The loss of the Prussians at Waterloo was not far short of our own.  You would not know it, to read our historians.  And then the abuse of our Belgian allies has been overdone.  Some of them fought splendidly, and one brigade of infantry had a share in the critical instant when the battle was turned.  This also you would not learn from British sources.  Look at our Portuguese allies also!  They trained into magnificent troops, and one of Wellington’s earnest desires was to have ten thousand of them for his Waterloo campaign.  It was a Portuguese who first topped the rampart of Badajos.  They have never had their due credit, nor have the Spaniards either, for, though often defeated, it was their unconquerable pertinacity which played a great part in the struggle.  No; I do not think that we are very amiable partners, but I suppose that all national history may be open to a similar charge.

It must be confessed that Marbot’s details are occasionally a little hard to believe.  Never in the pages of Lever has there been such a series of hairbreadth escapes and dare-devil exploits.  Surely he stretched it a little sometimes.  You may remember his adventure at Eylau—­I think it was Eylau—­how a cannon-ball, striking the top of his helmet, paralyzed him by the concussion of his spine; and how, on a Russian officer running forward to cut him down, his horse bit the man’s face nearly off.  This was the famous charger which savaged everything until Marbot, having bought it for next to nothing, cured it by thrusting a boiling leg of mutton into its mouth when it tried to bite him.  It certainly does need a robust faith to get over these incidents.  And yet, when one reflects upon the hundreds of battles and skirmishes which a Napoleonic officer must have endured—­how they must have been the uninterrupted routine of his life from the first dark hair upon his lip to the first grey one upon his head, it is presumptuous to say what may or may not have been possible in such unparalleled careers.  At any rate, be it fact or fiction—­fact it is, in my opinion, with some artistic touching up of the high lights—­there are few books which I could not spare from my shelves better than the memoirs of the gallant Marbot.

I dwell upon this particular book because it is the best; but take the whole line, and there is not one which is not full of interest.  Marbot gives you the point of view of the officer.  So does De Segur and De Fezensac and Colonel Gonville, each in some different branch of the service.  But some are from the pens of the men in the ranks, and they are even more graphic than the others.  Here, for example, are the papers of good old Cogniet, who was a grenadier of the Guard, and could neither read nor write until after the great wars were over.  A tougher soldier never went into battle.  Here is Sergeant Bourgogne, also with his dreadful account of that nightmare campaign in Russia, and the gallant Chevillet, trumpeter of Chasseurs, with his matter-of-fact account of all that he saw, where the daily “combat” is sandwiched in betwixt the real business of the day, which was foraging for his frugal breakfast and supper.  There is no better writing, and no easier reading, than the records of these men of action.