to
Erlon that he should turn round and come back to Quatre Bras.

Of course, if war were clockwork, if there were no human character in a
commander, if no latitude of judgment were understood in the very nature
of a great independent command such as Ney's was upon that day, if there
were always present before every independent commander's mental vision an
exact map of the operations, and, _at the same time_, a plan of the exact
position of all the troops upon it at any given moment--if all these
armchair conceptions of war were true, then Ney's order would have been
as undisciplined in character and as foolish in intention as it was
disastrous in effect.

But such conceptions are not true. Great generals entrusted with separate
forces, and told off to engage in a great action at a distance from the
supreme command, have, by the very nature of their mission, the widest
latitude of judgment left to them. They are perfectly free to decide, in
some desperate circumstance, that if their superior knew of that
circumstance, he would understand why an afterorder of his was not obeyed,
or was even directly countermanded. That Ney should have sent this furious
counterorder, therefore, to Erlon, telling him to come back instantly, in
spite of Napoleon's first note, though it was a grievous error, is one
perfectly explicable, and parallel to many other similar incidents that
diversify the history of war. In effect, Ney said to himself: "The Emperor
has no idea of the grave crisis at _my_ end of the struggle or he wouldn't
have sent that order. He is winning, anyhow; I am actually in danger of
defeat; and if I am defeated, Wellington's troops will pour through and
come up on the Emperor's army from the rear and destroy it. I have a
right, therefore, to summon Erlon back." Such was the rationale of Ney's
decision. His passionate mood did the rest.

A second and graver difficulty is this: By the time Erlon got the message
to come back, it was so late that he could not possibly bring his 20,000
up in time to be of any use to Ney at Quatre Bras. They could only arrive
on the field, as they did in fact arrive, when darkness had already set
in. It is argued that a general in Ney's position would have rapidly
calculated the distance involved, and would have seen that it was useless
to send for his subordinate at such an hour.

The answer to this suggestion is twofold. In the first place, a man under
hot fire is capable of making mistak