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Page 17
"At one o'clock in the morning, amid the rain and storm, he had
explored with Bertrand the hills near Rossomme, and was pleased to see
the long lines of English fires illumining the horizon from
Frischemont to Braine l'Alleud. It seemed to him as if destiny had
made an appointment with him on a fixed day and was punctual. He
stopped his horse and remained for some time motionless, looking at
the lightning and listening to the thunder. The fatalist was heard to
cast into the night the mysterious words, '_We are agreed_.' Napoleon
was mistaken; they no longer agreed."
The arena of Waterloo is an undulating plain. Strategically it has the
shape of an immense harrow. The clevis is on the height called Mont
St. Jean, where Wellington was posted with the British army. Behind
that is the village of Waterloo. The right leg of the harrow
terminates at the hamlet of La Belle Alliance. The left leg is the
road from Brussels to Nivelles. The cross-bar intersects the right leg
at La Haie Sainte. The right leg is the highway from Brussels to
Charleroi. The intersection of the bar with the left leg is near the
old stone chateau of Hougomont. The battle was fought on the line of
the cross-bar and in the triangle between it and the clevis.
The conflict began just before noon. The armies engaged were of equal
strength, numbering about 80,000 men on each side. Napoleon was
superior in artillery, but Wellington's soldiers had seen longer
service in the field. They were his veterans from the Peninsular War,
perhaps the stubbornest fighters in Europe. Napoleon's first plan was
to double back the allied left on the centre. This involved the
capture of La Haie Sainte, and, as a strategic corollary, the taking
of Hougomont. The latter place was first attacked. The field and wood
were carried, but the chateau was held in the midst of horrid carnage
by the British.
Early in the afternoon a Prussian division under Billow, about 10,000
strong, came on the field, and Napoleon had to withdraw a division
from his centre to repel the oncoming Germans. For two or three hours,
in the area between La Haie Sainte and Hougomont, the battle raged,
the lines swaying with uncertain fortune back and forth. La Haie
Sainte was taken and held by Ney. On the whole, the British lines
receded. Wellington's attempt to retake La Haie Sainte ended in a
repulse. Ney, on the counter charge, called on Napoleon for
reinforcements, and the latter at that moment, changing his plan of
battle, determined to make the principal charge on the British centre,
saying, however, "It is an hour too soon." The support which he sent
to Ney was not as heavy as it should have been, but the Marshal
concluded that the crisis was at hand, and Napoleon sought to support
him with Milhaud's cuirassiers and a division of the Middle Guard.
Under this counter charge the British lines reeled and staggered, but
still clung desperately to their position. They gave a little, and
then hung fast and could be moved no farther. In another part of the
field Durutte carried the allied position of Papelotte, and Lobau
routed B�low from Planchenois. At half-past four everything seemed to
portend disaster to the allies and victory to the French.
If the tragedy of Waterloo had been left at that hour to work out its
own results as between France and England it would appear that the
latter must have gone to the wall; but destiny had prepared another
end for the conflict. Waterloo was a point of concentration. Several
tides had set thither, and some of them had already arrived and broken
on the rocks. Other tides were rolling in. The British wave had been
first, and this had now been rolled back by the tide of France. A
German wave was coming, however, and another French billow, either or
both of which might break at any moment.
On the morning of June 18, at the little town of Wavre, fifteen miles
southeast of Brussels and about eight or ten miles from Waterloo, a
battle had been fought between the French contingent under Marshal
Grouchy and the Prussian division under Thielmann, who commanded the
left wing of Marshal Bl�cher's army. That commander had a force of
fully forty thousand men under him, and was on his way to join his
forces with those of Wellington on the plateau of Mont St. Jean.
Grouchy had at this time between thirty and forty thousand men, and
was under orders from Napoleon to keep in touch with his right wing,
watching the Prussians and joining himself to the main army according
to the emergency.
These two divisions--Bl�cher's and Grouchy's--were _sliding along_
toward Waterloo, and on the afternoon of the eighteenth it became one
of the great questions in the history of this century which would
first arrive on the field. Napoleon believed that Grouchy was at hand.
Wellington in his desperation breathed out the wish that either night
or Bl�cher would come. The ambiguous result of the principal conflict
made it more than ever desirable to both of the commanders to gain
their reinforcements, each before the other. The event showed that the
arrival of B�low's contingent was really the signal for the oncoming
of the whole Prussian army. The French Emperor, however, remained
confident, and at half-after four he felt warranted in sending a
preliminary despatch of victory to Paris.
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