by Foster, R E
Contemporaries were divided as to the merits or otherwise of La Butte du Lion. The Reverend William Falconer, who observed the mound as a work in progress in 1825, thought that it disturbed the dead. This did not prevent him from picking up a rib disturbed by the work, though he did put it down again only to discover the next day that a less respectful visitor ‘had probably secured it as a relic’. Wellington was also unimpressed. Like Falconer, he first saw the mound in 1825 when guiding a Mrs Parnther over the battlefield. This seems the most likely occasion for his supposed remark that, ‘They have spoiled my Battle-field.’267 Belgians were also less than enamoured. In 1830, on gaining independence, there were rumours that some would attempt to destroy the lion, which they regarded as a symbol of their having had to live under a Dutch yoke as part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands since 1815. Above all, inevitably, it was the French who objected to the ‘modern pyramid’. Monsieur Saintine related to his compatriots in 1829 that the lion was ‘looking towards, and apparently threatening’ France. But most tourists loved it, for the panoramic vantage point it afforded of the battlefield. By 1830, map sellers and two women selling cakes, wine and gin were on the lion’s pedestal to greet them.268 Such was the genesis of what would become known as Le Hameau du Lion.
The erection of official allied memorials on the battlefield prompted the Morning Post to ask why, ‘England, that supplied the transcendent Genius who planned, and the main bulk of the heroic army who achieved that most glorious victory – England is the only nation whose triumphs rest unrecorded by a single national monument.’ By the same date, regret had also been expressed that there was no official act of remembrance each 18 June, pointing out that in Belgium, public officials attended Te Deums in the principal churches:
We love these patriotic rites to the shades of departed heroes […] Why do we suffer the great day in question, to pass by unheeded in the march of time? Why is not some national solemnity appointed to mark its return? Some public scenes at which children may learn to lisp the name of Wellington, and prattle, even in their sports, of Waterloo!269
An editorial suggested one possible answer: ‘In times of peace, we are certainly not fond of recurring to the triumph of war in a public way, as we would not wish to excite any angry feeling in the bosom of those once respected as gallant enemies but now esteemed as honourable friends.’ For a few others at least, the reluctance to celebrate 18 June stemmed from the belief that Waterloo had marked the triumph of ancien régime ideals and the government (of which Wellington had become a member), to which they were opposed. There had always been some who thought that the Duke had been the instrument of those intent on upholding despotism. Byron, for one, asked:
And I shall be delighted to learn who,
Save you and yours, have gained by Waterloo?270
Those who agreed with him included Robert Waithman, who became MP for the City of London in June 1818. He proclaimed at a celebratory dinner in his honour that, ‘The Battle of Waterloo was the Ministers’ battle, in which neither this country nor the Continent gained any benefit [great applause].’ Similarly, John Cam Hobhouse, who only narrowly lost the 1819 Westminster by-election, refuted allegations that he had referred to ‘the carnage of Mont St Jean’ but ‘would content himself with remarking, that British soldiers had never been employed on a more unfortunate occasion than the battle of Waterloo’. And at a dinner in Edinburgh to remember Charles James Fox’s birthday, Lord Erskine told assembled guests that Britain found itself ‘even after a kind of miracle in our favour, at the battle of Waterloo, in a state of Europe far less favourable to our prosperity, than probably would have been its condition if we had left France, in the beginning of her Revolution’. Certainly it was easier to forge a national consensus about the meaning of Trafalgar: in 1805 a charismatic hero had died in a battle that was won by a Britain fighting against an enemy that planned to invade her.271
