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Updated: May 14, 2025
A plot was on foot to deliver Antwerp to the French, and Vendome moved forward to take advantage of it; but Marlborough took post at Halle, and Vendome halted his army at Soignies, three leagues distant. Considerable portions of each force moved much closer to each other, and lay watching each other across a valley but a mile wide.
The field was open and fair: and in case the enemy should force the Duke from his position, the village of Mont St Jean behind, still further back the town of Waterloo, and lastly the great forest of Soignies offered successively the means of renewing his defence, and protecting his retreat. The British front extended, in all, over about a mile.
Wellington, with the forest of Soignies behind him, at Waterloo, was not half so confident of wearing out Napoleon, as Davenport was of beating back King Charles the Second, in his presumptuous attempt to govern his Puritan colonies.
Don John having thus vindicated his own military fame and the amazing superiority of the Spanish arms, followed up his victory by the rapid reduction of many towns of second-rate importance Louvain, Judoigne, Tirlemont, Aerschot, Bauvignes, Sichem, Nivelle, Roeux, Soignies, Binch, Beaumont, Walcourt, Tviaubeuge, and Chimay, either submitted to their conqueror, or were taken after short sieges.
They particularly object that the Duke fought without having the means of a retreat, if the attacks of his enemy had proved successful; and that the English army, if once broken, must have lost all its guns and MATERIEL in its flight through the Forest of Soignies, that lay in its rear.
This edifice, which, though its exterior was almost wholly devoid of ornament, nevertheless presented a majestic aspect on account of its vast size, adjoined a splendid park, whose leafy groups of ancient trees merged into the forest of Soignies. Here also stood the palaces of the great nobles and, on the side of the hill which sloped to the lower city, the Cathedral of St.
The woodman did not answer; he leaned over the half-open wicket, and swayed it backwards and forwards under his bare arm. He was a good, harmless, gentle fellow, swarthy as charcoal and simple as a child, and quite ignorant, having spent all his days in the great Soignies forests making fagots when he was a little lad, and hewing down trees or burning charcoal as he grew to manhood.
In olden times it was spoken of as "gay Brabant," and so, indeed, it might be nowadays. Dull, pompous people are not liked there. You must be lively and amusing, like the town itself, of which the people are so proud that they call it the Little Paris. Close to Brussels, on the south and west, there is a great forest the Forest of Soignies.
On the 17th the Duke of Wellington displayed his whole force to the enemy, and seemed to defy them to the combat but in the evening retired upon Waterloo, and there reposed with some of his officers in the village, which lies embosomed in the Forêt de Soignies. Picton had fallen; each herald brought us tidings of a hero less, where all were heroes.
The first army corps, consisting of the second and third divisions of Dutch and Belgians, and the first and third of the British, extended from Enghien on the right to Quatre Bras on the left. The first British division were at the former town, the third between Soignies and Roeulx, while the Belgians and Dutch lay between Nivelles and Quatre Bras.
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