; Russian, thirty per cent.;
Austrian, forty-four per cent.; at Wagram, French, thirteen per cent.;
Austrian, fourteen per cent.; at Moscow, French, thirty-seven per
cent.; Russian, forty-four per cent.; at Bautzen, French, thirteen
cent.; Russian and Prussian, fourteen per cent.; at Waterloo, French,
fifty-six per cent.; allies, thirty-one per cent.--total for Waterloo,
forty-one per cent., or out of one hundred and forty-four thousand
fighting men, sixty thousand killed.
The field of Waterloo has at the present day that calmness which
belongs to the earth, and resembles all plains; but at night, a sort
of a visionary mist rises from it, and if any traveler walk about it,
and listen and dream, like Virgil on the mournful plain of Philippi,
the hallucination of the catastrophe seizes upon him. The frightful
June 18th lives again, the false monumental hill is leveled, the
wondrous lion is dissipated, the battlefield resumes its reality,
lines of infantry undulate on the plain; furious galloping crosses the
horizon; the startled dreamer sees the flash of sabers, the sparkle
of bayonets, the red lights of shells, the monstrous collision of
thunderbolts; he hears like a death groan from the tomb, the vague
clamor of the fantom battle.
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