all but touched the English
front when its mass, torn by the terrible fire of musketry with which it
was received, gave way before a charge. The second, three thousand
strong, advanced with the same courage over the slope near Hougomont,
only to be repulsed and shattered in its turn. At the moment when these
masses fell slowly and doggedly back down the fatal rise, the Prussians
pushed forward on Napoleon's right, their guns swept the road to
Charleroi, and Wellington seized the moment for a general advance. From
that hour all was lost. Only the Guard stood firm in the wreck of the
French army; and though darkness and exhaustion checked the English in
their pursuit of the broken troops as they hurried from the field, the
Prussian horse continued the chase through the night. Only forty
thousand Frenchmen with some thirty guns recrossed the Sambre while
Napoleon himself fled hurriedly to Paris. His second abdication was
followed by a triumphant entry of the English and Prussian armies into
the French capital; and the long war ended with his exile to St. Helena,
and the return of Lewis the Eighteenth to the throne of the Bourbons.

* * * * *

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

Reference to the Index has been removed from the
Table of Contents.

The word manoeuvre uses an oe ligature in the original.

Variations in spelling have been left as in the original.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE,
VOLUME VIII (OF 8)***

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