nd to the French troops already engaged,
coming upon the flank and spreading to the rear of the Prussian host,
would inevitably have destroyed that host, and, to repeat Napoleon's
famous exclamation, "not a gun would have escaped."

The reader may ask: "If this plan of victory be so obvious, why did
Napoleon send Ney off with a separate left wing of forty to fifty thousand
men towards Quatre Bras?"

The answer is: that when, upon the day before, the Thursday, Napoleon had
made this disposition, and given it as the general orders for that Friday,
he had imagined only one corps of Prussians to be before him.

The right wing, with which the Emperor himself stayed, numbering, as we
have seen, about 63,000 men, would have been quite enough to deal with
that one Prussian corps; and he had sent so large a force, under Ney, up
the Brussels road, not because he believed it would meet with serious
opposition, but because this was to be the line of his principal advance,
and it was his intention to occupy the town of Brussels at the very first
opportunity. Having dealt with the single Prussian corps, as he had first
believed it would be, in front of Fleurus, he meant that same evening to
come back in person to the Brussels road and, in company with Ney, to
conduct decisive operations against Wellington's half of the Allies, which
would then, of course, be hopelessly outnumbered.

But when Napoleon saw, a little after midday of the Friday, that he had to
deal with nearly the whole of the Prussian army, he perceived that the
great force under Ney would be wasted out there on the west--supposing it
to be meeting with little opposition--and had far better be used in
deciding a crushing victory over the Prussians. To secure such a victory
would, without bothering about the Duke of Wellington's forces to the
westward, be quite enough to determine the campaign in favour of the
French.

As early as two o'clock a note was sent to Ney urging him, when he had
brushed aside such slight resistance as the Emperor expected him to find
upon the Brussels road, to return and help to envelop the Prussian forces,
which the Emperor was about to attack. At that hour it was not yet quite
clear to Napoleon how large the Prussian force really was. This first note
to Ney, therefore, was unfortunately not as vigorous as it might have
been; though, even if it had been as vigorous as possible, Ney, who had
found unexpected resistance upon the Brussels roa