Went the Day Well?

by David Crane

  Myth Triumphant

  1. In the aftermath of the battle a medal: Even if Napoleon was right, and ‘it is with baubles that men are led’, the Waterloo Medal had been an unusually imaginative act of inclusive unity. The soldiers who had fought their way up through the Peninsula would have to wait another thirty-odd years for similar recognition, and the Waterloo Medal – not just the first British medal awarded to every soldier regardless of rank, but the first medal that carried the name of the recipient around the rim, the first that was given to the widows and families of the dead – reflects a genuine sense of responsibility, debt and communal identity that seems something new in the life of the nation. ‘I was under the necessity of talking to my wife in French, as she could not understand English,’ Sergeant Lawrence recalled his arrival back in Britain, when he and his new French wife were trying to sail, walk and hitch their way from Leith to the childhood village in Devon he had not seen in sixteen years campaigning. They had just got into a cab with another gentleman and Lawrence was explaining this to him when the man noticed the Waterloo medal on his breast. ‘“I see you have been in the battle of Waterloo, sergeant?” … He wished to know where I was bound for, and when I told him, he politely asked me to spend a week at his house on the way, saying that I should not want for anything, but I told him the reason of my hurry, thanking him for his kindness, and his stage having expired at this period he got out. But he would insist on giving my wife five shillings and paying our fare: we then shook hands heartily and parted, he wishing us good-speed on our journey’ (Lawrence, p. 162).

  2. recalled James Nasmyth: Such homecomings were not always the case, though, and the young William Keppel and the ‘Peasants’ of the 14th of Foot had come home in December 1815 to find ‘Waterloo men at a discount’ and a Britain ‘saturated with glory … brooding over the bill that it had to pay. An anti-military spirit had set in,’ Keppel recalled, ‘and if we had been convicts disembarking from a hulk we could hardly have met with less consideration. “It’s us as pays they chaps,” was the remark of a country bumpkin as our men came ashore. A brigade of artillery, their muzzles crammed with French contraband, had just slipped through the fingers of the customs officers undetected, and they did not get much kinder notice from them either’ (Keppel, II, p. 68).

  3. eventual Catholic emancipation: There is a need for caution here – Wellington, himself, had consistently voted against Catholic Emancipation before necessity brought him round – and popular anti-Catholicism was probably as rampant in the post-war period as it had ever been. In the 1820s the Catholic priest and historian John Lingard was exploding all the most cherished foundation myths of English Protestantism, but that was not going to stop a man like the chaplain to the rabidly anti-Catholic Duke of York, (as he had subsequently become) George Stonestreet – that excellent barometer of enlightened self-interest – from producing a 130-odd-page diatribe against popery and the corrupting threat of foreign influence.

  4. heirs to Crécy, Agincourt, Poitiers and Blenheim: As Wilkie’s painting had suggested, they were also the progenitors of the Alma, Inkerman and Mons. It is impossible to look at a map of the Waterloo campaign and not be as conscious of the First World War as Wellington’s men were of Marlborough’s, and nineteenth-century Britain and its regiments wallowed in a tradition that linked its armies across time in an unbroken line of bravery and stoic endurance. ‘On one occasion,’ a nineteenth-century historian of the Reverend Grindrod’s Altrincham proudly recorded, ‘two men were whipped, one after another. One of them, after having received his portion, begged with a self-abnegation and gallantry worthy of all praise, that he might receive his companion’s lashes, as he was sure he was unable to bear the punishment. No wonder that with men made of such sterling stuff Wellington won Waterloo. No wonder that their descendants conquered at Inkerman, and charged through the Russian hosts at Balaclava!’

  5. when Bonaparte finally surrendered: It would not have been Britain, though, if having fought the ‘usurper’, ‘monster’ and anti-Christ for the best part of twenty years, they had not streamed down to Torbay in their crowds to catch a glimpse of the man. ‘As I went over Westminster Bridge last week,’ complained an astonished Hester Piozzi, ‘I saw we were building a new mad-house twice as big as the old Bethlehem Hospital; and sure no building could be so wanted for Englishmen … this Man, this Buonaparte, whom to dethrone such torrents blood were willingly spilt; whom, to depose such treasures of money had been willingly spent, no sooner surrenders himself than we make an idol of him, crowd round for a glance of his eye, and huzza him as if he were our defender. Had not Government prudently prevented his touching shore, hundred, nay thousands, would have drawn him up and down in triumph’ (Piozzi, IV, p. 392). ‘I come as Themistocles, to sit at the heart of the British people,’ Bonaparte famously wrote to the Prince Regent, and with Charles Lamb not the only one wondering how long it would take for the British people to decide that he would make a far better job of ruling them than their own wretched Hanoverian, it was small wonder the government were taking no risks. Castlereagh had never been happy with the allies’ choice of Elba for Bonaparte’s first exile, and at the beginning of August he was transferred at Plymouth from the Bellerophon to the Northumberland and taken south to St Helena to begin an exile under the ghastly Sir Hudson Lowe – the first man Wellington had sacked when he got to Brussels – that most people thought punishment enough for a lifetime of crime.

