Like General Alexandre d’Arblay, Colonel Sir William De Lancey was an aristocratic career soldier, and both were called to take part in the last campaign against Napoleon after his escape from Elba on 1 March 1815. Magdalene De Lancey had been married for less than two months when her husband was ordered to join the Duke of Wellington in preparation for the battle that came to be known as Waterloo. The De Lanceys travelled to Brussels, where they arrived early in June 1815. About a fortnight later, anticipating that the fighting would start very soon, De Lancey arranged for Magdalene to go to Antwerp, about twenty-five miles away, where she would be safe. There, after a day, she received news that her husband had been killed, then that he had survived. In her memoir A Week at Waterloo, she recounts the very taxing time that followed, culminating in her nursing her husband during the last days of his life.