him with Milhaud's cuirassiers and a division of the Middle Guard.
Under this counter charge the British lines reeled and staggered, but
still clung desperately to their position. They gave a little, and
then hung fast and could be moved no farther. In another part of the
field Durutte carried the allied position of Papelotte, and Lobau
routed Buelow from Planchenois. At half-past four everything seemed to
portend disaster to the allies and victory to the French.

If the tragedy of Waterloo had been left at that hour to work out its
own results as between France and England it would appear that the
latter must have gone to the wall; but destiny had prepared another
end for the conflict. Waterloo was a point of concentration. Several
tides had set thither, and some of them had already arrived and broken
on the rocks. Other tides were rolling in. The British wave had been
first, and this had now been rolled back by the tide of France. A
German wave was coming, however, and another French billow, either or
both of which might break at any moment.

On the morning of June 18, at the little town of Wavre, fifteen miles
southeast of Brussels and about eight or ten miles from Waterloo, a
battle had been fought between the French contingent under Marshal
Grouchy and the Prussian division under Thielmann, who commanded the
left wing of Marshal Bluecher's army. That commander had a force of
fully forty thousand men under him, and was on his way to join his
forces with those of Wellington on the plateau of Mont St. Jean.
Grouchy had at this time between thirty and forty thousand men, and
was under orders from Napoleon to keep in touch with his right wing,
watching the Prussians and joining himself to the main army according
to the emergency.

These two divisions--Bluecher's and Grouchy's--were _sliding along_
toward Waterloo, and on the afternoon of the eighteenth it became one
of the great questions in the history of this century which would
first arrive on the field. Napoleon believed that Grouchy was at hand.
Wellington in his desperation breathed out the wish that either night
or Bluecher would come. The ambiguous result of the principal conflict
made it more than ever desirable to both of the commanders to gain
their reinforcements, each before the other. The event showed that the
arrival of Buelow's contingent was really the signal for the oncoming
of the whole Prussian army. The French Emperor, however, remained
confident