No one knew who the woman was, but she lay on the field of Waterloo and even in death remained beautiful. Volunteer Charles Smith of the 95th Rifles found her body, as he helped to bury the dead after the battle. All he could tell was that she was French and must have gone into the thick of the action to have reached the spot where she died. Everything else about her remained a mystery.

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She was not the only woman to fall at Waterloo on June 18, 1815, for British troops found two dead Frenchwomen during a lull in the fighting. ‘I saw one of them, wrote Captain Henry Ross-Lewin of the 32nd Regiment of Foot. She was dressed in a nankeen jacket and trousers, and had been killed by a ball which had passed through her head.

The female participants at Waterloo form one of the great, untold stories of the epic battle. Nobody knows how many Frenchwomen followed their husbands and lovers to, and beyond death, but their presence on the battlefield was by no means unusual. Marshal André Masséna’s mistress had been constantly at his side when he invaded Portugal in 1810-inadequately but delightfully disguised in a dragoon’s uniform as one of his aides-de-camp. Unfortunately for the French army, her presence had distracted Masséna, antagonized his subordinates and delayed his army’s march. What a mistake I made in taking a woman to war with me! he had admitted afterward. But Masséna’s mistress was only one of many women who accompanied their menfolk to war during the Napoleonic Era, and had not proved to be such a burden at all.

Each French regiment had women authorized to accompany it on campaign. Designated cantinières or vivandières, they wore clothes of at least partly military design. Their official function within the regiment was to sell tobacco and refreshments such as cognac from their carts and care for the wounded. In the latter role, some inevitably ventured into harm’s way and became casualties. Marie Tête-du-bois, the cantinière of the 1st Grenadiers of the Guard, was cut in two by a cannonball at Waterloo.

The British did not have cantinières as such, but they did have camp followers who often found their way onto the battlefield. Many soldiers were married, but only six or sometimes four in each company were permitted to take their wives with them on active service. Once the regiments landed in the theater of war, they soon accumulated a bevy of unofficial camp followers.

Many British officers’ wives were attending the Duchess of Richmond’s ball in Brussels when word of Napoleon’s invasion of Belgium broke up the dance in the early hours of June 16. It was a dreadful evening, remembered Lady Georgiana Lennox, taking leave of friends and acquaintances, never to be seen again.

Miss Charlotte Ann Waldie, an English resident of Brussels, described the heart-rending scenes in the city on that morning: Numbers were taking leave of their wives and children, perhaps for the last time, and many a veteran’s rough cheek was wet with the tears of sorrow. One poor fellow, immediately under our windows, turned back again and again, to bid his wife farewell, and take his baby once more in his arms; and I saw him hastily brush away a tear with the sleeve of his coat, as he gave her back the child for the last time, wrung her hand, and ran off to join his company, which was drawn up on the other side of the Place Royale. Many of the soldiers’ wives rushed out with their husbands to the field, and I saw one young English lady mounted on horseback, slowly riding out of town along with an officer, who, no doubt, was her husband.

The ladies who stayed in Brussels, or further north in the port of Antwerp, suffered appalling mental tortures as they awaited news of the fate of their loved ones. An officer’s wife learned in Antwerp that her husband had been slain. She ran hysterically around the market place, screaming, My husband is not dead, he is just coming; his head is not shot off. The women left behind had the additional worry of not being able to see for themselves how their army was faring in the battle. They could not expect gentle treatment if the undisciplined French broke through to Brussels.

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