with 80,000 men. Wellington’s troops were concentrating at Quatre Bras, which lies due north of Charleroi, and is about nine miles from Ligny. On the 16th, Napoleon in person attacked Blucher, and, after a long and obstinate battle, defeated him, and compelled the Prussian army to retire northward toward Wavre. On the same day, Marshal Ney, with a large part of the French army, attacked the English troops at Quatre Bras, and a very severe engagement took place, in which Ney failed in defeating the British, but succeeded in preventing their sending any help to Blucher, who was being beaten by the emperor at Ligny. On the news of Blucher’s defeat at Ligny reaching Wellington, he foresaw that the emperor’s army would now be directed upon him, and he accordingly retreated in order to restore his communications with his ally, which would have been dislocated by the Prussians falling back from Ligny to Wavre if the English had remained in advance at Quatre Bras. During the 17th, therefore, Wellington retreated, being pursued, but little molested by the main French army, over about half the space between Quatre Bras and Brussels. This brought him again parallel, on a line running from west to east, with Blucher, who was at Wavre. Having ascertained that the Prussian army, though beaten on the 16th, was not broken, and having received a promise from its general to march to his assistance, Wellington determined to halt, and to give battle to the French emperor in the position, which, from a village in its neighborhood, has received the ever-memorable name of the field of Waterloo.
Sir Walter Scott, in his "Life of Napoleon," remarks of Waterloo that "the scene of this celebrated action must be familiar to most readers either from description or recollection." The narratives of Sir Walter himself, of Alison, Gleig, Siborne, and others, must have made the events of the battle almost equally well known. I might, perhaps, content myself with referring to their pages, and avoid the difficult task of dealing with a subject which has already been discussed so copiously, so clearly, and so eloquently by others. In particular, the description by Captain Siborne of the Waterloo campaign is so full and so minute, so scrupulously accurate, and, at the same time, so spirited and graphic, that it will long defy the competition of far abler pens than mine. I shall only aim at giving a general idea of the main features of this great event, of this discrowning and crowning victory.
