Vox Meditantis

Waterloo, Belgium – 18th June 1815

The morning mist clung to the Belgian countryside like a shroud, and I found myself wondering, not for the first time, what countries I might visit if I were not destined to see them through the smoke of cannon fire. The question had haunted me since dawn, when young Pemberton—barely eighteen and fresh from his father’s estate in Dorset—had posed it during our meagre breakfast of hardtack and lukewarm tea.

“I say, Leyton,” he had whispered, his voice trembling with anticipation rather than fear, “when this business with Bonaparte is finished, what countries do you want to visit?”

I am Captain Edward Leyton of the Royal Scots Greys, and on this morning of 18th June 1815, positioned on the ridge of Mont-Saint-Jean, I carried within my breast a heart weary of visiting foreign shores as a harbinger of death. At twenty-six, I had seen more of Europe than any gentleman of leisure might dream of—but always through the lens of war, always with sabre drawn and pistol primed.

The question lingered as I surveyed the field before us. Across the valley, through the dissipating fog, the French army spread like a dark stain upon the green Belgian landscape. Somewhere among those ranks rode Napoleon himself, the Corsican who had dragged us all across this continent in an endless dance of conquest and retreat. How many countries had I visited in his pursuit? Spain, where the very stones seemed to weep with the blood of fallen comrades. Portugal, its hills echoing with the crack of rifle fire. The Netherlands, its canals running red. And now Belgium, this crossroads of Europe where fate would finally render its verdict.

“What countries do you want to visit?” The question mocked me as I adjusted my position in the saddle. My horse, Bucephalus—named in a moment of youthful fancy for Alexander’s steed—stamped restlessly beneath me, sensing the tension that crackled through our ranks like summer lightning.

I had wanted to visit Italy, once. Not as we had done in ’96, when the French had swept through like locusts, but properly—to stand before the Colosseum in Rome and imagine the gladiators’ roar, to drift through Venice’s canals with nothing more pressing than the choice of wine for dinner, to climb the steps of St. Peter’s with pilgrimage rather than plunder in my heart. I had dreamed of walking the Forum where Cicero once spoke, of touching the very stones that Caesar’s feet had trod.

Instead, I had seen Italy through gunpowder and grief, had watched the Austrian eagles fall at Rivoli, had heard the cannons boom across the plains of Lombardy. Every church we passed was either a refuge for the wounded or a target for the artillery. Every villa held either enemies or allies, but rarely simply people living their quiet lives.

The sound of drums began to roll across the valley, a thunder that seemed to emerge from the very earth itself. The French were stirring, preparing for what we all knew would be the final throw of the dice. Wellington sat his horse nearby, that aquiline profile I had come to know so well turned towards the enemy, his blue eyes calculating distances and possibilities with the precision of a master craftsman.

“Steady, lads,” came the familiar voice of Sergeant MacLeod, a Highlander whose accent could cut glass and whose loyalty was absolute. “The Frenchies are stirring their stumps, but we’ll be ready for them, eh?”

I thought of Scotland then, MacLeod’s homeland and mine by adoption of service. I had visited it, naturally—Edinburgh’s castle perched like an eagle’s nest above the city, the wild beauty of the Highlands where mist and legend intertwined. But I had seen it only in passing, during brief leaves between campaigns. I longed to return there not as a soldier seeking respite, but as a man seeking home. To walk the heather-covered hills without the weight of command upon my shoulders, to hear the pipes play for celebration rather than to rally men to battle.

Young Pemberton rode up beside me, his face pale but determined. “Sir, the Colonel sends word—the French cavalry are massing on our left.”

I nodded, pushing aside my reverie. “What countries do you want to visit, Pemberton?” I asked him suddenly, surprising myself with the question.

He blinked, clearly taken aback. “Sir?”

“When this is over. Where would you go, if you could go anywhere in the world, not as a soldier but as… as yourself?”

His young face brightened for a moment, and I glimpsed the boy he had been before the uniform claimed him. “Greece, I think. To see where Homer walked, where Achilles fought. But properly, you know—to read the Iliad beneath the walls of Troy, to swim in the wine-dark sea.” He paused, then asked hesitantly, “And you, sir?”

“Persia,” I said without thinking, the word escaping before I could catch it. “I should like to see Isfahan, the city they call half the world. To visit the gardens of Shiraz, to walk where Omar Khayyam composed his verses.” I had read Burton’s translations by campfire light, had dreamed of roses and nightingales instead of grapeshot and screams.

But even as I spoke, I knew the bitter irony. If we soldiers had our way, if the great game of empires continued, I might indeed see Persia—but I would see it as I had seen Spain and Portugal and all the rest, through smoke and steel, as conqueror rather than guest.

The French cannons opened fire then, a thunderous cannonade that shook the earth beneath us and sent clods of Belgian soil flying like startled birds. The grand battery, they called it—eighty guns or more firing in unison, seeking to shatter our line before their cavalry charged. I watched the round shot tear through our ranks, saw men I had shared meals with disappear in an instant, and I wondered if any of us would live to visit anywhere at all.

