware if that veteran General could not effect a junction with Wellington before eight o'clock that evening, all would be lost. At nine o'clock the two heroes mutually felicitated each other at the small auberge of Genappe.
He saw that on the wide road which leads to Genappe and Charleroi the once invincible cavalry of the mighty Emperor was fleeing helter-skelter from the scene of its disaster: he saw that the British what was left of them were in hot pursuit! He saw from far Plancenoit the scintillating casques of Blücher's Prussians.
It has been disfigured for the sake of glorifying it. Wellington, when he beheld Waterloo once more, two years later, exclaimed, "They have altered my field of battle!" Where the great pyramid of earth, surmounted by the lion, rises to-day, there was a hillock which descended in an easy slope towards the Nivelles road, but which was almost an escarpment on the side of the highway to Genappe.
The sound of the bells as they responded to each other from Planchenois to Genappe, from Frichemont to Waterloo, reminded me of Pfalzbourg, and I thought: "To-day is Sunday, the day of rest and peace. Mr. Goulden has hung his best coat, with a white shirt, on the back of his chair.
He told me that he was making for Brussels by a circuitous way." "Ah! that is right! Well done, my brave de Marmont! Braver than your treacherous kinsman ever was! So you saw him, did you, Bertrand? Did he tell you that he had just come from Genappe?" "Yes, Sire, he did," replied Bertrand moodily.
At Genappe, where the bridge was blocked by fugitives, the pursuit was so close that he was compelled to abandon his carriage leaving his sword and hat behind him.
I thought I should drop every moment from weakness, but it was worse still when we overtook the baggage, for then we were obliged to march on the sides of the road, and the farther from it we went the more deeply we sank in the soft soil. About eleven o'clock we reached a large village called Genappe, which lies on both sides of the route.
Let us inflict punishment, since we are history: old Blucher disgraced himself. This ferocity put the finishing touch to the disaster. The desperate route traversed Genappe, traversed Quatre-Bras, traversed Gosselies, traversed Frasnes, traversed Charleroi, traversed Thuin, and only halted at the frontier. Alas! and who, then, was fleeing in that manner? The Grand Army.
I with my splendid mare was soon able to get clear of the throng, and just after I passed Genappe I overtook the Emperor with the remains of his Staff. Soult was with him still, and so were Drouot, Lobau, and Bertrand, with five Chasseurs of the Guard, their horses hardly able to move. The night was falling, and the Emperor's haggard face gleamed white through the gloom as he turned it toward me.
I answered, 'The first to the left is Genappe, the second is at Bois de Bossu, near the farm of Quatre Bras; the third is at Gosselies. 'Let us march on the second one, then, replied Foy, 'and let no obstacle stop us take the head of the column, and do not lose sight of the guiding light. Such was his order, and I strove to obey.
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