rtial historian cannot doubt to be ignorance of the great stroke
which Napoleon had so nearly brought off upon that very day, and would
certainly attempt to bring off upon the next.

In the midst of the ball, or rather during the supper, definite news came
in that the French army had crossed the river Sambre, and had even pushed
its cavalry as far up the Brussels road as Quatre Bras.

The Duke does not seem to have appreciated even then what that should mean
in the way of danger to the Prussians, and indeed of the breaking of the
whole line. He left the dance at about two in the morning and went to
bed.

He was not long left in repose. In the bright morning sunlight, four hours
afterwards, he was roused by a visitor from the frontier, and we have it
upon his evidence that the Duke at last understood what was before him,
and said that the concentration of his forces must be at Quatre Bras.

In other words, Wellington knew or appreciated extremely tardily on that
_Friday_ morning about six that the blow was about to fall upon his
Prussian allies to the south and east, and that it was the business of his
army upon the west to come up rapidly in succour.

As will be seen in a moment, he failed; but it would be a very puerile
judgment of this great man and superb defensive General to belittle his
place in the history of war upon the basis of even such errors as these.

True, the error and the delay were prodigious and, in a fashion, comic;
and had Napoleon delivered upon the _Thursday_ afternoon, as he had
intended, an attack which should have defeated the Prussians before him,
Wellington's error and delay would have paid a very heavy price.

As it was, Napoleon's own delay in crossing the Sambre made Wellington's
mistake and tardiness bear no disastrous fruit. The Duke failed to succour
the Prussians. His troops, scattered all over Western Belgium, did not
come up in time to prevent the defeat of his allies at Ligny. But he held
his own at Quatre Bras; and in the final battle, forty-eight hours later,
the genius with which he handled his raw troops upon the ridge of Mont St
Jean wiped out and negatived all his strategical misconceptions of the
previous days.

From this confusion, this partial delay and error upon Napoleon's part,
this ignorance upon Wellington's of what was toward, both of which marked
Thursday the 15th, we must turn to a detailed description of that morrow,
Friday the 16th, which, though it is less