=Medal for Brunswick Contingent.=--On October 30th, 1824, Duke Charles II decided to award a medal to those who formed the Brunswick Contingent, which came to England in 1809 with the Duke Frederick William, and took part in the Spanish and Portuguese war against Napoleon. The Contingent fought in nearly all the battles between 1810-14. The officers received a silver medal, and sub-officers and privates one of bronze. The medal, 1³⁄₁₆ in. in diameter, has a plain double border, and is suspended from a crimson ribbon by means of a loop and ring. On the obverse is a wreath of laurel and oak and PENINSULAR; on the reverse is a military trophy with a studded shield, arranged sideways, on which the Duke's initials, C. C., are arranged in monogrammic form.
=Medal for British German Legion.=--King Ernest Augustus founded, on May 11th, 1841, a medal for distribution to the survivors of the British German Legion, who had served in the Peninsular War between 1803-14. The medal, having a double rim, was of bronze made from captured cannon. One and seven-twentieths inch in diameter, it bears on the obverse a cross _patée_ with double raised edges, in the centre of which is the King's monogram, E. A. R., surmounted by a crown; on the reverse within a laurel wreath is the inscription TAPFER UND TREU (Brave and Loyal), and within the rim KÖNIGLICH-DEUTSCHE LEGION (Royal German Legion). The medal is suspended from a 1⅖ in. white ribbon, with yellow stripe near the edge, by means of a ring and loop. I have in my possession one without the inscriptions, a laurel wreath and 1813 entirely filling the reverse. (See facing page 58.)
=Eve of Waterloo.=--On February 27th, 1815, Napoleon, untamed by adversity, escaped from Elba, and on March 1st landed at Cannes in Provence with 1,000 determined followers, but so rapidly did the people rally to his standard that by the 20th he had reached Paris with an army of such proportions that Louis was compelled to retire to Ghent, and the Bourbon dynasty was again forgotten. Early on the morning of June 12th Napoleon quitted the capital, on the 14th joined the army collected on the frontier, and commenced his last campaign, which was to terminate on the 18th at Waterloo. Wellington had been sent to take charge of an army which he described in a letter as "very weak and ill-equipped, and a very inexperienced staff," but we now know that, though it was "a green army," the right material was there, and only required the moulding of opportunity to make good form. Wellington's army comprised British, Hanoverian, and Belgian troops, with contingents of Nassau and Brunswick Oels. Of the 78,500 men comprising it, only about 43,000 were British, German, or Hanoverians. By the 18th it had been reduced to 74,040. The Prussian army was 115,000 strong. The French army, estimated at not less than 154,370, with 296 pieces of cannon--and variously at 127,000, 122,000, and 115,000, with 350 guns--was mainly composed of men "whose trade was war, and whose battles were as many as their years"; so that against the heterogeneous mass of men of various tongues commanded by Wellington, his great opponent was to hurl an army of veterans who could well be called upon to repeat the deeds of Marengo, of Friedland, and of Austerlitz. As it happened, the raw levies of Britain were to emulate the deeds of their brethren at Badajoz and Albuera.