whole English army that, as a matter of fact, it had to do with three brigades only-those of Colin Halkett, Maitland, and Adam. The first-named had lost over three hundred men at Quatre Bras; it had taken up its position at Waterloo only 1,900 strong; and, after repelling a dozen cavalry charges and standing four hours in square under a devastating artillery fire, it had been reduced to a mere handful of men. The 73rd had, at the moment of the advance of the Middle Guard, not more than eighty men in line, as that admirable witness, Thomas Morris, relates; the other three regiments were in hardly better case. It is doubtful if the whole brigade had 600 muskets left to receive the enemy's final attack. Maitland's two battalions of Guards had also suffered dreadfully at Quatre Bras, where they had left behind them 514 killed and woundedmore than a quarter of their strength. They had been exposed at Waterloo, during the afternoon, to trials only less severe than those which had fallen upon Halkett's devoted brigade, and had lost the greater part of the 450 men who fell during the whole engagement, long ere the head of Ney's last column came opposite them. Instead of being 'two enormous battalions,' or '2,000 men,' as M. Houssaye repeatedly calls them, they cannot possibly have had more than 1,200 muskets left for the final struggle. Adam's brigade had not been present at Quatre Bras, and had arrived on the field of Mont St. Jean with its full strength of 2,600 men. Allowing 300 men as having been lost in the afternoon, when they had stood many charges of the Cuirassiers and beaten back Foy's infantry, Adam's battalions may have mustered 2,300 bayonets at the crucial moment. In all, then, the three English brigades which fought the Imperial Guard cannot have had more than 4,100 men in their ranks at 7.30 on the fatal evening.

According to M. Houssaye two other corps were engaged with the French, to the left of Halkett's line, viz., two Brunswick battalions and Ditmer's brigade of Dutch-Belgian militia. This allegation is contrary to all evidence, save that of two vague official reports of Dutch provenance. Halkett's officers positively state that no French column attacked to their left or eastward flank; they dealt themselves with the two battalions of the Guard which came up against their front. The validity of the claim of Ditmer's militia, that they pushed forward into the front line in time to co-operate in this repulse of the French, may be gauged from the fact that they only lost one officer and 28 rank and file killed during the whole battle, but contributed more than 250missing' to the horde of runaways who were pouring

to the rear down the Brussels road. As to the two Brunswick battalions, we have the clear evidence of Colonel Mercer, whose b tery was placed precisely between them. He bears witness to their excellent con ect during the cavalry charges, but is positive that neither he nor they had any part in repulsing the Imperial Guard. At the moment of the final clash they were being vexed by artillery fire from the neighbourhood of La Haye Sainte, and not by an infantry attack. Incidentally we learn from Mercer's 'Waterloo Campaign' that Van der Smissen's Dutch battery, which M. Houssaye alleges to have been turned upon the Guard, was, as a matter of fact, engaged at the moment with French guns to the left, which it succeeded in enfilading and ultimately drove from the field. The three English references which M. Houssaye gives, as proving that the Brunswick troops were attacked by Friant's column, turn out, when verified, to refer to a previous stage of the battle; and one of them contains a statement (ignored by the French author) to the effect that these German corps were not engaged with the Guard.

We are surprised to find that Sir Herbert Maxwell has, most incautiously, swallowed the whole of M. Houssaye's inaccurate statements concerning the number of Allied troops which took part in this phase of the battle. He even makes a most unnecessary apology for the omission by earlier English writers of any acknowledgment of the services of Ditmer's brigade. A more careful study of the original authorities would have shown him that every statement of M. Houssaye requires careful verification, and that there is no proof that the Dutch-Belgians were engaged with the Guard at all. The result of a careful comparison of M. Houssaye's version with the English evidence seems to be that five (or six) French battalions took part in the attack. They advanced in échelon, with their right columns thrown forward. The two leading battalions struck Halkett's brigade, and were repulsed by it after a short engagement; the two central columns, which had drawn close together and acted as a single mass, came against Maitland's Grenadier Guards and Napier's battery, and suffered defeat from them. The left, or rear, échelon, one (or more probably two) battalions strong, was taken in flank by Adam's brigade and driven off eastward, some minutes after the rest of the attacking force had been dispersed. Among the many maps which we have examined, showing the positions at the moment of the Middle Guard's advance, that in Mr. Horsburgh's 'Waterloo' seems to give the formation of the French columns more clearly than any other. Siborne, generally the safest of guides, has been misled by two false conceptions.

The first was an overestimate of the strength of the French; he gave them ten instead of six battalions. The second was an idea (which he subsequently recanted in the United Service Journal' for 1845) that the front and right échelon of the Guards did not extend more to the east than the spot occupied by Maitland's brigade. The evidence of Halkett's officers makes it clear that the leading French battalions formed a separate attacking force, which reached far beyond Maitland's left flank, and was repulsed by the desperate remnant of the 30th, 33rd, 69th, and 73rd regiments before the Grenadier Guards had opened fire upon the second échelon of the

assailants.