Such sentiments, however, did not reflect the popular mainstream. More representative of what was going on was the ironic advice contained in Freeman’s Journal under the headline ‘on the privilege of being disagreeable’. It included the injunction for, ‘All Englishmen travelling on the continent: to shew a due sense of their own superiority, and a becoming recollection of the battle of Waterloo.’272 The truth is that many Britons did continue to commemorate Waterloo, so much so that a disgusted French press was complaining at the end of the 1820s that were they to mark their martial triumphs on the same scale ‘there would be no end to them’. Though church services were relatively rare, church bells were commonly rung on 18 June in British towns and cities from Scotland to Cornwall. By 1821 too, there were public memorials inside St Paul’s Cathedral to Lord James Hay (General Maitland’s youthful aide-de-camp who had died at Quatre Bras), and Sir William Ponsonby and Sir Thomas Picton, the senior generals who had fallen. The latter was also remembered by an obelisk to him near Carmarthen. Opened to the public on Waterloo Day 1828, 10,000 had attended the ceremony to mark the laying of the foundation stone on 16 August 1825. Picton’s Waterloo medal was placed beneath it. And though the long-talked about Waterloo column failed to materialise, the memorial initiated before Waterloo by the ladies of England was completed. Dedicated to Wellington ‘and his brave companions in arms’, an 18-foot statue of Achilles, its head said to have been based on the Duke’s, was unveiled in Hyde Park on Waterloo Day 1822. Cast from cannon taken at Vitoria, Salamanca, Toulouse and Waterloo, it was the first public statue in London of a nude male. Offended sensibilities were mollified by the addition of a strategically-placed fig leaf.273
It was, however, celebration rather than commemoration that was the salient feature of each 18 June. In London the best known event was the fete held in Vauxhall Gardens. That which took place in 1827 was ‘one of the most grand and extraordinary perhaps ever witnessed in this country’. The centrepiece was a re-enactment of the battle on a site of several acres – which became known as the Waterloo Grounds – with underground gas pipes used to provide fire. Many veterans took part. The following year local residents complained that the noise was a ‘moral nuisance’ that ‘could only be compared to the cannonading of a town’.274 The only regular event to rival it was J. M. Amherst’s The Battle of Waterloo, staged at Astley’s Amphitheatre from 1824. It provided the perfect vehicle for the famous equestrian performer, Andrew Ducrow, who had taken over the business from its eponymous founders. Running initially for 144 nights, it was destined to be revived for over half a century. Both Vauxhall and Astley’s, however, were eclipsed in scale by the one-off regatta on the Thames organised by the Duke of Clarence as Lord High Admiral on Waterloo Day 1828, purportedly the first event of its kind since the reign of Charles II. Wellington, who at various times attended both Vauxhall and Astley’s, arrived at 4.30 p.m. He was ‘hailed by loud cheers’ from vast crowds on either bank as he was rowed to the state cabin of Clarence’s barge.275
In the provinces, travelling panoramas of the battle remained popular. One, consisting of ten scenes painted on 10,000 square feet of canvas, complete with a piper from Waterloo, could be viewed in Glasgow until it closed early in 1821. A decade later, Mr Laidlaw’s panorama in Brighton proved ‘a resistless magnet with the military, and their many friends cannot but be influenced by their example’.276 Waterloo Day itself became an obvious midsummer date to choose for other celebratory events. In 1819, for example, 18 June was chosen to open a new stretch of the Lancaster Canal; in 1825 the day was picked to launch steam packets at Liverpool and Chester. Somewhat incongruously, the annual Maying at St Cross near Winchester was also moved to 18 June to mark Waterloo.277 Meanwhile, near Chelmsford in 1825, a Waterloo veteran named Mr Graham chose 18 June to ascend in a balloon: ‘It is to be hoped that his courage will in future be guided with more prudence,’ noted a concerned editorial. Such admonitions did not deter a Mr Green from undertaking a similar stunt near Exeter on 18 June 1828 during which, for reasons best known to himself, he despatched a cat safely to ground
via a parachute.278
Above all, ordinary Britons took advantage of 18 June as an opportunity to eat, drink and make merry. There were public dinners in Aberdeen, a ball and supper at Ipswich; the people of Pontefract held a dinner dance to celebrate the completion of their Waterloo monument.279 Military personnel regularly played host: in 1826, Colonel Horner and the officers of the North Somerset Yeomanry Cavalry patronised a grand gala event at the Sydney Gardens in Bath; in 1832 an estimated 400 attended the fancy dress ball and dinner given by the Plymouth garrison. Soldiers might in their turn be feted by locals: detachments of the Scots Greys were entertained at Ipswich in 1825.280 A typical statement of what they all believed themselves to be celebrating – the quasi-myth of Waterloo as a purely British victory – was given eloquent expression by an editorial in the Morning Post to mark the battle’s tenth anniversary. It was, the paper said, one ‘which seemed to absorb and eclipse all the former triumphs of our arms, by its splendour and the importance of its results, and which shed a lustre on Old England and unparalleled perhaps in the annals of the world’.281
