buildings burst into flame.
Once more the French rush to the onset, and a furious hand-to-hand
scuffle ensues. Half stifled by heat, smoke, and dust, the rival
nations fight on, until the defenders give way and fall back on the
further part of the village behind the brook; but, when reinforced,
they rally as fiercely as ever, and drive the French over its banks;
lane, garden, and attic once more become the scene of struggles where
no man thinks of giving or taking quarter.

Higher up the stream, at St. Amand, Vandamme's troops fared no better;
for Bluecher steadily fed that part of his array. In so doing, however,
he weakened his reserves behind Ligny, thereby unwittingly favouring
Napoleon's design of breaking the Prussian centre, and placing its
wreckage and the whole of their right wing between two fires. The
Emperor expected that, by 6 o'clock, Ney would have driven back the
Anglo-Dutch forces, and would be ready to envelop the Prussian right.
That was the purport of Soult's despatch of 3.15 p.m. to Ney: "This
army [the Prussian] is lost, if you act with vigour. The fate of
France is in your hands."

But at 5.30, when part of the Imperial Guard was about to strengthen
Gerard for the decisive blow at the Prussian centre, Vandamme sent
word that a hostile force of some twenty or thirty thousand men was
marching towards Fleurus. This strange apparition not only unsteadied
the French left: it greatly perplexed the Emperor. As he had ordered
first Ney and then D'Erlon to march, not on Fleurus, but against the
rear of the Prussian right wing, he seems to have concluded that this
new force must be that of Wellington about to deal the like deadly
blow against the French rear.[490] Accordingly he checked the advance
of the Guard until the riddle could be solved. After the loss of
nearly two hours it was solved by an aide-de-camp, who found that the
force was D'Erlon's, and that it had retired.

Meanwhile the battle had raged with scarcely a pause, the French guns
working frightful havoc among the dense masses on the opposite slope.
And yet, by withdrawing troops to his right, Bluecher had for a time
overborne Vandamme's corps and part of the Young Guard, unconscious
that his insistence on this side jeopardized the whole Prussian army.
His great adversary had long marked the immense extension of its
concave front, the massing of its troops against St. Amand, and the
remoteness of its left wing, which Grouchy's horsemen sti