  6. they loved what Waterloo told them about themselves: It is impossible to put a strict date to these kind of attitudes, of course, but there is an intriguing sidelight cast on them in the journal of an English, Roman Catholic antiquarian called John Gage, who found himself in Brussels in the days after the battle. There was nothing unusual in the habit of seeing Britain as a second Rome – West’s portrait of the death of Wolfe had made the connection explicit – but here, in the grounds of Hougoumont, is a moment when the stock comparisons of the classically educated Englishman of the time, the almost reflex habit of dignifying British achievements by reference to a classical past, suddenly seem no longer needed, because nothing could possibly add a lustre to what Britons have done and borne. ‘In the Hougoumont garden Sir James Craufurd’s son had been buried the morning after the battle in part of his clothes, and in a blanket with every decency the moment would allow. We had one of the Guards with us for our guide and he directed us to the spot, and we had no difficulty in finding the body. Raphael, to paint the horror of civil war, in his battle of Constantius and Maxentius, has represented a father taking up his sons, who had fought on opposite sides. None but a father can feel the sentiments which are there expressed, none but a Raphael paint them! This picture loses its force when I look upon the scene in the Hougoumont garden: a father opening the winding sheet of a beloved son who had fallen in battle eight days before! I retired down the garden and indulged feelings I could not repress’ (T. A. Birrell, Across the Narrow Sea, BL 1991).

  Reference Notes

  Prologue

  ‘There exists …’: Victor Hugo, Les Misérables. Translated by Norman Denny, London, 1982, p. 317.

  ‘Well!’ he wanted …: J. Wardroper, The World of William Hone, London, 1997, p. 22.

  ‘He didn’t …’: T. F. Fremantle Diary, 13 June 1815, D-FR/82/1-14, Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies.

  ‘And what should …’: Rudyard Kipling, ‘The English Flag’, St James’s Gazette, 3 April 1891.

  The Tiger is Out

  ‘The pilot who …’: G. Ticknor, Life, Letters and Journals Vol 1, Cambridge, Mass., 1876, p. 49.

  ‘May security, confidence …’: Adam Zamoyski, Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna, London, 2007, p. 418.

  ‘What times …’: H. Piozzi, The Piozzi Letters. Eds E. & L. Bloom, London, 1989, Vol V, pp. 339–44.

  ‘God knows how …’: Glasgow Herald, 17 March 1815.

  ‘What a dreadful …’: Sir Samuel Romilly, Memoir of Sir Samuel Romilly, London, 1818, V
ol 3, p. 160.

  ‘In 1814 a war …’: Henry Cockburn, Memorials of his Time, London & Edinburgh, 1856, pp. 168–70.

  ‘All the town …’: James Nasmyth: An Autobiography. Ed. Samuel Smiles, London, 1891, p. 59.

  ‘We are at …’: Liverpool Mercury, 24 March 1815.

  ‘I am for …’: W. Derry, Dr. Parr: A Portrait of the Whig Dr. Johnson, Oxford, 1966, p. 299.

  ‘vain, insolent …’: Benjamin Haydon, Autobiography of Benjamin Robert Haydon. Ed. Edmund Blunden, Oxford, 1927, p. 284.

  ‘I don’t much …’: Charles Lamb, The Complete Correspondence and Works of Charles Lamb, London, 1868, Vol I, p. 234.

  ‘It seems …’: Morning Chronicle, 26 September 1796.

  ‘When pressed …’: H. C. Robinson, Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson. Ed. T. Sadler, London, 1869, Vol I, p. 250.

  ‘Dear God! …’: William Wordsworth, ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge’, September 1802. Works, London, 1994, p. 269.

  Midnight: Belgium

  ‘he cannot live …’: C. A. Eaton, Waterloo Days: The Narrative of an Englishwoman Resident in Brussels in June, 1815, p. 56.

  There had always been …: Cockburn, p. 258.

