eir total forces were, of course,
overwhelmingly superior.

He did succeed, as we have seen, in striking suddenly in between the two
halves of the allied army in Belgium. He was not as quick as he had
intended to be. There were faults and delays, but he managed, mainly
through the malinformation and misjudgment of Wellington, to deal with the
Prussians unsupported by Wellington's western wing.

He attacked those Prussians with the bulk of his forces; and although he
was outnumbered even upon that field, he defeated the Prussians at Ligny.
But the defeat was not complete. The Prussians were free to retire
northward, and so ultimately to rejoin Wellington. They took that
opportunity, and from the moment they had taken it Napoleon was doomed.

We have further seen that Grouchy, who had been sent after the Prussian
retreat, might, if he had seen all the possibilities of that retreat, and
had seen them in time, have stepped in between the Prussians and
Wellington, and have prevented the appearance of the former upon the field
of Waterloo.

Had Grouchy done so, Waterloo would not have been the crushing defeat it
was for Napoleon. It would very probably have been a tactical success for
Napoleon.

But, on the other hand, we have no ground for thinking that it would have
been a final and determining success for the Emperor. For if Wellington
had not known quite early in the action that he could count upon the
arrival of the Prussians, he would not have accepted battle. If, as a
fact, he had found the Prussians intercepted, he could have broken contact
and retreated before it was too late.

Had he done so, it would simply have meant that he would later have
effected a junction with his allies, and that in the long-run Napoleon
would still have had to fight an allied army immensely superior to his
own.

All this is as much as to say once more what has been insisted upon
throughout these pages; Waterloo was lost, not upon Sunday, June 18th, but
two days before, when the 63,000 of Napoleon broke and drove back the
80,000 of Blucher but failed to contain them, failed to drive them
eastward, away from Wellington, or to cause a general surrender, and
failed because the First French Army Corps, under Erlon, a matter of
20,000 men, failed to come up in flank at the critical moment.

We have seen what the effect of that failure was; we have discussed its
causes, and we must repeat the main fact for military history of all
those