We have lingered long over the details of Waterloo, for it is a subject from which every student of military history finds it hard to tear himself away. Before bringing our criticism of M. Houssaye and Sir Herbert Maxwell to a close, we have to note some inexactitudes of names and words which require correction. The French author is by far the milder offender in this respect: his spelling of English names is far more correct than is usual in books from across the Channel. We have only noted Yalcott for Walcott, Whyniates for Whinyates, Mac-Ready (an odd-looking word) for Macready, and a composite personage de Lancy-Evans,' who is compounded from Wellington's Quartermaster-General Delancey and de Lacy-Evans, the hero of a very different campaign. Among his own countrymen M. Houssaye seems to be much puzzled by a certain brigadier-general of Foy's, who appears indifferently as Jannin (p. 376) and Jamin (p. 102). The latter, as is made clear by Foy himself, is the correct form. Sir Herbert Maxwell is an offender of a much worse class in the mangling of names. A good many errors in his first edition have been corrected in later issues, but Sabral is left for Sobral (i, 202), Thomars for Thomar (i, 136); while the heights on the battlefield of Salamanca are spelt Arapeiles in the map, Arapiles in the text (i, 280, 281). The general who commanded the French left wing at the same fight is alternately Thomière (map) and Thomières (i, 283 and 284). Calvarasa and Calbarasso are sufficiently diverse names for the same village. So too among the Prussian generals we have the variants Thielmann and Thieleman, Kleinst and Kleist, and among the Spaniards, Vanegas and Venegas, Ballesteros and Ballasteros, Zaya and Zayas. We are positive that scores of such slips could be collected from Sir Herbert Maxwell's two volumes without any difficulty.

The impression of over-hasty work which such misprints

leave upon us is strengthened by many passages in which the author has not taken the trouble to bring his sentences into accordance with the simplest rules of grammar. We may give a few examples :

'Hardly had Somerset galloped off, and just as Wellington rode out alone to Huarte, when a patrol of French cavalry entered the village.' (i, 333.)

'With what different feelings he viewed these scenes from those when last he stood among them!' (i, 382.)

'Not ashamed some, in the delirium of success, others under the sheer pang of remembered defeat, to revile the great commander, by declaring that before the battle was fairly lost he rode off the field.' (ii, 84.)

Another class of errors consists of those in which one name is substituted for another by some trick of memory on the author's part. Sir Herbert knows well enough that Sattara was not the capital of the Peshwas, nor Agra that of Scindiah; the right names-Poona and Gwalior-appear in many pages of his book; yet on pp. 53 and 72 of vol. i he makes these unaccountable substitutions. Again, throughout the account of Assaye, the river which Wellesley had to cross is styled the Kistna. It was really the Kaitna: the larger and better-known stream which Sir Herbert names does not come within two hundred miles of the battle-field. It is comparatively seldom that we have detected absolute mis-statements of fact as opposed to errors of names; but there is a grave slip on p. 70 of vol. ii, where Picton is described as the 'beloved chief' of the old 88th, the Connaught Rangers. Anyone who has read Grattan's 'Peninsular Diary,' or other writings by officers of the 88th, will remember that Picton was detested by the regiment. He had called them 'ragged Connaught foot-pads,' accused them of selling their cartridges to buy aguardiente, and steadily refused to recommend any of their officers for promotion or to insert their names in despatches. Hence came a well-grounded dislike for him in the regiment, which was not forgotten for long years after his death. Another error of some importance is the description (vol. i, p. 55) of Kruse's brigade at Waterloo as consisting of Dutch cavalry. They were really Nassau infantry.

We wish Sir Herbert a competent and conscientious proofreader for his next edition, and trust that he may find time to reconsider his enthusiasm for M. Houssaye's version of Waterloo. With a moderate amount of revision his book may take its place as the standard Life of our greatest British General.

ART. XII.—THE AFRIKANDER BOND.

1. The Boer States. By A. H. Keane. London: Methuen, 1900.

2. The Transvaal from Within. By J. P. Fitzpatrick. Popular edition. London: Heinemann, 1900.

3. On the Eve of the War. By Evelyn Cecil, M.P. London: John Murray, 1900.

4. A Century of Wrong. Issued by F. W. Reitz. London: 'Review of Reviews' Office, 1900.

5. The Birth of the Bond.

Josiah Slater, 1900.

Grahamstown, Cape Colony :

6. Paul Kruger en de Opkomst van de Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek. By J. S. van Oordt. Amsterdam: HollandAfrikander Publishing Company, 1898.

7. Transvaalsche Herinneringen. By E. T. P. Jorissen. Amsterdam: 1897.

8. South African Press: (English) Cape Times; Cape Argus; Friend of the Free State; (Dutch) De Patriot; Zuid Afrikaan; Ons Land; De Express.

SECTION-a large section-of the Dutch inhabitants of

A South Africa have long cherished a desire to convert

that country into a Republic, or federation of Republics, in which Great Britain shall have no more place or authority than she has in the Republics of France or Switzerland; and certain of their leaders, not in the Transvaal and Orange Free State only, but in Natal and the Cape Colony also, have been working together to accomplish this desire. To call this desire and the concerted endeavour to accomplish it a 'conspiracy,' is to assert more than in the very nature of things can be proved; and to assert more than can be proved is to play into the hands of the champions of the South African Republics, enabling them to divert attention from the dangerous disaffection of the Dutch by a controversy as to the name by which that disaffection should be called. As Mr. Fitzpatrick remarks, in the introduction to the popular edition of his admirable book:'charges of treason and conspiracy are unnecessary. It is sufficient to show that the aim of the Transvaal has been to subvert the Imperial authority and expel the Imperial power, and that the sympathetic attitude of the Afrikander Bond, however human it may be, has been used to draw British subjects into a dangerous course, and has led them to coquet with an ambition which the British half of the population and the British Empire will resist at all costs.' With a view to discover the origin and prevalence of this