s at Ghent, and promised to furnish
the Allies with the outline of the Emperor's plan of the campaign ere it
began. But the minister of police took care that this document should
not arrive until the campaign was decided.

At daybreak on Thursday, the 15th, the French drove in all the outposts
on the west bank of the Sambre, and at length assaulted Charleroi; thus
revealing the purpose of the Emperor; namely, to crush Blucher ere he
could concentrate all his own strength, far less be supported by the
advance of Wellington, and then rush at once upon Brussels. Ziethen,
however, held out, though with severe loss, at Charleroi so long, that
the alarm spread along the whole Prussian line; and then fell back in
good order on a position between Ligny and Armand; where Blucher now
awaited Napoleon's attack--at the head of the whole of his army, except
the division of Bulow which had not yet come up from Liege. The scheme
of beating the Prussian divisions in detail had therefore failed; but
the second part of the plan, namely, that of separating them wholly from
Wellington, might still succeed. With this view, while Blucher was
concentrating his force about Ligny, the French held on the main road to
Brussels from Charleroi; beating in some Nassau troops at Frasnes, and
followed them as far as _Quatre-Bras_, a farmhouse, so called, because
it is there that the roads from Charleroi to Brussels, and from Nivelles
to Namur, cross each other.

At half-past one o'clock, p.m., of the same day (Thursday the 15th) a
Prussian officer[72] of high rank arrived at Wellington's headquarters
in Brussels, with the intelligence of Napoleon's decisive operations. By
two o'clock orders were despatched to all the cantonments of the Duke's
army, for the divisions to break up, and concentrate on the left at
Quatre-Bras; his Grace's design being that his whole force should be
assembled there, by eleven o'clock on the next night, Friday the 16th.

It was at first intended to put off a ball announced for the evening of
Thursday, at the Duchess of Richmond's hotel in Brussels; but on
reflection it seemed highly important that the population of that city
should be kept as far as possible in ignorance as to the course of
events, and the Duke of Wellington desired that the ball should proceed
accordingly; nay, the general officers received his commands to appear
in the ball-room--each taking care to quit the apartment as quietly as
possible, at ten o'clo