Magdalene De Lancey

He rose to post-captain in the Royal Navy and while a lieutenant on HMS Endymion (1797), a ship sent to Portugal at the time of the battle of Corunna, he met and became friendly with William Howe De Lancey, who was then serving in the army with Sir John Moore.

On 8 June 1815, Magdalene and her husband arrived in Brussels where they were billeted in the house of the Comte de Lannoy at the Impasse du Parc.

"[6] At six in the morning on Friday 16 June she relocated to Antwerp "to avoid the alarms that [Sir William] knew would seize everyone the moment the troops were gone"[7] but also so that if the battle was lost, she could return to England.

The route to find her husband was "entangled in a crowd of wagons, carts, horses, wounded men, deserters or runaways, and all the rabble and confusion, the consequence of several battles".

"[7] She nursed William for six days, rarely sleeping, tearing her petticoat to provide dressings, applying leeches to his wounds and "sat down to watch the melancholy progress of the water in his chest, which I saw would soon be fatal".

[3] Sir Walter Scott wrote on 13 October 1825 that he considered the narrative "as one of the most valuable and important documents which could be published all illustrative of the woes of war ...

"[9] Charles Dickens wrote on 16 March 1841 " ...To say that the reading that most astonishing and tremendous account has constituted an epoch in my life—that I shall never forget the lightest word of it—that I cannot throw the impression aside, and never saw anything so real, so touching, and so actually present before my eyes, is nothing.

"[9] In 1817 at Dunglass House,[10] Magdalene de Lancey married Captain Henry Harvey, Madras infantry, who retired in 1821.

[12] "Her description of the battle and surrounding areas is said to have contributed to WM Thackeray's seminal Brussels scene in Vanity Fair.

[7][14] Earl Stanhope wrote: "I mentioned with much praise Lady De Lancey's narrative of her husband's lingering death and of her own trials and sufferings after Waterloo.