“Form square!” The command rang out as the French cuirassiers began their advance, a glittering tide of steel and horsehair plumes that seemed to cover the entire slope. I raised my sabre, feeling its familiar weight, and prepared to meet them.

But in that moment before the storm broke upon us, I found myself thinking not of the countries I had visited as a soldier, but of the one I had never seen at all—home. Not England, though I loved her well, but the home that exists only in the heart, the place where one belongs not by accident of birth but by choice of spirit. I had travelled across Europe seeking that place in the thunder of hooves and the flash of steel, but I had never found it because I had been looking in all the wrong ways.

The cuirassiers struck our square like a hammer blow, but we held. British steel met French courage in a clash that seemed to split the very air. I cut and parried, thrust and wheeled, my sabre singing its deadly song as Bucephalus danced beneath me. Around me, men fought and died with the names of distant sweethearts on their lips, with prayers to gods they hoped might remember them kindly.

Through the melee, I caught sight of a French officer, his uniform torn and bloody, his horse stumbling with exhaustion. Our eyes met across the carnage, and for a moment—just a moment—I saw not an enemy but a fellow traveller, another man far from home, another wanderer caught in this terrible dance of nations. He raised his sword in what might have been salute or challenge, and I found myself doing the same.

Then the moment passed, swept away by the tide of battle, and I never knew if he lived or died. But in that instant of recognition, I understood something I had been too young to grasp before: we were all visitors in foreign lands, all of us—French and British, Prussian and Dutch, Belgian and German. The only difference was that some came in peace and some came in war, but all of us were far from the places we truly belonged.

The battle raged through the long afternoon. Hougoumont burned like a funeral pyre, La Haye Sainte changed hands like a dice cup, and still we held the ridge. I saw the sun track across the Belgian sky and thought of all the other skies I had watched it traverse—Spanish skies heavy with smoke, Portuguese skies weeping rain, Dutch skies grey with winter. In how many countries had I watched the sun set, wondering if I would see it rise again?

When the Prussians finally appeared on our left, when Blücher’s cannons added their voice to the symphony of destruction, I felt not triumph but exhaustion. Another battle won, another day survived, another page in the bloody book of European history. How many more countries would we visit before this madness ended?

But then came the moment that changed everything—the sight of the Imperial Guard, Napoleon’s immortals, breaking at last. These men who had never retreated, who had carried the Eagles from Moscow to Madrid, suddenly turned and fled. The cry went up across our line: “The Guard retreats! The Guard retreats!”

And in that moment, I knew the answer to Pemberton’s question. The country I wanted to visit was not on any map. It was the country of peace, the nation that existed only in the dreams of men who had seen too much of war. It was the place where children played in streets unmarked by cannon wheels, where mothers sang lullabies uninterrupted by the drummer’s beat, where lovers met in gardens unpoisoned by gunpowder.

As the French army dissolved into rout and our cavalry swept forward in pursuit, I remained on the ridge, watching the sun set over the battlefield of Waterloo. Young Pemberton lay nearby, his dream of visiting Greece ended by a French musket ball. MacLeod was helping the wounded, his harsh voice now gentle as a woman’s as he comforted the dying.

I dismounted and knelt beside a French soldier—perhaps the very officer who had saluted me hours earlier. His breathing was shallow, his uniform soaked with blood, but his eyes were clear. He looked at me without fear, and in broken English whispered, “Monsieur… what countries… do you want to visit?”

I took his hand, this enemy who had become in death simply a fellow human being. “The same ones you do, my friend,” I said. “The ones where children play, where mothers sing, where the only thunder is from storms that water the earth instead of watering it with blood.”

He smiled then, this dying Frenchman on a Belgian field, and whispered something in his own tongue that I did not understand but felt in my heart. Then he was gone, off to visit whatever country awaits us all at the end of our journeys.

As night fell over Waterloo, as the battlefield grew quiet except for the moans of the wounded and the prayers of the dying, I stood among the carnage and made myself a promise. If I survived this war, if I lived to see peace return to Europe, I would visit countries not as a soldier but as a man. I would go to Italy to see beauty, not to make war. I would walk in Greece to learn wisdom, not to plant flags. I would journey to Persia to find poetry, not to extend empires.

But first, I would go home—not to England, which was merely where I was born, but to that country of the heart where peace dwells, where the only drums that beat are for dancing, where the only flags that fly are hung out to dry in cottage gardens.

The battle was over. Napoleon was finished. The map of Europe would be redrawn once more. But for me, Captain Edward Leyton of the Royal Scots Greys, the real journey was just beginning. I had visited too many countries as a bringer of death. Now, perhaps, I could learn to visit them as a seeker of life.

That is what I would tell young Pemberton, if he could hear me. That is what I would tell all the boys who lie sleeping forever in this Belgian earth. The countries worth visiting are not the ones you conquer, but the ones that conquer you—with their beauty, their wisdom, their capacity to make you more than you were when you arrived.

As I led Bucephalus away from the field of Waterloo, I carried with me the answer to the question that had haunted me all day: I wanted to visit the country called Tomorrow, where wars were history and travellers came in peace. It was a long journey, and the road was uncertain, but for the first time in my life, I knew exactly where I was going.

The End

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.