La Belle Alliance

There are two plaques on the building: one is "In memory of the French Medical Corps who attended the wounded with devotion on 18 June 1815"; and the other commemorates the meeting of the two victorious field marshals at the end of the Battle of Waterloo.

[3][a] According to[4] page 57 of his 1877 Book "Notes and Reminiscences of a Staff Officer" by Lieutenant Colonel Basil Jackson, writes: Certainly it was a moment when even the Iron Duke might feel excited.

The two great chiefs cordially shook hands, and were together about ten minutes; it was then so dark that I could not distinguish Blucher's features, and had to ask a Prussian officer whom the Duke was conversing with, although I was quite close to him at the time, but of course not near enough to hear what was said.

Darkness shrouded the spectacle of the dead and dying near La Haye Sainte ; but the frequent snorting of our horses as they trod between them showed that the ground, so fiercely contested during the day, was very thickly strewed with bodies of the brave.

Wellington, who had chosen the field and commanded an allied army which had fought the French all day, instead recommended Waterloo, the village just north of the battlefield, where he himself had spent the previous night.

We have, however, now before us some additional evidence on this interesting topic, which shows that Mr. Maclise's picture does not depart more widely from the truth of history than the license of art may fairly admit of.