cision. He immediately placed the 1st corps belonging to the left wing, under Ney, with two divisions of heavy cavalry, behind the village of Frasnes, on the right, and at a little distance from the Brussels road, where it was to form á reserve that could be brought up to support either his attack upon the Prussians or Ney's attack upon the British. The 3d corps was ordered to advance in column to carry the village of St. Amand, whilst the 4th corps, supported by the Guard and the cavalry, was ordered to attack Ligny.

The enemy advanced in overpowering masses upon St. Amand, where the action first commenced, on the morning of the 16th. The brave Prussians defended this part of their advanced position with great firmness, and it was not till after a long and sanguinary conflict that they were obliged to yield for a time to superior numbers. The 4th corps commenced its attack upon the village of Ligny about mid-day, and by one o'clock P.M. the action may be said to have become general throughout the whole of the extended line of the Allied British and Prussian armies. Grouchy by that time had attacked the extreme left beyond Sombref, and Ney had come in contact with the advance of the army under the Duke of Wellington, near Frasnes. But it was in the villages of St. Amand and Ligny that the greatest struggle for victory took place between the contending armies. There the battle continued for five hours, it may be said, almost in the villages themselves, as the movements forwards and backwards during that period were confined to a very narrow space. Fresh troops were constantly moved up on both sides; and as each army had immense masses of infantry behind that part of the village which it occupied, these served to maintain the combat, as they were continually receiving reinforcements from the rear. Upwards of 200 pieces of cannon were directed against the villages, and they were frequently on fire in many places.

About four o'clock Prince Blücher placed himself at the head of a battalion of infantry, and charged with them into the village of St. Amand. After a dreadful struggle he gained possession of the greater part of it. The enemy were panic-struck, and the victory seemed so doubtful, that Buonaparte was obliged to send in all haste for the 1st corps, which he had left in reserve near Frasnes; at the very moment, too, that it had become equally necessary to Marshal Ney, whose columns, having been repulsed by the 5th Division of British infantry, were retiring in great confusion.

The advantage which Blücher had so nobly gained, was of little importance to the general action in which his troops were engaged. At Ligny the battle still raged with unabated vigour and though the evening was far advanced, the victory remained undecided. The badness of the roads, and the difficulties which Gen. Bulow had to encounter in his march, prevented his corps from getting up on the 16th; so that Blücher had only three corps

of his army in position; and though they had repulsed every attack which had been made upon them, the danger was becoming urgent, as all the divisions were engaged, or had already been so, and there was no reserve at hand.

As the night advanced, the enemy, favoured by the darkness, made a circuit round the village of Ligny, with a division of infantry on one side; and, without being observed, got into the rear of the main body of the Prussian army, at the same moment that some regiments of Cuirassiers forced their passage on the other side of the village. This movement decided the day, and Field-marshal Blücher was obliged to commence his retreat; yet his brave columns, though surprised, were not dismayed. They formed themselves into solid masses, and repulsing every attack which the enemy made upon them, retired in perfect good order to their original ground, upon the heights above the village, and from thence continued, unmolested, their retrograde movement upon Tilly.

The badness of the roads obliged the Field-marshal to abandon some of his artillery during this retreat; but, except the badly wounded, the enemy made very few prisoners. At one time the veteran warrior had a very narrow escape from being taken prisoner himself. Wherever the battle was hottest, there Blücher was to be found; and wherever it was of importance to carry a point, he led his troops to the charge in person. During his retreat, a charge of cavalry which he had led, having failed, the enemy were vigorously pursuing his broken squadrons, when a musket-ball having struck his horse, it bounded forward with increased velocity for a moment, then suddenly dropped dead. The Field-marshal, stunned with the fall, lay entangled under his horse, and a whole regiment of Cuirassiers galloped past him. Immediately afterwards, the Prussian cavalry having formed, charged the enemy, and were in turn victorious; and the same regiment of Cuirassiers, in their flight, again galloped past the Field-marshal, who then, and not till then, was relieved from his perilous situation, and enabled to mount a horse belonging to one of his own dragoons.

The Duke of Wellington, having given orders for the army under his command to concentrate on the left, proceeded with the 5th Division and the Duke of Brunswick-Oels' corps, in the direction of Charleroi. About two o'clock on the afternoon of the 16th, the head of the British column reached the farm of Quatre Bras, so named from its standing near where the roads from Brussels to Charleroi, and from Nivelles to Namur, cross each other. The advance of the enemy under Ney, who had again driven the Dutch troops from their position near Frasnes, had nearly reached the same spot; and General Kempt's brigade had scarcely time to deploy from the great road, before it was attacked by the

enemy's cavalry, supported by heavy masses of his infantry. Nothing could exceed the daring intrepidity of the French troops at this moment; their success on the 15th, and confidence in their leader, added to the natural bravery of the troops, made them · advance with almost a certainty of victory. The sudden appearance of overwhelming masses of cavalry, and the rapidity with which they charged our infantry, before they had time to throw themselves into squares, created some little confusion in one or two regiments. Indeed, so daring were the French Cuirassiers, that a regiment actually cut into the square of the 42d Highlanders; but they paid dear for their temerity, as few ever returned to their lines; and the Highlanders had ample revenge for the loss of their brave Colonel, Sir Robert Macara. The 3d battalion of the Royal Scots, 28th, and 1st battalion of the 95th, were warmly engaged for several hours on the left of the Brussels road while General Pack's brigade, consisting of the 44th, 79th, and 92d regiments, with the 42d, already mentioned, succeeded completely in repelling the enemy on the right, after an equally arduous contest.