As well as being sponsors and guests at public gatherings, the military also marked Waterloo Day with its own series of events. Those on duty on 18 June wore laurel leaves in their caps. Those who had actually fought in the campaign were excused duty and received an extra day’s pay. With over 70 per cent of officers who had served in the campaign (1,646 of 2,281), still in the army in 1827 it comes as no surprise to learn that many dined together, for example those from three regiments of the Guards who met in London’s Thatched House Tavern that year.282 One supposes that such occasions were more given over to reflection than most. A few were explicitly so. Arguably the most notable occurred in 1829. Sixteen veterans of the 92nd processed behind a piper from their barracks in Limerick to Sir Denis Pack’s grave in County Kilkenny. Here they placed laurel on the grave of the man (Pack died in 1823), in whose brigade they had served at Waterloo.283
Their unusual act of remembrance concluded, however, the sixteen veterans conformed to the far more typical programme of dinner where, ‘animated by an ample supply of mountain dew, the brave fellows passed a delightful evening, and “fought their battles o’er again, and told how fields were won”’. Mountain dew, in its various alcoholic forms, seems to have been the absolute prerequisite for any gathering of Waterloo veterans. Most passed off unremarkably. Even some excesses were reported with an indulgent pen. In 1826, after a suitably liquid commemoration of 18 June, a private who had served with the 42nd in 1815 appeared before magistrates in Marlborough Street. He was charged with being drunk in the streets, and had refused the watchman’s entreaties to go home ‘saying that he had been at Waterloo, and as he had not been compelled to retreat there, he would not fly before a watchman’. The magistrates offered to let him go if he would promise not to get drunk again before the following 18 June. The veteran thought this impossible ‘for there is the Anniversary of the battle of Vitoria to come, then that of Salamanca, and – but I cannot recollect them all, but I must get drunk upon those days, and then, you see, we shall have the battle of Waterloo round by then. This is the effect of being always victorious.’284
Similar episodes were not always so amusing. On Waterloo Day 1816, Benjamin Twigg and John Moody were amongst twenty celebrating at The White Lion near the Tower of London. Drawn into an argument by a Spanish sailor, they were both fatally stabbed. Sadly, this example of alcohol-induced violence was not unique. Exactly five years later, five soldiers were charged with the murder of William Cogle, who died from his injuries following a heated altercation in Westminster. The coroner’s jury expressed regret that ‘during the last two Anniversaries of the Battle of Waterloo, the drunken and disorderly conduct of the soldiery in this neighbourhood has excited considerable alarm’. The Duke of York ordered that troops should be confined to barracks for future celebrations.285 It made little difference. In 1823, dragoons stationed in Canterbury met, appropriately enough, at The Duke of Wellington ‘to regale themselves, and talk over the merits of the battle: after some little time, they were joined by others, principally broom-dashers, and both parties got into warm altercation; at length, each man arming himself with whatever came first to hand, a desperate fight ensued, and many of them were most severely bruised’.286 For all that he was criticised for it, there was some substance in Wellington’s contention that British soldiers were ‘the scum of the earth […] fellows who have all enlisted for drink’.287
