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Rh loss of 6932; the Prussians too lost nearly as many; i. e. 6682, and a fitting memorial has been erected for them at Plancenoit. The Germans lost 4494, and the Netherlanders some thousands. The French must have lost over 20,000 in fighting simultaneously against the allied nations.

There have been greater victories in modern warfare, but probably none more important. For in that battle ended the glory of the greatest conqueror of modern times, and the greatest man that the world has ever produced. Alexander conquered vaster kingdoms, because he fought with vast undisciplined forces, and Cæsar won his laurels and victories too against defenceless barbarians. The spectacle of a general fighting against nations equally great and civilized, equally rich and powerful, equally brave and disciplined as his own, fighting them all round with a matchless celerity which baffled all combination, fighting and beating them in every single instance for nearly 20 years, has only once been presented by the world and that was in Napoleon! At Moscow he met his first disaster, at Leipsic he received his first defeat,—at Waterloo he fell, never to rise again.

If any readers find the above account of the battle somewhat tourist-like, I can only inform them in explanation that it was penned, in an atmosphere of smoke, in a humble inn at Waterloo,—in the midst of a running conversation French (and very bad French on my part) with the elderly but amiable landlady who knew all about the battle of course! As soon as it was time for