loo, and
obtain a pledge of aid, on the strength of which he fought next day?
It is not merely possible to quote experts on each side of this
question; it is possible to quote the same expert on both sides.
Ropes, for example, the latest Waterloo critic, devotes several pages
to proving that the interview never took place, and then adds a note to
his third edition declaring that he has seen evidence which convinces
him it did take place! It is possible even to quote Wellington himself
both for the alleged visit and against it. In 1833 he told a circle of
guests at Strathfieldsaye, in minute detail, how he got rid of his only
aide-de-camp, Lord Fitzroy Somerset, and rode over on "Copenhagen" in
the rain and darkness to Wavre, and got from Bluecher's own lips the
assurance that he would join him next day at Waterloo. In 1838, when
directly asked by Baron Gurney whether the story was true, he replied,
"No, I did not see Bluecher the day before Waterloo." If Homer nodded,
it is plain that sometimes the Duke of Wellington forgot!

[Illustration: Battle of Waterloo, June 18th, 1815.]

Clearness on some points, it is true, is slowly emerging. It is
admitted, for example, that Napoleon took the allies by surprise when
he crossed the Sambre, and, in the very first stage of the campaign,
scored a brilliant strategic success over them. Wellington himself, on
the night of the famous ball, took the Duke of Richmond into his
dressing-room, shut the door, and said, "Napoleon has humbugged me, by
----; he has gained twenty-four hours' march on me." The Duke went on
to explain that he had ordered his troops to concentrate at Quatre
Bras; "but," he added, "we shall not stop him there, and I must fight
him here," at the same time passing his thumb-nail over the position of
Waterloo. That map, with the scratch of the Duke's thumb-nail over the
very line where Waterloo was afterwards fought, was long preserved as a
relic. Part of the surprise, the Duke complained, was due to Bluecher.
But, as he himself explained to Napier, "I cannot tell the world that
Bluecher picked the fattest man in his army (Muffling) to ride with an
express to me, and that he took thirty hours to go thirty miles."

The hour at which Waterloo began, though there were 150,000 actors in
the great tragedy, was long a matter of dispute. The Duke of
Wellington puts it at ten o'clock. General Alava says half-past
eleven, Napoleon and Drouet say twelve o'clock,