Note 68 — BATTLE OF WATERLOO. 18th. June, 1815.

Lady de Lancey, a sister of Captain Basil Hall, carefully attended her dying husband, Sir William de Lancey, in a peasant’s cottage at Waterloo, for seven or eight days after the battle, in which he had been severely wounded, and, in fact, was at first returned as killed. In “Recollections, by Samuel Rogers,” the following account is given by the Duke:—“De Lancey was with me when he was struck. We were on a point of land that overlooked the plain, and I had just been warned by some soldiers, (but as I saw well from it, and as two divisions were engaging below, I had said, ‘Never mind,’) when a ball came leaping along en richochet, as it is called, and striking him on the back, sent him many yards over the head of his horse. He fell on his face, and bounded upward and fell again. All the staff dismounted, and ran to him; and when I came up he said, ‘Pray tell them to leave me, and let me die in peace.’ I had him conveyed into the rear: and two days afterwards, when, on my return from Brussels, I saw him in a barn, he spoke with such strength that I said, (for I had reported him among the killed,) ‘Why, De Lancey, you will have the advantage of Sir Condy in Castle Rackrent; you will know what your friends said of you after you were dead.’ ‘I hope I shall,’ he replied. Poor fellow! We had known each other ever since we were boys. But I had no time to be sorry; I went on with the army, and never saw him again.”