was hidden from him by a slight lift of
land.

There were 5000 mounted men drawn up in the hollow to the west of the
Brussels road for the charge. It was not until they began to climb the
slope that Napoleon saw what numbers were being risked, and perceived the
full gravity of Ney's error.

To charge unshaken infantry in this fashion, and to charge it without
immediate infantry support, was a thing which that master of war would
never have commanded, and which, when he saw it developing under the
command of his lieutenant, filled him with a sense of peril. But it was
too late to hesitate or to change the disposition of this sudden move. The
5000 climbed at a slow and difficult trot through the standing crops and
the thick mud of the rising ground, suffered--with a moment's
wavering--the last discharge of the British guns, and then, on reaching
the edge of the plateau, spurred to the gallop and charged.

It was futile. They passed the line of guns (the gunners had orders to
abandon their pieces and to retire within the infantry squares); they
developed, in too short a start, too slight an impetus; they seethed, as
the famous metaphor of that field goes, "like angry waves round rocks";
they lashed against every side of the squares into which the allied
infantry had formed. The squares stood.

Wellington had had but a poor opinion of his command. It contained,
indeed, elements more diverse and raw material in larger proportion than
ever he, or perhaps any other general of the great wars, had had to deal
with, but it was infantry hitherto unshaken; and the whole conception of
that false movement, the whole error of that cavalry action, lay in the
idea that the allied line had suffered in a fashion which it had been very
far from suffering. Nothing was done against the squares; and the firmest
of them, the nucleus of the whole resistance, were the squares of British
infantry, three deep, against which the furious close-sabring, spurring,
and fencing of sword with bayonet proved utterly vain. Upon this mass of
horsemen moving tumultuous and ineffectual round the islands of foot
resisting their every effort, Uxbridge, gathering all his cavalry,
charged, and 5000 fresh horse fell upon the French lancers and
cuirassiers, already shredded and lessened by grape at fifty yards and
musket fire at ten. This countercharge of Uxbridge's cleared the plateau.
The French horsemen turned bridle, fled to the hollow of the valley again,