action against Ligny could be
more decisive or more important than his own. It was a question of
exercising judgment, and of deciding whether Napoleon had justly judged
the proportion between his chances of a great victory and Ney's chances;
and further, whether a great victory at Ligny would have been of more
effect than a great victory or the prevention of a bad defeat at Quatre
Bras. Napoleon was right and Ney was wrong.

I have heard or read the further suggestion that Napoleon, on seeing
Erlon, or having him reported, not two miles away, should have sent him
further peremptory orders to continue his march and to come on to Ligny.

This is bad history. Erlon, as it was, was heading a trifle too much to
the south, so that Napoleon, who thought the whole of Ney's command to be
somewhat further up the Brussels road northward than it was, did not guess
at first what the new troops coming up might be, and even feared they
might be a detachment of Wellington's, who might have defeated Ney, and
now be coming in from the west to attack _him_.

He sent an orderly to find out what the newcomers were. The orderly
returned to report that the troops were Erlon's, but that they had turned
back. Had Napoleon sent again, after this, to find Erlon, and to make him
for a third time change his direction, it would have been altogether too
late to have used Erlon's corps d'armee at Ligny by the time it should
have come up. Napoleon had, therefore, no course before him but to do as
he did, namely, give up all hope of help from the west, and defeat the
Prussians at Ligny before him, if not decisively, at least to the best of
his ability, with the troops immediately to his hand.

* * * * *

So much for Erlon.

Now for the second point: the way in which the units of Wellington's
forces dribbled in all day haphazard upon the position of Quatre Bras.

Wellington, as we saw on an earlier page, was both misinformed and
confused as to the nature and rapidity of the French advance into Belgium.
He did not appreciate, until too late, the importance of the position of
Quatre Bras, nor the intention of the French to march along the great
northern road. Even upon the field of Waterloo itself he was haunted by
the odd misconception that Napoleon's army would try and get across his
communications with the sea, and he left, while Waterloo was actually
being fought, a considerable force useless, far off upon his right