Such stories only received the amount of column inches they did because the participants had been at Waterloo. To have survived the battle and then still be cut down prematurely was deemed a newsworthy bitter irony. Shortly before Christmas 1825, Major Whitefoord, a captain in the 15th Hussars at Waterloo, who carried a bullet inside him from the day, was killed in a shooting accident near Ipswich when his friend slipped and discharged his gun. A Lieutenant Grant, who had led the charge of the 42nd Highlanders, was run over and killed by a stagecoach on or about Waterloo Day 1827.288 And the battle itself was still numbering its victims, for several veterans who died during the 1820s were said to have succumbed to injuries sustained in 1815. Lieutenant W. P. Fortescue of the 47th died in June 1821 after a ‘decline brought on by a severe wound through the body, received at the battle of Waterloo’. In 1828, R. Bamford Hesketh of the 3rd Guards died in Denbighshire ‘after a long and painful illness from a wound sustained at Waterloo’. But none was as stoical as William Addiss, a former grenadier from Herefordshire, who died in Dublin on Waterloo Day 1822. As he slipped away, he bade his mother decorate his room with laurel and wore his medal – which he asked to be placed on his coffin. His last reported words were ‘that it was a day on which a soldier ought to be proud to die’.289
Even for those who survived Waterloo and had left the army, the fact of their having served in the campaign meant that they remained of public interest. Few can have led such an esoteric existence, however, as Mr Thompson, billed in 1821 as a 7-foot Scottish giant who had fought at Waterloo, and who was one of five ‘natural curiosities’ who could be viewed during market week in Derby. More predictably, a good number found temporary or permanent employment in the various fields of law enforcement. Several Waterloo veterans were amongst those sworn in as special constables at the end of 1823, including one who had survived forty-three sabre wounds in the battle. John Briggs of the 1st Life Guards found a new life as lodge turnkey at Worcester Jail until his death in November 1826. At Waterloo he had been one of those who had helped carry Lord Uxbridge from the field. Professional policing offered another obvious opening. Best known is Charles Rowan. He had attended the Duchess of Richmond’s ball and served with the 52nd Light Infantry at Waterloo. In 1829 he was appointed Senior Commissioner of the newly created Metropolitan Police.290 A decade later he was one of a three-man royal commission whose report led to the creation of county constabularies.
Other veterans found themselves on the wrong side of the law, proof of the truth of Wellington’s warning to Croker a month after Waterloo that ‘every man you see in a military uniform is not a hero’. One was found guilty of bigamy at the Sussex assizes in 1818. In August 1819 Ralph Wright was found guilty of rioting in Macclesfield. Two more were sent from Huddersfield to York Prison charged with treason in April 1820. In September 1823 Robert Gill was hanged at York Castle for robbery; George Pitchford was executed at Warwick in 1824 for coining base money. Two years later, John Sutton and William Butt were found guilty of poaching on Lord Stamford’s estate and shooting at his gamekeeper, whilst in 1829 John Wilson was convicted of burgling a Cambridge widow.291 Some of these instances, at least, were the consequence of economic hardship or political Radicalism. Others accepted their misfortune stoically. One such was George Thorp. Twice wounded at Waterloo, he found work for a time as a white-metal manufacturer. When he became unemployed, however, his wife and three children ended up in the workhouse, where one child perished. Thorp was eventually put to work breaking stones on the road of Sha
les Moor near Sheffield, but died of weakness in 1827. The press invited donations for his surviving family for, ‘A grateful country cannot now recompense him.’ Even before he died, a desperate Thorp had attempted suicide. At least two other veterans succeeded in doing so in 1830. One of them, Sam Wright, the keeper of the Marylebone watchhouse, had been unable to support his young family.292
A few of the Waterloo ‘heroes’ who remained in the news were drawn from the army’s many female camp followers. One of the most colourful characters known to the London authorities during the 1820s was Ann Jones, better known by her alias ‘Waterloo Tom’. Her husband, who had served with the 7th Light Dragoons, was killed in the battle. She, however, had mounted his horse and rescued a Captain Lance, only to be wounded herself. Subsequently she was granted the not ungenerous pension of 1s 9d daily. In the summer of 1822, however, she was arrested for a ninth time charged with vagrancy in Camberwell and sentenced to a month in Brixton Mill. In 1824 she was sentenced to another month for vagrancy in Chancery Lane. She was arrested for a sixteenth time shortly before Waterloo Day 1825 and by the end of the year was being charged with breaking a pane of glass in a confectioner’s window in Oxford Street. Thereafter she disappears from the record.293