tured and recaptured. The horsemen overran
the ridge, they got behind the squares, they counter-charged over their
own tracks, they rode until the breasts of the horses touched the guns.
They fired pistols in the face of the English. One such charge is
enough to immortalize its makers, and during that afternoon they made
twelve!

Ney, raging over the field, had five horses killed under him. The
British suffered horribly. If the horsemen did draw off to take
breath, and reform for another effort, the French batteries, the
English squares presenting easy targets, sent ball after ball through
them. And nobody stopped fighting to watch the cavalry. Far and wide
the battle raged. Toward the close of the day some of the English
squares had become so torn to pieces that regiments, brigades and
divisions had to be combined to keep from being overwhelmed.

Still the fight raged around Hougomont. Now, from a source of
strength, La Haye Sainte had become a menace. There the English
attacked and the French held. Off to the northeast the country was
black with advancing masses of men. No, it was not Grouchy and his
thirty-five thousand who, if they had been there at the beginning,
might have decided the day. It was the Prussians.

They, at least, had marched to the sound of the cannon. Grouchy was
off at Wavre. He at last got in touch with one of Bluecher's rear corps
and he was fighting a smart little battle ten miles from the place
where the main issue was to be decided. As a diversion, his efforts
were negligible, for without that corps the allies outnumbered the
French two to one.

Telling the troops that the oncoming soldiers were their comrades of
Grouchy's command who would decide the battle, Napoleon detached the
gallant Lobau, who had stood like a stone wall at Aspern, with the
Young Guard to seize the village of Planchenoit and to hold the
Prussians back, for if they broke in the end would be as certain as it
was swift. And well did Lobau with the Young Guard perform that task.
Buelow, commanding the leading corps, hurled himself again and again
upon the French line. His heavy columns fared exactly as the French
columns had fared when they assaulted the English. But it was not
within the power of ten thousand men to hold off thirty thousand
forever, and there were soon that number of Prussians at the point of
contact. Frantic messages from Lobau caused the Emperor to send one of
the divisions of the