was obliged to return. The multitude of carcases, the heaps of wounded men
with mangled limbs unable to move, and perishing from not having their
wounds dressed or from hunger, as the Allies were, of course, obliged to
take their surgeons and waggons with them, formed a spectacle I shall never
forget. The wounded, both of the Allies and the French, remain in an
equally deplorable state.

At Hougoumont, where there is an orchard, every tree is pierced with
bullets. The barns are all burned down, and in the court-yard it is said
they have been obliged to burn upwards of a thousand carcases, an awful
holocaust to the War-Demon.

As nothing is more distressing than the sight of human misery when we are
unable to silence it, I returned as speedily as possible to Bruxelles with
Cowper's lines in my head:

War is a game, which, were their subjects wise,
Kings should not play at.

I hope this battle will, at any rate, lead to a speedy peace.


June 28.

We have no other news from the Allied Army, except that they are moving
forward with all possible celerity in the direction of Paris. You may form
a guess of the slaughter and of the misery that the wounded must have
suffered, and the many that must have perished from hunger and thirst, when
I tell you that all the carriages in Bruxelles, even elegant private
equipages, landaulets, barouches and berlines, have been put in requisition