the Allies and their card of delay. For everything depended
upon time. Ney, as will be seen, had thrown away his chance of victory by
his extreme dilatoriness, and during the day the Allies were to bring up
unit after unit, until by nightfall nearly 40,000 men not only held Quatre
Bras successfully, but pushed the French back from their attack upon it.

Perponcher, then, put a battalion and five guns in front of Gemioncourt,
another battalion inside the walls of the farm, four battalions and a
mounted battery before the Wood of Bossu and the farm of Pierrepont. Most
of his battalions were thus stretched in front of the position of Quatre
Bras, the actual Cross Roads where he left only two as a reserve.

Against the Dutchmen, thus extended, the French order to advance was
given, and somewhere between half-past two and a quarter to three the
French attack began. It was delivered upon Gemioncourt and the fields to
the right or east of the Brussels road.

The action that followed is one simple enough to understand by
description, but difficult to express upon a map. It is difficult to
express upon a map because it consisted in the repeated attack of one
fixed number of men against an increasing number of men.

Ney was hammering all that afternoon with a French force which soon
reached its maximum. The position against which he was hammering, though
held at first by a force greatly inferior to his own, began immediately
afterwards to receive reinforcement after reinforcement, until at the
close of the action the defenders were vastly superior in numbers to the
attackers.

I have attempted in the rough pen sketch opposite this page to express
this state of affairs on the allied side during the battle by marking in
successive degrees of shading the bodies of the defence in the order in
which they came up, but the reader must remember the factor of time, and
how all day long Wellington's command at Quatre Bras kept on swelling and
swelling by driblets, as the units marched in at a hurried summons from
various points behind the battlefield. This gradual reinforcement of the
defence gives all its character to the action.

[Illustration]

The French, then, began the assault by an advance to the right or east of
the Brussels road. They cleared out the defenders from Gemioncourt; they
occupied that walled position; they poured across the stream, and were
beginning to take the rise up to Quatre Bras when, at about three o'