Note 185 — Chapter XV
Reading edition
Great allowance must be made for exaggeration in enumerating the strength of contending armies in those early times, since even in these days of despatches, bulletins, and Moniteurs, it is so extremely difficult to get at the truth. The battle of Waterloo offers a remarkable instance of this, for no two published accounts agree as to the respective numbers of the belligerents, and one which I have read—a French one, of course—swells the force under the Duke of Wellington, on the 18th June, to 170,000 men!!!