Witnessing Waterloo: 24 Hours, 48 Lives, A World Forever Changed. David Crane

De Lancey’s recall reached them. On assuming command in Brussels, Wellington had wanted as many of his old Peninsula officers as he could muster, and high on his list to replace the wretched quartermaster-general the army had foisted on him was William De Lancey. ‘To tell you the truth, I am not well pleased with the manner in which the Horse Guards have conducted themselves towards me,’ Wellington had complained to Lord Bathurst, the Secretary for War; ‘It will be admitted that the army is not a very good one, and, being composed as it is, I might have expected that the Generals and Staff formed by me in the last war would have been allowed to come to me again; but instead of that, I am overloaded with people I have never seen before; and it appears to be purposely intended to keep those out of my way whom I wished to assist me.’

      The duke would not always get his way with appointments – and the newly married De Lancey was not at all sure he was ready to resume his career at his old rank – but Wellington was ready to fight for him and by 16 April, Major General Torrens was writing to reassure him that his new QMG was ‘on his way out … I told him the very handsome and complimentary manner in which you asked for his services, and assured him that nothing could be so gratifying, in my view of the case, to his military and professional feelings, as the desire you expressed to me of having him again with you.’

      The new Lady De Lancey had followed Sir William south to London and then, on 8 June, across to Brussels where for one brief week they were billeted on the fourth floor of Count de Lannoy’s house overlooking the Parc. De Lancey had been confident even then that it would be another month before there could be any fighting, but the newlyweds were taking no chances with the time they had together, cocooning themselves in a world of their own, walking out only when the rest of Brussels was dining, dining when the rest of Brussels was walking, utterly oblivious to the fears and rumours that filled the air or to the cavalry reviews, assignations and race meetings that made up the lives and the diaries of the rest of Brussels’ British population.

      It was not a regime to make a new bride much liked by fashionable Brussels – especially not the bride of a man as popular as Sir William De Lancey – but that was the last thing to worry Magdalene. In the months to come she would add a faintly pious gloss of gratitude for the memory of these few days together, but there was an unabashedly worldly joy in the way she seized her brief happiness, an implicit sense in everything she said and did that a whole lifetime had to be crushed into these few hours and an entire world into their Brussels rooms. ‘I never passed such a delightful time, for there was always enough of very pleasant society,’ she recalled, ‘I used to sit and think with astonishment of my being transported into such a scene of happiness, so perfect, so unalloyed! – feeling that I was entirely enjoying life – not a moment wasted. How active and how well I was! I scarcely knew what to do with all my health and spirits. Now and then a pang would cross my mind at the prospect of the approaching campaign, but I chased away the thought, resolving not to lose the present bliss by dwelling on the chances of future pain.’

      There had been a ‘small alarm’ on the afternoon of the 14th that had come to nothing, and even deep into the afternoon of Thursday 15th – ‘the happiest’ day of her life it had been until then – the only thing to disturb them was a three-line whip that would take him away from her for the early part of the evening. The De Lanceys had been invited to a ball that night at the Duchess of Richmond’s that they could safely miss, and as they dallied away the afternoon in their rooms overlooking the Parc, putting off the moment when he would have to dress for dinner with General Alava, there seemed no reason to think that that evening or that ball would be any different from any other that filled the aristocratic Brussels life that they had so determinedly avoided. ‘We little dreamt that Thursday was the last we were to pass together, and the storm would burst soon,’ she remembered, ‘Sir William had to dine at the Spanish Ambassador’s, the first invitation he had accepted from the time I went; he was unwilling to go, and delayed and still delayed, till at last when near six, I fastened all his medals and crosses on his coat, helped him to put it on, and he went. I watched at the window till he was out of sight, and then I continued musing on my happy fate; I thought over all that had passed, and how grateful I felt! I had no wish but that this might continue; I saw my husband loved and respected by everyone, my life gliding on, like a gay dream, in his care.’

      She was mistaken. While Wellington’s quartermaster-general idled away the afternoon with his young bride, and the commander of his 4th Division sat in the Richmonds’ garden assuring their daughters that nothing was in the offing, Bonaparte had crossed the border and Charleroi was in French hands. The duke had, in his own words, been ‘Humbugged’. Moving with all his old clandestine speed and decision – the borders had been sealed since 7 June, with coaches immobilised, fishing vessels held in port, letters intercepted – Bonaparte had spent just three days on the road from Paris and by the 14th was with his Army of the North concentrated around Beaumont. On the 15th, the anniversary of Marengo, he had issued his memorable orders of the day and by 11 a.m. was in Charleroi reviewing his advancing troops. Ahead of him, to his right, were the Prussians under Blücher. To the left, scattered across a wide area of the Belgian countryside, Wellington’s army. And between them, guarded only by a small allied force at Quatre Bras, the road to Brussels.

      In his anxiety to escape envelopment Wellington had guessed wrong. No British general likes being separated from the Channel and in his conviction that any attack would come from his western flank he had opened up a gap between the two allied armies. Now all he could do was plug that gap. At five in the afternoon orders were issued for his scattered army to prepare to march, and by seven, as Brussels rang to the first sounds of bugles, Magdalene De Lancey knew that her dream was over. ‘When I had remained at the window nearly an hour,’ she recalled, living again those last moments of happiness before the husband of two months metamorphosed into the soldier and another small, private life was swallowed up in the drama of war, ‘I saw an aide-de-camp ride under the gateway of our house. He sent to enquire where Sir William was dining. I wrote down the name; and soon after I saw him gallop off in that direction. I did not like this appearance, but I tried not to be afraid. A few minutes after, I saw Sir William on the same horse gallop past to the Duke’s, which was a few doors beyond ours. He dismounted and ran into the house, leaving his horse in the middle of the street. I must confess my courage failed me now, and the succeeding two hours formed a contrast to the happy forenoon.’

      At around nine, ‘Sir William came in; seeing my wretched face, he bade me not be foolish, for it would soon be all over now; they expected a great battle on the morrow … He said it would be a decisive battle, and a conclusion of the whole business … He said he should be writing all night, perhaps: he desired me to prepare some strong green tea in case he came in, as the violent exertion requisite to setting the whole army in motion quite stupefied him sometimes. He used sometimes to tell me that whenever operations began, if he thought for five minutes on any other subject, he was neglecting his duty. I therefore scrupulously avoided asking him any questions, or indeed speaking at all. I moved up and down like one stupefied myself.’

      For all Brussels it had been a long, sleepless night, punctuated by the endless reveilles echoing through the streets, by the sounds of aides coming and going, messengers galloping into the darkness, and of an army mustering for war. De Lancey had put in place plans for Magdalene to leave for the safety of Antwerp, but as dawn broke and they stood for the last time at their window together and the last plumed Highland bonnet disappeared through the Namur Gate, and the sound of the bagpipes and fifes finally melted away, Magdalene De Lancey did not need to have gone to school at Siccar Point to fear the worst.

      It would have been strange, in fact, if she had not wondered, as the carriage carrying her and her maid Emma rolled northwards towards Antwerp, whether the intense happiness of those few days in Brussels had only been given her to be snatched away again. Her husband had made her promise though that she would listen to nothing until she had heard directly from him, and for the next two days she was as good as her word, immuring herself in the rooms at the back of the Laboureur Inn, windows tight shut against the world, and telling herself that the sound of cannon was the distant roll of the sea on her family’s Dunglass estate.

      She had stayed up deep into the night on Friday, waiting to learn whether she was a widow or a wife, but no message had come. Through the Saturday, too, as the streets of Antwerp