on a fixed day and was punctual. He
stopped his horse and remained for some time motionless, looking at
the lightning and listening to the thunder. The fatalist was heard to
cast into the night the mysterious words, '_We are agreed_.' Napoleon
was mistaken; they no longer agreed."

The arena of Waterloo is an undulating plain. Strategically it has the
shape of an immense harrow. The clevis is on the height called Mont
St. Jean, where Wellington was posted with the British army. Behind
that is the village of Waterloo. The right leg of the harrow
terminates at the hamlet of La Belle Alliance. The left leg is the
road from Brussels to Nivelles. The cross-bar intersects the right leg
at La Haie Sainte. The right leg is the highway from Brussels to
Charleroi. The intersection of the bar with the left leg is near the
old stone chateau of Hougomont. The battle was fought on the line of
the cross-bar and in the triangle between it and the clevis.

The conflict began just before noon. The armies engaged were of equal
strength, numbering about 80,000 men on each side. Napoleon was
superior in artillery, but Wellington's soldiers had seen longer
service in the field. They were his veterans from the Peninsular War,
perhaps the stubbornest fighters in Europe. Napoleon's first plan was
to double back the allied left on the centre. This involved the
capture of La Haie Sainte, and, as a strategic corollary, the taking
of Hougomont. The latter place was first attacked. The field and wood
were carried, but the chateau was held in the midst of horrid carnage
by the British.

Early in the afternoon a Prussian division under Billow, about 10,000
strong, came on the field, and Napoleon had to withdraw a division
from his centre to repel the oncoming Germans. For two or three hours,
in the area between La Haie Sainte and Hougomont, the battle raged,
the lines swaying with uncertain fortune back and forth. La Haie
Sainte was taken and held by Ney. On the whole, the British lines
receded. Wellington's attempt to retake La Haie Sainte ended in a
repulse. Ney, on the counter charge, called on Napoleon for
reinforcements, and the latter at that moment, changing his plan of
battle, determined to make the principal charge on the British centre,
saying, however, "It is an hour too soon." The support which he sent
to Ney was not as heavy as it should have been, but the Marshal
concluded that the crisis was at hand, and Napoleon sought to support