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Updated: June 16, 2025
Napoleon had placed himself in one of these squares: Marshal Soult, Generals Bertrand, Drouot, Corbineau, De Flahaut, and Gourgaud, were with him. The Colonel states that he heard these details from General Gourgaud himself. Meanwhile the Duke of Wellington still rode forward with the van of his victorious troops, until he reined up on the elevated ground near Rossomme.
To belie those words by an ignominious flight was to court the worst of sins in French political life, ridicule. And the flight was ignominious. Wellington's weary troops, after several times mistaking friends for foes in the dusk, halted south of Rossomme and handed over the pursuit to the Prussians, many of whom had fought but little and now drank deep the draught of revenge.
Then he mounted his horse, advanced beyond Rossomme, and selected for his post of observation a contracted elevation of turf to the right of the road from Genappe to Brussels, which was his second station during the battle.
In the morning he dismounted in the mud on the slope which forms an angle with the Plancenoit road, had a kitchen table and a peasant's chair brought to him from the farm of Rossomme, seated himself, with a truss of straw for a carpet, and spread out on the table the chart of the battle-field, saying to Soult as he did so, "A pretty checker-board."
We stood waiting with shouldered arms, when about three o'clock Buche looked behind him on the road and said, "The Emperor is coming!" And others in the ranks repeated, "Here is the Emperor." The smoke was so thick that we could barely see the bear-skin caps of the Old Guard on the little hill of Rossomme.
Leaving two battalions of these in Planchenoit, and three near Rossomme as a last reserve, he led forward nine battalions formed in hollow squares. A thrill ran through the line regiments, some of whom were falling back, as they saw the bearskins move forward; and, to revive their spirits, the Emperor sent on Labédoyère with the news that Grouchy was at hand.
I sat upon the little rising ground of Rossomme; before me in the valley, where yet the tall corn waved in ripe luxuriance, stood the quiet and peaceful-looking old Château of Hougoumont, and the blossoming branches of the orchard; the birds were gayly singing their songs; the shrill whistle of the fatal musketry was to be heard; and through my glass I could detect the uniform of the soldiers who held the position, and my heart beat anxiously and proudly as I recognized the Guards.
It is almost superfluous here to sketch the appearance of Napoleon on horseback, glass in hand, upon the heights of Rossomme, at daybreak, on June 18, 1815. All the world has seen him before we can show him.
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