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  WATERLOO DAYS;

  THE NARRATIVE OF AN ENGLISHWOMAN
  RESIDENT AT BRUSSELS IN JUNE, 1815.

  BY

  CHARLOTTE A. EATON,

  AUTHOR OF "ROME IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY,"
  "AT HOME AND ABROAD,"
  ETC.

  _NEW EDITION._

  WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND APPENDIX
  BY EDWARD BELL, M.A.

  LONDON: GEORGE BELL & SONS, YORK STREET,
  COVENT GARDEN.
  1888.




  LONDON:

  PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
  STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.




INTRODUCTION.[1]


The following little book which was first published within two years
of the events which it describes, was republished in 1852, after some
revision by the author, under the title of "The Days of Battle." It has
now been out of print for a considerable time, but its merits as a very
graphic and interesting description of those few momentous days which
have left their mark on English literature no less than on the history
of Europe, are sufficient, it is believed, to justify its republication
in a popular series.

Though it was first published anonymously as a "Narrative of a few
days' Residence in Belgium with some account of a visit to the field of
Waterloo, by an Englishwoman," it has so much personal interest that
the reader will, doubtless, be glad to know something of its author,
more especially as she is favourably known by other works, and with
other members of her family has claims upon the memory of a younger
generation.

Miss Charlotte Anne Waldie, the lady in question, was born 28
September, 1788, and was the second of three daughters of George
Waldie, Esq., of Hendersyde Park, near Kelso, Roxburghshire, and Forth
House, Newcastle-on-Tyne. There were also two sons, one of whom is
mentioned in the following pages, but they both died without issue.
The eldest daughter, Maria Jane, married in 1812 Mr. Richard Griffith,
the distinguished civil engineer, who was appointed by Government sole
commissioner for the general valuation of Ireland, and was the author
of the famous geological map of that country. After more than forty
years of arduous public service, during a large part of which he was
President of the Board of Works in Ireland, he was created a baronet;
and his son, Sir George R. Waldie-Griffith, inherited Mr. Waldie's
estates.

The youngest of the three sisters, Jane, was an accomplished painter,
and her pictures are to be met with in many institutions in the north
of England. She also had considerable literary talent, and wrote a work
entitled "Sketches descriptive of Italy," which was published in four
volumes in 1820. She married Captain, afterwards Admiral, Watts, of
Langton Grange, near Staindrop, Darlington, but unfortunately died in
early life.

Charlotte, the sister with whom we are chiefly concerned, accompanied
her brother and younger sister, as is hereafter related, on a visit to
Brussels, in June, 1815, when it had temporarily and hastily become the
headquarters of the army under Wellington. The allied forces, as every
one supposed, were to meet and crush Napoleon, who had just returned
from Elba, before he had time to take the offensive. But his movements
were more rapid than had been anticipated, and the Belgian capital,
crowded with non-combatants of both sexes, instead of being merely a
point of departure, suddenly found itself the central point of the seat
of war. The pen of Thackeray has well adapted this dramatic situation
to the purposes of fiction; but in the following pages we have the
circumstances brought before us with all the vividness which actual
experience only can give. A few weeks later the two sisters visited the
field of Waterloo, and a short narrative of the battle written by one,
and illustrated by the pencil of the other, was published anonymously
by Murray, and rapidly went through ten editions.

In the course of the next year the two sisters rejoined their brother
in France, and went on with him to Italy, and it was then, as explained
in the author's preface, that the following account, which incorporated
the previous narrative, made its appearance.

In 1817-18 Miss Charlotte Waldie was again in Italy, and in 1820
published, still anonymously, her best known work, "Rome in the
Nineteenth Century."[2] This work gives the result of her own
experience and observation, and is written in the personal style which,
when it is combined, as in her case it is, with cultivated taste and
sensible criticism, is not to be equalled in interest by any formal
description. Notwithstanding the many changes which recent research
and excavation have wrought in the descriptive topography of Rome the
book is still useful to travellers, and is largely quoted by the latest
popular writer on the subject.[3]

In the same year her sister published her "Sketches in Italy,"
above referred to.