About four o'clock, the 1st Division under Major-general Cooke, and 3d under Lieutenant-general Sir Charles Alten, came up, and were also immediately engaged. The enemy was now driven from his ground, and obliged to retire to the position which he had occupied the night before, and where he had some difficulty in maintaining himself, until the darkness put an end to the combat. The troops of the Duke of Brunswick distinguished themselves very much on the afternoon of the 16th; and His Serene Highness was unfortunately killed at the head of his brave hussars.

The enemy had many advantages over the handful of British troops that were in the field this day. Few of our guns, and none of our cavalry, came up till late in the evening; and, independent of the four divisions of cavalry which Ney had under his command, his infantry more than outnumbered the British. Ney has stated that the removal of the 1st corps from under his command by Buonaparte was the cause of his want of success; and certainly had he been able to bring his two corps, and all his cavalry, against the 5th Division, which was engaged singly for nearly two hours, he would, in all probability, have overwhelmed that division. But after the 1st and 3d Divisions had come up, I am inclined to think that his success would have been doubtful, even with his whole force.

June 18th, 1815.

At daylight on the morning of the 17th, the army having come up, the Duke of Wellington showed his whole force, and in a manner challenged the enemy to fight; but as they did not seem inclined to accept the challenge, and as he had learned in the course of the morning that Marshal Blücher had continued his retrograde movement upon Gembloux, where the 4th corps of his army, under General Bulow, had joined him, and that he had decided on concentrating his whole force in the environs of Wavre, still more in the rear; the Duke determined also to retire upon the position in front of the village of Waterloo. The movements intended by the two commanders were mutually communicated to each other; and the Duke, in stating his arrangements to the Field-marshal, added that it was his intention to defend the position which he had chosen, and requested, if the enemy should attack next day, that he (Field-marshal Blücher) would support him with two divisions of his army. Blücher replied, that he was ready to support the British army with his whole force; stating at the same time, that it was his opinion, should Buonaparte not attack, that they ought to attack him next day with their united armies.

About eleven o'clock on the forenoon of the 17th, orders were given for the infantry to move to the rear, while the cavalry and some light troops took up a position in front. The enemy remained quietly on the ground he had occupied the preceding night, in front of the British line. Buonaparte, who had left about 20,000 infantry, and General Pajol's division of cavalry, under the orders of Marshal Grouchy, to watch the motions of the Prussian army, proceeded with the remainder of his force to the position which the troops under Marshal Ney occupied; but before his arrangements were completed, and his orders given for his army to advance, our infantry had nearly finished their march, and were about to take up their ground in the new position. His troops advanced in strong columns of attack; but when they reached the heights above the village of Frasnes, Buonaparte found, to his great surprise, that the British army had retreated, and that the troops against which his columns were advancing were nothing more than a strong rear-guard, which fell back as his troops advanced. He ordered his cavalry immediately to advance in pursuit, and his columns of infantry continued their march in the direction of Brussels. Buonaparte, who was with his advance, kept his cavalry up with our rear-guard during the whole of the day. The French army, when it found no enemy to oppose its progress during the day, is said to have believed, with its usual levity, that the greater part of the British force was

destroyed, and that the remainder were flying to the ships at Antwerp and Ostend.

The position which the British army now took up had been chosen with great judgment, from its proximity to the extensive forest of Soignies. The village of Waterloo lies upon the great road from Brussels to Charleroi, embosomed in the forest; and a few scattered houses extend to another small village called Mount St. John; about a quarter of a mile in front of this latter village there is a rising ground, which crosses the great road already mentioned, and extends from a farm-house, called Ter-laHaye, on the left, to the village of Merbe-le-Braine on the right, crossing also the road from Brussels to Nivelles, which diverges from the road to Charleroi at the village of Mount St. John. It was on this rising ground that the Allied army, commanded by Field-marshal the Duke of Wellington, or, more properly, the 1st corps of that army, took up its position on the evening of the 17th of June. The 2d corps, under the command of Lord Hill (with the exception of the 4th Division and the troops of the Netherlands, under Prince Frederick of Orange, who were left to guard an important position at Halle), was placed in reserve on the right of the position, and in front of the village of Merbe-le-Braine, with its right resting on Braine-la-Leud. The infantry bivouacked a little under the ridge of the rising ground, and the cavalry in the hollow ground in rear of the infantry. Excepting a few round shot, which the enemy occasionally fired while our troops were deploying into their position, nothing of any moment occurred during that afternoon or the whole of the night.

It had rained almost incessantly during the greater part of the 17th, and the weather was very tempestuous during the night. The ground afforded no cover for the troops; so that generals, officers, and men, were equally exposed to the rain, which fell in torrents. Buonaparte slept at the farm-house of Caillou, near Planchenoit; and his army halted in the neighbourhood of Genappe. The Duke of Wellington slept at a small public-house in the village of Waterloo.

This night, which was dreadful to the soldier, must have been still more so to the wretched inhabitants of the country which the armies occupied; obliged to abandon their humble dwellings in despair, they had fled to the deep recesses of the forest for security, and in the hope of saving their lives. The rich crops of grain, which were fast hastening to maturity, were trodden under foot, or eaten up by the cavalry, and the helpless farmer saw the labour of a whole year destroyed in a single day; houses of all kinds were destroyed or burnt to ashes; and the inhabitants, herding in the forest, must have felt uncertain even of their own fate, should chance have conducted any of the plundering banditti to their lonely retreat.