An able critic in the “Saturday Review” of May 10, 1902, has charged me with neglecting to say that the French left wing (Foy’s and Bachelu’s divisions) supported the French cavalry at the close of the great charges.  I stated (p. 502) that French infantry was not “at hand to hold the ground which the cavaliers seemed to have won.”  Let me cite the exact words of General Foy, written in his Journal a few days after the battle (M.  Girod de L’Ain’s “Vie militaire du General Foy,” p. 278):  “Alors que la cavalerie francaise faisait cette longue et terrible charge, le feu de notre artillerie etait deja moins nourri, et notre infanterie ne fit aucun mouvement.  Quand la cavalerie fut rentree, et que l’artillerie anglaise, qui avait cesse de tirer pendant une demi-heure, eut recommence son feu, on donna ordre aux divisions Foy et Bachelu d’avancer droit aux carres qui s’y etaient avances pendant la charge de cavalerie et qui ne s’etaient pas replies.  L’attaque fut formee en colonnes par echelons de regiment, Bachelu formant les echelons les plus avances.  Je tenis par ma gauche a la haie [de Hougoumont]:  j’avais sur mon front un bataillon en tirailleurs.  Pres de joindre les Anglais, nous avons recu un feu tres vif de mitraille et de mousqueterie.  C’etait une grele de mort.  Les carres ennemis avaient le premier rang genoux en terre et presentaient une haie de baionettes.  Les colonnes de la 1’re division ont pris la fuite les premieres:  leur mouvement a entraine celui de mes colonnes.  En ce moment j’ai ete blesse....”

This shows that the advance of the French infantry was far too late to be of the slightest use to the cavalry.  The British lines had been completely re-formed.

FOOTNOTES TO VOLUME I: 

[Footnote 1:  From a French work, “Moeurs et Coutumes des Corses” (Paris, 1802), I take the following incident.  A priest, charged with the duty of avenging a relative for some fourteen years, met his enemy at the gate of Ajaccio and forthwith shot him, under the eyes of an official—­who did nothing.  A relative of the murdered man, happening to be near, shot the priest.  Both victims were quickly buried, the priest being interred under the altar of the church, “because of his sacred character.”  See too Miot de Melito, “Memoires,” vol. i., ch. xiii., as to the utter collapse of the jury system in 1800-1, because no Corsican would “deny his party or desert his blood.”]

[Footnote 2:  As to the tenacity of Corsican devotion, I may cite a curious proof from the unpublished portion of the “Memoirs of Sir Hudson Lowe.”  He was colonel in command of the Royal Corsican Rangers, enrolled during the British occupation of Corsica, and gained the affections of his men during several years of fighting in Egypt and elsewhere.  When stationed at Capri in 1808 he relied on his Corsican levies to defend that island against Murat’s attacks; and he did not rely in vain.  Though confronted by a French Corsican regiment, they remained true to their salt, even during a truce, when they could recognize their compatriots.  The partisan instinct was proof against the promises of Murat’s envoys and the shouts even of kith and kin.]