Bijlandt. This body was stationed in front of
the sunken road (at the point marked A in red upon the map). Behind it he
had put Pack's brigade and Kemp's, both British; to the left of it, but
also behind the road, Best's Hanoverian brigade. Papelotte village he held
with Perponcher's Belgians.

It will be seen that the crushing fire of the French eighty guns
maintained for half an hour had fallen full upon the Dutch-Belgians,
standing exposed upon the forward slope at a range of not more than 800
yards.[20] At the French charge, though that was delivered through high
standing crops and over drenched and slippery soil up the slope,
Bijlandt's brigade broke. It is doubtful indeed whether any other troops
would not have broken under such circumstances. Unfortunately the incident
has been made the subject of repeated and most ungenerous accusation. A
body purposely set forward before the whole line to stand such fearful
pounding and to shelter the rest; one, moreover, which in two days of
fighting certainly lost one-fourth of its number in killed and wounded,
and probably lost more than one-third, is deserving of a much more
chivalrous judgment than that shown by most historians in its regard.
Anyhow, Kemp's brigade quickly filled the gap left by the failure of the
Netherlanders, and began to press back the French charge.

Meanwhile the French right, which had captured Papelotte, was compelled to
retreat upon seeing the centre thus driven back, while the French left had
failed to carry the farm of La Haye Sainte. Indeed upon this side, that
is, in the neighbourhood of the great road, the check and reverse to the
French assault had been more complete than elsewhere. An attempt to drive
its first success home with a cavalry charge had been met by a
countercharge, deservedly famous, in which, among other regiments, the
First and Second Lifeguards, the Blues, the King's Dragoons, had broken
the French horse and followed up the French retirement down the slope. The
centre of that retirement was similarly charged by the Scots Greys; and in
the end of the whole affair the English horsemen rode up to the spur where
the great battery stood, sabred the gunners, and then, being thus advanced
so uselessly and so dangerously from their line, were in their turn driven
back to the English positions with bad loss.

When this opening chapter of the battle closed, the net result was that
the initial charge of the First Corps under Erlon ha