Notes and Reminiscences of a Staff Officer: Chiefly Relating to the Waterloo Campaign and to St. Helena Matters During the Captivity of NapoleonE. P. Dutton & Company, 1903 - 218 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
Admiral afterwards aide-de-camp allied appeared army artillery asked attack battalion battle bayonets became Belgian Bertrand Blücher body Bonaparte British troops Brunswick Brussels cannon Captain cavalry chaussée Colonel Lowe command corps Corsican Rangers course Cuirassiers Delancey despatch division Duke Duke's Dutch duty Emperor enemy enemy's English feel fell felt field fire Forsyth France French Genappe Gneisenau Gourgaud Governor ground guns headquarters honour horses Hougomont infantry island James Town knew La Haye Sainte Lady Lowe Ligny Longwood look Lord Lowe's ment miles military Mont St Jean Montholon morning musket Muttlebury Napoleon never Ninove Nivelles numbers O'Meara observe occasion Paris passed Peninsula person Picton poor fellows position present Prussians Quatre Bras rank rear regiment riding road rode scene seemed seen sent Sir George Sir Hudson Lowe soldiers soon St Helena staff officer thought tion told waggons Wavre Wellington wounded
Popular passages
Page 15 - And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves, Dewy with nature's tear-drops as they pass, Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves, Over the unreturning brave, — alas! Ere evening to be trodden like the grass...
Page 60 - You are aware how useful he has always been to me, and how much I shall feel the want of his assistance, and what a regard and affection I feel for him ; and you will readily believe how much concerned I am for his misfortune. Indeed, the losses I have sustained have quite broken me down ; and I have no feeling for the advantages we have acquired.
Page 214 - ... your rare military talents, your profound judgment on the great operations of war, and your imperturbable sangfroid in the day of battle. These rare qualities and your honourable character will link me to you eternally.
Page 201 - ... own aggrandizement, involve nations in strife. War is in itself an unmitigated curse. It is indeed the abomination of desolation. It may impose upon the imagination with all its proud pomp and circumstance, and few sights can be conceived of more thrilling interest than the march of a great army in compact array. But follow that army to the battle-field. See it after the shock of conflict, when • the clash of swords is over and the artillery has ceased to thunder. Listen to the cries of the...
Page 82 - For he shall deliver thee from the snare of the hunter : and from the noisome pestilence. 4 He shall defend thee under his wings, and thou shalt be safe under his feathers : his failhfumosss and truth shall be thy shield and buckler.
Page 169 - Either the charge is in the last degree false and calumnious, or you can have no possible excuse for having hitherto suppressed it. "In either case, and without adverting to the general tenor of your conduct as stated in your letter, my Lords consider you to be an improper person to continue in His Majesty's service, and they have directed your name to be erased from the list of naval surgeons accordingly.
Page 197 - ... philosophy the right to think that if he had not been master of the world by the concurrence of circumstances with the force of his genius, he might have been an ordinary soul in some private condition of life. He perpetually identified himself with the part he had to play. This monologue of six years which he addressed to the world from the summit of his rock, and the most trivial words of which were registered by his courtiers to be transmitted to his myrmidons as a gospel of party, was nothing...
Page 166 - There are perhaps few, if any, public administrations of any kind, of which the records are so full and complete as those of my Government at St. Helena. There is not only a detailed correspondence addressed to the proper department of His Majesty's Government, reporting the occurrences of almost every day during the five years that Napoleon Bonaparte remained under my custody, but the greater part of the conversations held with Bonaparte himself, or with his followers, was immediately noted down...
Page 168 - ... with him, conversing for hours together with me alone, both in his own house and grounds and at Longwood, either in my own room, or under the trees and elsewhere. On some of these occasions he made to me observations upon the benefit which would result to Europe from the death of Napoleon Bonaparte, of which event he spoke in a manner which, considering his situation and mine, was peculiarly distressing to me.
Page 165 - As regards Napoleon, if I know anything of myself, my sympathies were in his favour. I cannot now sufficiently express my admiration of his genius ; but neither can I blind myself to the fact that he did not exhibit in misfortune that magnanimity without which there is no real greatness, and that he concentrated the energies of his mighty intellect on the ignoble task of insulting the Governor of St. Helena and manufacturing a case of hardship and oppression for himself.