The rain
was tremendous--the sky looked like that in Poussin's picture of the
Deluge, and a heavy black cloud spread, like the wings of a monstrous
vulture, over Brussels. The wounded continued to arrive the whole of
Saturday night and Sunday morning, in a condition which defies
description. They appeared to have been dragged for miles through oceans
of mud; their clothes were torn, their caps and feathers cut to pieces,
and their shoes and boots trodden off. The accounts they brought were
vague and disheartening--in fact, we could only ascertain that the Duke
of Wellington had late on Saturday taken up his position at Waterloo,
and that there he meant to wait the attack of the French. That this
attack had commenced we needed not to be informed, as the roar of the
cannon became every instant more distinct, till we even fancied that it
shook the town. The wounded represented the field of battle as a perfect
quagmire, and their appearance testified the truth of their assertions.
About two o'clock a fresh alarm was excited by the horses, which had
been put in requisition to draw the baggage-wagons, being suddenly
galloped through the town. We fancied this a proof of defeat, but the
fact was simply thus: the peasants, from whom the horses had been taken,
finding the drivers of the wagons absent from their posts, seized the
opportunity to cut the traces, and gallop off with their cattle.
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