Wellington and defeat them in succession. On the evening of June
15th, news was brought to the Duke at Brussels that the enemy had
passed the frontier and were engaging the Prussian outposts. He
at once gave the necessary orders for the advance, and after
midnight showed himself at the now famous ball of the Duchess of
Richmond. At eleven the next forenoon he was at QuatreBras, where
his army was engaged in beating off an attack by Marshal Ney,
while Blucher was being pounded by Napoleon a few miles to the
eastward at Ligny. Both the allies retreated, but instead of
separating as Napoleon hoped and believed, they retired along
converging lines, the English to Waterloo, the Prussians to
Wavre, the positions being connected by a roadway. Through the
rain of Saturday, June 17th, Wellington disposed his sixty-nine
thousand men and one hundred and fifty-six guns on both sides of
the Brussels highway, along which Napoleon advanced on the morrow
with seventy-two thousand men and two hundred and forty cannon.
The action opened near noon on the 18th, the French making a vain
effort to carry the Château of Hougomont on the British right.
Next an army corps was hurled at the center, only to be stopped
by Wellington's cavalry with appalling loss. In the afternoon the
Emperor delivered a series of cavalry attacks upon the allied
center. Twelve thousand horsemen thundered up the gentle slope
past the English guns, only to break against the bayonet-hedged
squares of the infantry. At the end of eight hours' fighting the
French center had advanced to within sixty yards of the British
position, but the line still held, and Blucher's Prussians were
rapidly coming up on the right flank. Marshal Grouchy having
failed to prevent this fatal manoeuver, Napoleon shot his last
bolt, sending Ney with the Old Guard against the British right.
But "the bravest of the brave had fought his last battle," and as