Waterloo Days by Charlotte A. (Charlotte Anne) Eaton

Author:Charlotte A. (Charlotte Anne) Eaton [Eaton, Charlotte A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781331143246
Google: 0hGmtAEACAAJ
Goodreads: 26996877
Publisher: Forgotten Books
Published: 2015-09-27T00:00:00+00:00

In the failure of taxes and contributions to satisfy his rapacity, he sequestrated a large portion of the funds destined for the annual repair of the dykes and sluices, which in consequence were fast falling to decay; so that had the French Government lasted much longer, Holland might have been no longer a country; it might physically, as well as politically, have ceased to exist, and a tide, even more destructive than the armies of France, have rolled over it and restored it again to the ocean.

Sometimes the faint reports of distant war roused us during our slumbering progress through this soporific country; and Dutch men and Dutch bonnets, and towns and palaces, and universities and museums, and tulips and hyacinths, and even "Orange Boven" itself, were entirely forgotten in the animating and overpowering interest of the triumphant progress of the British arms,—the final fall of the Usurper of France,—and the entrance of the Allied Army, led by the Duke of Wellington, into the gates of Paris.

A sight more affecting than any other that Holland contained we frequently witnessed:—long treckschuyts filled with the wounded Dutch soldiers of Waterloo, mutilated, disabled, sick and suffering, passed us upon the canals, slowly returning to their homes. In many of the towns and villages of Holland, the hospitals were filled with these poor soldiers, to whom the inhabitants showed the most humane and praiseworthy kindness and attention. It is but justice to the Dutch to state, that though their charity began at home it did not end there. Every town and village made contributions for the wounded Belgic and British, as well as for the Dutch, both of money and provisions, including plenty of butter and cheese, together with an enormous supply of ankers of real Hollands, which amused me extremely. I am sure they sent it out of pure love and kindness, anxious, I suppose, that the poor wounded should have plenty of what they liked best themselves; or perhaps they thought that gin, like spermaceti, was "sovereign for an inward bruise."

If Ireland be "the country that owes the most to Nature and the least to Man," Holland is unquestionably the country which owes the most to Man and the least to Nature. I bade it farewell without one feeling of regret: with as little emotion as Voltaire, I could have said—"Adieu! Canaux, Canards, Canaille!"—and after crossing many a tedious and toilsome ferry, and slowly traversing the trackless and sandy desert which separates Bergen-op-Zoom from Antwerp, we left Holland,—I hope, for ever!

Nothing can be imagined more dreary than this journey. One wide extended desert of barren sand surrounded us as far as the eye could reach, in which no trace of man, nor beast, nor human habitation, could be seen. Some bents, thinly scattered upon the hillocks of sand, and occasional groups of stunted fir, through which the wind sighed mournfully, were the only signs of vegetation. Slowly and heavily the horses dragged our cabriolet through these deep sands, choosing their own path as their own sagacity, or that of their driver, directed.

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