Sadly, some of the women did not live up to the magnificent standard set by their fine sisters. After the battle, many of the local peasants seized the opportunity to loot from the dead and wounded. Women were among the worst looters-one female even cut the off the fingers of an injured but living Prussian officer to steal the precious rings he wore.

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Lieutenant George Simmons of the 95th Rifles made a miraculous recovery from a wound he suffered at Waterloo, largely thanks to the devoted care he received in Brussels. My dear little nurse has never been ten minutes from me since I came to the house, he wrote. For ten nights together she never went to bed, but laid her head on my pillow.

One young woman, Lady Magdalene de Lancey, has come to symbolize all the women who waited for their men went to return from Waterloo. The beautiful Magdalene had married Colonel Sir William Howe de Lancey, Wellington’s deputy quartermaster-general, on April 4, 1815. Magdalene went to Antwerp for safety when hostilities began and there she received a succession of conflicting rumors that William was either dead or alive. At last, she learned that he was alive, but badly wounded. She managed to reach his side in a cottage and was with him when he died on June 26. They had been married for less than three months. Magdalene de Lancey later wrote an outstanding account of her experiences, which she called A Week at Waterloo in 1815. When English novelist Charles Dickens read her narrative, he commented, If I live for fifty years, I shall dream of it every now and then, from this hour to the day of my death, with the most frightful reality.

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