  ‘He was the …’: Elizabeth Grant, Memoirs of a Highland Lady, Edinburgh, 1988, Vol II, p. 50.

  ‘On us who saw …’: J. Playfair, The Life of Dr. Hutton, Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1805, reprinted 1997, p. 72.

  ‘We divided …’: Lady Magdalene De Lancey, A Week at Waterloo in 1815. Ed. Major B. R. Ward, London, 1906, p. 27.

  ‘To tell you the truth …’: Ibid., p. 12.

  ‘on his way out …’: Ibid.

  ‘I never passed …’: Ibid., p. 40.

  ‘We little dreamt …’: Ibid., p. 43.

  ‘I saw an aide …’: Ibid.

  ‘he was safe …’: Ibid., p. 46.

  1 a.m.: Cut

  ‘Child Roland …’: William Hazlitt, ‘The Life of Napoleon’, Selected Writings. Ed. John Cook, Oxford, 1991, p. 240.

  ‘dumb, inarticulate …’: Hazlitt, ‘My First Acquaintance With Poets’, ibid., p. 211.

  ‘like a stream …’: Ibid., p. 213.

  ‘I had no notion …’: Ibid., p. 211.

  ‘pollute the air …’: T. Paulin, The Day Star of Liberty, London, 1998, p. 179.

  ‘to be a true …’: Hazlitt, ‘Illustrations of The Times Newspaper’, Selected Writings, p. 52.

  ‘Hating,’ he acknowledged …: Ibid., p. 52.

  ‘shut up in …’: ‘My First Acquaintance With Poets’, ibid., p. 212.

  2 a.m.: Dance of Death

  ‘hope, confidence …’: Eaton, p. 13.

  ‘Old men …’: Ibid., p. 40.

  ‘It was a solemn …’: Ibid., p. 59.

  ‘The Brunswickers are …’: Augustus Frazer, Letters of Colonel Sir Augustus Frazer, KCB. Ed. Major-Gen. E. Sabine, London, 1859, p. 550.

  ‘Duchess, you may …’: Elizabeth Longford, Wellington: The Years of the Sword, London, 1969, p. 416.

  ‘Nobody can guess …’: Ibid., p. 411.

  ‘Our movements …’: G. G. Stonestreet, British Library, Add Mss 61805.

  ‘as it was the place …’: Longford, p. 417.

  ‘There was the sound …’: George Gordon Byron, Lord, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto III, Stanzas XXI–XXIII, The Poetical Works of Lord Byron, London, 1855, Vol 1, p. 96.

  ‘Soon afterwards …’: Eaton, p. 21.

  ‘Where indeed …’: Frazer, p. 550.

  ‘In no battle …’: E. Cotton, A Voice from Waterloo, London, 1862, p. 30.

  3 a.m.: A Dying World

  ‘Within the bay …’: Bill Lawson, Harris in History and Legend, Edinburgh, 2002, p. 68.

  ‘All the broad …’: Ibid., p. 9.

  ‘At the time …’: The National Archives of Scotland, JC 26/370.

  ‘That albeit …’: Ibid.

  4 a.m.: I Wish It Was Fit

  ‘What a sight …’: William Wheeler, The Letters of Private Wheeler. Ed. B. H. Liddell Hart, London, 1951, p. 169.

  ‘It was as bad …’: Cotton, p. 25.

  ‘another truant …’: George Keppel, Earl of Albemarle, Fifty Years of My Life, London, 1876, Vol I, p. 351.

  ‘plenty of us …’: Sir Henry Keppel, A Sailor’s Life under Four Sovereigns, London, 1899, p. 1.

  ‘Holding the King’s …’: Albemarle, Vol II, p. 4.

  ‘terrible licking …’: Ibid., p. 42.

  ‘afterwards General …’: Ibid., p. 16.

  ‘had hardly …’: Ibid., p. 13.

  ‘Well, Pearce …’: Ibid., p. 18.

  5 a.m.: A Trellis of Roses

  ‘The writer who …’: The Examiner, 18 June 1815.

  ‘mawkish, unmanly …’: Fiona MacCarthy, Byron: Life and Legend, London, 2002, p. 431.

  ‘Adonis in loveliness …’: Nicholas Roe, Fiery Heart: The First Life of Leigh Hunt, London, 2005, p. 163.

  ‘I turned it …’: Leigh Hunt, The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt. Ed. J. E. Morpurgo, London, 1948, p. 243.

  ‘mudshine’: The Examiner, 1 January 1815.

  ‘Capt. Bontein …’: The Examiner, 18 June 1815.

  ‘It is well known …’: Ibid.

