by Iain Gale
August Graf von Gneisenau goes on to have an illustrious military career in the Prussian army and becomes Governor of Berlin. In 1830 he is given command of a Prussian punitive expedition to suppress a Polish rebellion. He dies of cholera later that year, aged seventy-one.
Sir William Howe De Lancey dies in the arms of his wife, Magdalene, in a small house at Mont St Jean on 26 June. He is buried at the Protestant cemetery of St Josse Ten Noode in Brussels. In 1887 his remains are removed to the new Waterloo memorial at Evere cemetery in North Brussels where they lie today, alongside those of James, Lord Hay and Wellington’s aide-de-camp Sir Alexander Gordon.
Magdalene De Lancey leaves Belgium after the death of her husband and returns to Scotland. In 1816 she writes an account of her experience of the Waterloo campaign, of which nine copies are known to have existed. It is praised by her friend Walter Scott and reduces Charles Dickens to tears. Although consumed by grief, she marries again, in March 1819, Henry Harvey, an officer in the Indian army. The couple tour Europe, return to Edinburgh and settle in Worcester. They have three children, but in July 1822 Magdalene dies, aged only twenty-two. Dunglass is sold by the Hall family in 1915 and the house is demolished in the 1950s.
Sergeant Brice Macgregor is discharged from the Scots Guards in 1821 with a full pension. He becomes a Yeoman of the Guard and dies in November 1846.
Fitzroy Somerset, having lost his arm at Waterloo, goes on to enjoy a successful military career in the British army. He is chiefly remembered today as Lord Raglan, the Commander-in-Chief of the British army in the Crimea, who ordered the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava in 1854. He dies of dysentery in the course of the war, later that year.
Captain Edward Sumner dies of his wounds in Brussels on 26 June 1815.
Lieutenant-Colonel James Macdonell is created Companion of the Bath for his services at Hougoumont. At the end of the war he is named by Wellington ‘the bravest man in the British Army’, a title which he hates. He does not welcome the £500 which accompanies it, giving half to his old sergeant, Ralph Fraser. Macdonell continues to serve with the Coldstream Guards and in 1825 becomes its colonel. In 1830 he is made major general and commands the English forces in Ireland between 1831 and 1838. Later he becomes British commander in Canada and in 1838 is made a Knight Commander of the Bath (KCB). He becomes colonel of the 79th (Cameron) Highlanders and then of the 71st Highland Light Infantry. In 1841 he is promoted to lieutenant-general and in 1854 to general of the army. In 1855 he is made Knight Grand Cross of the Most Noble Order of the Bath (GCB). He dies, unmarried, in London in May 1857 at the age of seventy-nine.
Lieutenant-Colonel Daniel Mackinnon recovers from his leg wound and continues with the Coldstream Guards. He becomes colonel of a battalion of the Coldstream in 1826. He marries and writes the first regimental history of the Coldstream Guards. He dies in 1836.
Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Lord Saltoun rises to become a lieutenant-general and Colonel-in-Chief of the 2nd Regiment of Foot. He commands a brigade in China in 1842 and is created a Knight of the Thistle and Knight Commander of the Bath. He marries and dies in 1853, near Rothes.
Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington, returns from the battlefield to the village of Waterloo on the evening of 18 June and spends the night seated at his desk writing his despatch of the battle, his bed being occupied by his dying friend and aide-de-camp, Alexander Gordon.
In Britain a grateful nation presents Wellington with a grand country estate, Stratfield Saye. He remains with the army of occupation in France until 1818, and on his return to Britain enters politics with a Cabinet post. Under George IV he is appointed Lord High Constable and in 1827 Commander-in-Chief of the Army. In January 1828 Wellington becomes Prime Minister. He opposes the 1830 Reform Bill and plummets in popularity. Nothing, though, can challenge his lasting reputation as the victor of Waterloo. Foreign Secretary under William IV, in 1846 Wellington retires. He dies in 1852 at Walmer Castle in Kent. One and a half million people line the route of his funeral cortège through the streets of London.
Alexander Woodford is created Companion of the Bath for his role in the defence of Hougoumont. In 1842 he becomes Colonel-in-Chief of the 40th Foot and in 1861 transfers to the Scots Guards. He dies in 1870.
Hans Ernst Graf von Ziethen is rewarded for his part in the Waterloo campaign with the post of Commander of the Prussian Army of Occupation in France. In 1835 he is promoted to Feld-Marschall. He dies in 1848 at the age of seventy-eight.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book is a novel. It does not pretend to be a history of the Waterloo campaign. It was written in an attempt to see inside the minds of a few men who took part in a battle which decided the fate of the western world.
Almost every character in the book is based on an actual person. Where possible I have used what information I have been able to find about each man, particularly in the case of the officers and men of the Light Company, 2nd, Coldstream Guards. Wherever possible, where I have found individual memoirs, the characters speak as they did then. Students of language and manners may not always agree with the sentiments and expressions of the characters. I can only ask for a little interpretive licence, without which it would have been impossible to tell, in human terms, the story of those momentous four days.
In the course of researching the book I consulted some 300 published works and numerous first-hand accounts. I am endebted for their help to the staff at the library of the National Army Museum, the Public Record Office at Kew and the reading room of the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. My thanks also to the present-day tenant of the farm of Hougoumont, who allowed me to walk at liberty on several occasions around the site of some of the book’s key moments in the months before the structure became too unsafe for public access.
I must thank Patrick Barty, Seamus Collins and Ben Whit-worth for taking the trouble to read all or part of the manuscript and offer invaluable comments. I am also indebted to Denis Critchley Salmonson for his notes on his ancestor Henry Hardinge and to Rollo Wilson.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the late Giles Gordon for his enthusiasm in the early stages of this book, which he was tragically unable to see through to publication.
I am also, of course, indebted to my long-suffering wife Sarah and my children Alexander, Ruaridh and India, who, having endured my ‘Waterloo-mania’ with varying degrees of enthusiasm, have never ceased to provide their own particular brands of unstinting support.
Finally, thanks to my parents, with whom it all began when, unwittingly, some thirty years ago, they agreed to take a detour on the journey home from France and visit a muddy Belgian battlefield.
For those who wish to go further into the facts behind the book I can only point them in the direction of Mark Adkin’s superb Waterloo Companion. Peter Hofschröer’s controversial works on the German perspective of the campaign and the workings of the Prussian army also proved invaluable, as was David Miller’s highly readable life of William and Magdalene De Lancey.
While the portrait of Alisdair Macdonell of Glengarry is now one of the best known works in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, I have been unable to trace the whereabouts of Raeburn’s portrait of James Macdonell, which I have only seen in reproduction. I would be grateful for any information which would assist in my ongoing search.
About the Author
FOUR DAYS IN JUNE
Iain Gale has strong Scottish and military roots. He is the Editor of the Scottish National Trust magazine and Art critic for Scotland on Sunday. He lives outside Edinburgh and is working on a second novel.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.co.uk for exclusive information on Iain Gale.
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This paperback edition 2007
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First published in Gr
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Copyright © Iain Gale 2006
Iain Gale asserts the moral right to
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This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it,
while based on historical events, are
the work of the author’s imagination.
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ePub edition June 2008 ISBN- 9780007279470
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