SCENE I

THE FIELD OF WATERLOO

[An aerial view of the battlefield at the time of sunrise is
disclosed.

The sky is still overcast, and rain still falls. A green
expanse, almost unbroken, of rye, wheat, and clover, in oblong
and irregular patches undivided by fences, covers the undulating
ground, which sinks into a shallow valley between the French and
English positions. The road from Brussels to Charleroi runs like
a spit through both positions, passing at the back of the English
into the leafy forest of Soignes.

The latter are turning out from their bivouacs. They move stiffly
from their wet rest, and hurry to and fro like ants in an ant-hill.
The tens of thousands of moving specks are largely of a brick-red
colour, but the foreign contingent is darker.

Breakfasts are cooked over smoky fires of green wood. Innumerable
groups, many in their shirt-sleeves, clean their rusty firelocks,
drawing or exploding the charges, scrape the mud from themselves,
and pipeclay from their cross-belts the red dye washed off their
jackets by the rain.

At six o'clock, they parade, spread out, and take up their positions
in the line of battle, the front of which extends in a wavy riband
three miles long, with three projecting bunches at Hougomont, La
Haye Sainte, and La Haye.

Looking across to the French positions we observe that after
advancing in dark streams from where they have passed the night
they, too, deploy and wheel into their fighting places—figures
with red epaulettes and hairy knapsacks, their arms glittering
like a display of cutlery at a hill-side fair.

They assume three concentric lines of crescent shape, that converge
on the English midst, with great blocks of the Imperial Guard at
the back of them. The rattle of their drums, their fanfarades,
and their bands playing “Veillons au salut de l'Empire” contrast
with the quiet reigning on the English side.

A knot of figures, comprising WELLINGTON with a suite of general
and other staff-officers, ride backwards and forwards in front
of the English lines, where each regimental colour floats in the
hands of the junior ensign. The DUKE himself, now a man of forty-
six, is on his bay charger Copenhagen, in light pantaloons, a
small plumeless hat, and a blue cloak, which shows its white
lining when blown back.

On the French side, too, a detached group creeps along the front
in preliminary survey. BONAPARTE—also forty-six—in a grey
overcoat, is mounted on his white arab Marengo, and accompanied
by SOULT, NEY, JEROME, DROUOT, and other marshals. The figures
of aides move to and fro like shuttle-cocks between the group
and distant points in the field. The sun has begun to gleam.]