Met dear Sir Andrew Barnard at Apsley House... Told me the best troops we had at Waterloo were almost all second battalions, scarcely out of the goose-step. They stood, and hammered away as well as the oldest, but it would have been very hazardous to have manoeuvred with them under fire as with the old Peninsulars. The Duke said of Napoleon during the action: "D—n the fellow, he is a mere pounder after all." ... I asked him (Sir Andrew) if he had any anxiety about the result. He said, "Oh no, except for the Duke. We had a notion that while he was there nothing could go wrong."

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Met dear Sir Andrew Barnard at Apsley House... Told me the best troops we had at Waterloo were almost all second battalions, scarcely out of the goose-step. They stood, and hammered away as well as the oldest, but it would have been very hazardous to have manoeuvred with them under fire as with the old Peninsulars. The Duke said of Napoleon during the action: "D—n the fellow, he is a mere pounder after all." ... I asked him (Sir Andrew) if he had any anxiety about the result. He said, "Oh no, except for the Duke. We had a notion that while he was there nothing could go wrong."" in the context of "Lord Ellesmere, 'Note of a Memorandum' (6 May 1845), quoted in Lord Ellesmere, Personal Reminiscences of the Duke of Wellington, ed. Alice, Countess of Strafford (1903), p. 179" to mean that wisdom is timeless.