man's head, in order to defend
the orchard. As we went up into this stable, we looked through these
holes, and we could see our line of battle, the high-road to Brussels
and Charleroi, the little farms of Belle-Alliance, Rossomme, and
Gros-Caillou, which lie along this road at little distances from each
other; the Old Guard which was stationed across it, with their
shouldered arms, and the staff on a little eminence at the left, and
farther away in the same direction, in the rear of the ravine of
Planchenois, we could see the white smoke rising continually above the
trees. This was the attack of the first Prussian corps.

We heard afterward that the Emperor had sent Lobau with ten thousand
men to turn them back. The battle had begun, but the Old and the Young
Guard, the cuirassiers of Milhaud and of Kellerman, and the chasseurs
of Lefebvre-Desnoettes; in fact the whole of our magnificent cavalry
remained in position. The great, the real battle was with the English.

What a crowd of thoughts must have been suggested, by that grand
spectacle and that immense plain, to the Emperor, who could see it all
mentally better than we could with our own eyes.

We might have stayed there for hours, if Captain Florentin had not come
up suddenly, and exclaimed, "What are you doing here? Are we going to
dispute the passage with the Guard? Come! hurry! Knock a hole in that
wall on the side toward the enemy!"

We picked up the sledges and pickaxes which the Germans had dropped on
the floor, and made holes through the wall of the gable.

This did not take fifteen minutes, and then we could see the fight at
Hougoumont; the blazing buildings, the bursting of the bombs from
second to second among the ruins, and the Scotch chasseurs in ambuscade
in the road in the rear of the place, and on our right about two
gunshots distant, the first line of the English artillery, falling back
on their centre, and stationing their cannon, which our gunners had
begun to dismount, higher up the hill. But the remainder of their line
did not change; they had squares of red and squares of black touching
each other at the corners like the squares of a chess-board, in the
rear of the deep road; and in attacking them we would come under their
crossfire. Their artillery was in position on the brow of the hill,
and in the hollow on the hill-side toward Mont-St.-Jean their cavalry
was waiting.

The position of the English seemed to me still stronger th