  6 a.m.: The Billy Ruffian

  ‘The following account …’: The Alfred, June 1815.

  ‘small rain …’: Log of the Bellerophon, The National Archives, Adm 51/2024.

  7 a.m.: Le Loup de Mer

  ‘Lord Gambier’s plan …’: David Cordingley, Cochrane the Dauntless, London, 2007, p. 216.

  ‘His Lordship’s …’: Donald Thomas, Cochrane: Britannia’s Last Sea King, London, 1978, p. 187.

  ‘the goodness of Him …’: Ibid., p. 188.

  ‘I have the honour …’: Ibid., p. 212.

  ‘partiality, misrepresentation …’: Cordingley, p. 259.

  ‘You have before had …’: Ibid., p. 246.

  ‘His appearance …’: Robinson, Vol I, p. 226.

  ‘I will never …’: Cordingley, p. 248.

  ‘according to the …’: Ibid., p. 250.

  ‘justice he wanted’: Thomas, p. 259.

  8 a.m.: The ‘Article’

  ‘It is very difficult …’: The Examiner, 18 June 1815.

  ‘When Greek meets …’: Frazer, p. 539.

  ‘hundred times …’: Wheeler, p. 160.

  ‘I never remember …’: Ibid., p. 161.

  ‘By God! …’: Thomas Creevey, The Creevey Papers. Ed. Sir Herbert Maxwell, London, 1903, p. 228.

  ‘in the expression of …’: Wheeler, p. 170.

  ‘As much as …’: Ibid., p. 148.

  ‘When I look …’: Ibid., p. 158.

  ‘called Legion …’: Edmund Blunden, Introduction to Sir Fabian Ware’s The Immortal Heritage: An Account of the Work and Policy of the Imperial War Graves Commission during Twenty Years, 1917–1937, London, 1937, p. x.

  They waited …: A. Lagden and J. Sly, The 2/73rd at Waterloo: Being a Roll of All Ranks Present, Brightlingsea, 1998.

  9 a.m.: Carrot and Stick

  company or fun …: Fremantle, 18 June 1815.

  ‘The teachers are …’: E. Grindrod, Rules for Altrincham Methodist Sunday School, 1815, Greater Manchester County Record Office, C18/10/2/3/1.

  ‘What is the people?’: Hazlitt, ‘What are the People?’, p. 3.

  ‘disgusting’ and ‘unsubdued passions’: E. H. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, London, 1981, p. 441.

  ‘The Scholars must …’: MCRO c/18/10/2/3/1.

  ‘for the purpose’: Ibid.

  ‘more lowly path …’: Thompson, p. 442.

  ‘Break their wills …’: Ibid., p. 412.

  ‘I have left …’: Ibid., p. 90.

  ‘Believe me …’: T. W. Wansbrough, An Authentic Narrative of the Conduct of Elizabeth Fenning, by the Gentleman who attended her, London, 1815, p. 26.

  10 a.m.: The Sinews of War

  ‘some providential acc
ident …’: Gronow, Frederick Llewellyn, Waterloo Recollections, Leonaur, 2007, p. 111.

  ‘Early in June …’: Ibid., p. 107.

  ‘a continuous wall …’: Ibid., p. 112.

  ‘On the opposite …’: Wheatley, p. 63.

  ‘longed to see …’: Alessandro Barbero, The Battle: A New History of the Battle of Waterloo, London, 2006, p. 90.

  ‘swelled-faced …’: Wheatley, p. 64.

  ‘Tom, you are …’: Ed. Christopher Hibbert, A Soldier of the Seventy First, Moreton-in-Marsh, 1996, p. 106.

  ‘I have often heard …’: Wheeler, p. 153.

  ‘For the second time …’: Captain John Blackman, Captain J. H. Blackman Papers, National Army Museum, 1988-07-52.

  ‘tranquil and composed …’: Frazer, p. 543.

  ‘It is an awful …’: Wheatley, p. 64.

  ‘It will be lower …’: John Cam Hobhouse, Recollections of a Long Life, London, 1910, Vol I, p. 299.

  It was ‘strange’: Nick Foulkes, Dancing into Battle: A Social History of the Battle of Waterloo, London, 2006, p. 194.

  ‘A ball’: Wheatley, p. 64.

  11 a.m.: The Sabbath

  ‘dust and bustle …’: R. & S. Wilberforce, Life of William Wilberforce, London, 1838, Vol IV, p. 261.

  ‘In my last …’: Thomas Chalmers, CHA-6.16.91, New College Edinburgh.