giving way.

We see too a vast hecatomb: glory and might must claim their many
thousand victims: the dead and dying lie scattered like pawns upon an
abandoned chessboard, the humble pawns in this huge and final gamble for
supremacy and power, for national existence and for liberty. Hougoumont,
La Haye Sainte, Papelotte are sown with illustrious dead--but on the
plateau of Mont Saint Jean the British still hold their ground.

Wellington is still there on the heights, with the majestic trees of
Soigne behind him, the stately canopy of the elm above his head--more
frigid than before, more heroic, but also more desperately anxious.

"Bluecher or nightfall," he sighs as a fresh cavalry charge is hurled
against those indomitable British squares. The thirteenth assault, and
still they stand or kneel on one knee, those gallant British boys;
bayonet in hand or carbine, they fire, fall out and re-form again:
shaken, hustled, encroached on they may be, but still they stand and
fire with coolness and precision . . . the ranks are not broken yet.

Officers ride up to the field-marshal to tell him that the situation has
become desperate, their regiments decimated, their men exhausted. They
ask for fresh orders: but he has only one answer for them:

"There are no fresh orders, save to hold out to the last man."

And down in the valley at La Belle Alliance is the great gambler--the
man who to-day will either be Emperor again--a greater, mightier monarch
than even he has ever been--or who will sink to a status which perhaps
the meanest of his erstwhile subjects would never envy.

But just now--at four o'clock--when the fog has lifted--he is flushed
with excitement, exultant in the belief in victory.

The English centre on Mont Saint Jean is giving way at last, he is told.

"The beginning of retreat!" he cries.

And he, who had been anxious at Austerlitz, despondent at Marengo, is
gay and happy and brimming full of hope.

"De Marmont," he calls to his faithful friend, "De Marmont, go ride to
Paris now; tell them that victory is ours! No, no," he adds excitedly,
"don't go all the way--ride to Genappe and send a messenger to Paris
from there--then come back to be with us in the hour of victory."

And Victor de Marmont rides off in order to proclaim to the world at
large the great victory which the Emperor has won this day over all the
armies of Europe banded and coalesced against him.

From far away on the road of Ohain has