The Court of Saint Germains had conferred on him the empty title of Earl of Lucan; but history knows him by the name which is still dear to the most unfortunate of nations.

The region, renowned in history as the battle field, during many ages, of the most warlike nations of Europe, has seen only two more terrible days, the day of Malplaquet and the day of Waterloo.

During many months the ground was strewn with skulls and bones of men and horses, and with fragments of hats and shoes, saddles and holsters.

The next summer the soil, fertilised by twenty thousand corpses, broke forth into millions of poppies.

The traveller who, on the road from Saint Tron to Tirlemont, saw that vast sheet of rich scarlet spreading from Landen to Neerwinden, could hardly help fancying that the figurative prediction of the Hebrew prophet was literally accomplished, that the earth was disclosing her blood, and refusing to cover the slain.