Knight's store of knowledge for all readers: being a collection of treatises, in various departments of knowledge / by several authors.

  • Knight, Charles, 1791-1873
Date:
[1841]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Knight's store of knowledge for all readers: being a collection of treatises, in various departments of knowledge / by several authors. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    it, on the 1 liU of April, and attacked the lines of the Allies, who lost about 800 men in thisaflair, including General Hay, who was killed, and the general in command. Sir John Hope, who w.is wounded and taken prisoner. General Stopford, of the Guards, was also wounded. On the 30th of April Ix)rd Wellington set olT for Paris, whither he was sent for hy Lord Castlereagh. He left Ge- neral Hill in charge of the army. On the 13th of May he returned to Toulouse, and soon after set oil' for Madrid, wliere “ things were getting on very fast, and the army had already taken difl'erent sides; O'Donnell and Elio for the king, the former having issued a very violent declaration, and Freyre ami the Prince of Anglona for the constitution. I tliink, how- ever, I shall keep them both quiet.”—(‘ Dispatches,’ xii. p. 18.) On the 2r)th of May he wrote from Madrid to Sir Charles Stuart:—“You will have heard of the extraordinary occur- rences here, though not probably with surprise. Nothing can be more popular than the king and his measures, as far as they have gone to the overthrow of the Constitution. The im- prisonment of the Liberates is thought by some, 1 believe with justice, unnecessary, and it is certainly highly impolitic; but it is liked by the people at large However, I ar- rived only yesterday, and I have not had time to learn much. Those to whom I have talked, who pretend and ought to know, say that his majesty will certainly perform the promise made in his decree of the ‘1th of May, and will give a free constitu- tion to Spain. I have urged and shall continue to urge this measure upon them, as very essential to his majesty’s credit abroad.” In a subsequent letter to Lord Castlereagh, dated 1st of June, he says :—“ I have been very well received by the king and his ministers, but I fear that I have done very little good.” He repeats a conversation he had with the Duke de San Carlos, in which he urged the necessity of the king govern- ing on liberal principles; and he thus ends :—“ The fact is that there are no public men in this country who are ac- quainted either with the interests or the wishes of the country ; and they are so slow in their motions that it is impossible to do anything with them.’’ On the 11th of June Lord Wellington was again with his army at Bordeaux,'giving orders for the evacuation of France by the allied troops. On the Mth of June he issued his fare- well general orders to the army (‘ Dispatches,’ xii. p. 62); (he had been created a Duke on the 10th of May). On the 23rd of June the Duke of Wellington arrived in London, and on the 28th received in his place in the House of Peers the thanks of that House, and on the 1st of July he received likewise the thanks of the House of Commons, through the Speaker. In the following August he proceeded to Paris as Ambassador of Great Britain to the King of France. Campaign of Waterloo, 1815.—In the month of January the Duke of Wellington repaired to Yieiina to attend the general Congress of the European powers. In the beginning of March, Napoleon, having escaped from Elba, landed at Cannes, on tlie French coast, and from thence marched to Paris, without meeting any obstacle (Louis X VIII. withdrew to Ghent). On the 13th of March the ministers of the eight powers assembled at Yienna, including the miinsters of the King of France, signed a paper, by which they declared Bonaparte an outlaw, a violator of treaties, and a disturber of the peace of the world, and delivering him over to public justice, “ vindicte publique. — (‘ Dispatches,’ xii., 269, 352.) At the same time they declared that’ they would maintain inviolate the treaty of Paris of the 30th of May, 18M. At the begin- ning of April the Duke of Wellington repaired to Brussels to examine the military state of affairs on tliat frontier. An Eng- lish army was assembled in Flanders, including the Hano- verian Legion, and was joined by the troops of the King of the Netherlands, of the Duke of Brunswick, and of the Prince of Nassau ; and the chief command of the whole was given to the Duke of Wellington. In all, he had about 76,000 men under him, of whom 43,000 were British, or Hanoverians in lia British p.ay. Of these, deducting sick, detached, &c., there remained present in the field about 37,000 British and Hano- verians. The head quarters were fixed at Brussels. Marshal Blucher, with the Prussian army, estimated at about 80,000 men, was on the lell of the British ; his head-quarters were at Namur. During the month of May, Bonaparte, by great exertions, collected an army of about 120,000 men, chiefly composed of veterans, on the frontiers of Flanders; and on the 11th ot June he left Paris to take the command. On the L5th the French crossed the Sambre, and marched to Charleroi, the Prussian corps of General Ziethen retiring to Fleurus. Marshal Blil- cher concentrated his army upon Sombref, holding the vil- lages of St. Amand and Ligny in front of his position. The Duke of Wellington marched his army upon Quatre Bras, on the road from Cliarleroi to Brussels. Napoleon attacked Bltl- cher on the IGth, with superior numbers, carried the village of Ligny, and penetrated to the centre of the Prussian position; but the Prussians fought with great gallantry until night, when Blilcher withdrew his army in good order to Wavre. In the mean time the Duke of Wellington, with part of his army, was attacked at Quatre Bras by the 1st and 2nd corps of the French army, commanded by Ney, and a corps of^ cavalry under Keller'mann, which, however, made no impression upon the British position. On the 17th the Duke of Wellington made a retrograde movement upon Waterloo, corresponding to that of Mar- slial Blucher. He took up a position in front of the village of Waterloo, across the high roads from Charleroi and Ni- velles—his right thrown back to a ravine near Merke Brame, and his left extended to a height above the hamlet of Ter la Haye ; and he occupied the house and gardens of Hougoumont, near the Nivelles road, in front of his right centre, and the farm of La Haye Sainte in front of his left centre. The French collected their army, with the exception of the 3rd corps, which had been sent to observe die Prussians, on a range of heights in front of the British position. About 10 o'clock on the moridng of the 18th the French began a fu- rious attack on the post of Hougoumont, which was occupied by a detachment of the Guards, who maintained their ground against all the efl'orU of the enemy throughout the day. There was no manoeuvring on the part of Napoleon on that day. He made repeated attacks on the British position with heavy columns of infantry, supported by a numerous cavalry, and by a deadly fire from his numerous artillery. His attacks were repulsed with great loss on both sides. In one of these attacks the French carried the post of La Haye Sainte, which was occupied by a detachmeirt of Hanoverians, who, having ex- pended all their ammunition, were cut to pieces. Napoleon then ordered his cavalry to attack the British infantry, which formed in squares to receive them. The French cavalry for a time walked about the British squares, as if they had been of the same army, but all their efforts could make no impression on the British infantry, by whose steady fire they were brought down in great numbers. The French cavalry was nearly de- stroyed in these attacks, as well as in a charge from Lord E. Somerset’s brigade of heavy cavalry, consisting of the Life Guards, the Royal Horse Guards, and tire 1st Dragoon Guards, in which the French cuirassiers were completely cut up. At last, about 7 o’clock in the evening, when General Bulow’s Prussian corps began to be engaged uiion the French right, Na- poleon moved forwards his guard, which he had kept in re- serve, to make a last des]:a>rate effort on the British left centre near La Haye Sainte, of which the French had already pos- session. The French guard marched resolutely on in column, with supported anns, under a destructive fire from the British position : they halted at the distance of about 50 yards from the British line, and attempted to deploy, but they became mixed together, whilst uninterrupted discharges of musketry from the British infantry made fearful havoc in their dense mass; they were broken, and gave way down the slope of the hill in irretrievable confusion. On this the Duke of Wellington