of the personal characters of the
two generals, and partly by the fact that the bases of the allied
armies lay at widely separate points--the English base at Antwerp, the
Prussian on the Rhine. Bluecher was essentially "a hussar general"; the
fighting impulse ran riot in his blood. If attacked, he would
certainly fight where he stood; if defeated, and driven back on his
base, he must move in diverging lines from Wellington. That Bluecher
would abandon his base to keep touch with Wellington--as actually
happened--Napoleon never guessed. Wellington, cooler and more
methodical than his Prussian fellow-commander, would not fight, it was
certain, till his troops were called in on every side and he was ready.
Bluecher was nearer the French frontier. Napoleon calculated that he
could leap upon him, bar Wellington from coming to his help by planting
Ney at Quatre Bras, win a great battle before Wellington could join
hands with his ally, and then in turn crush Wellington. It was
splendid strategy, splendidly begun, but left fatally incomplete.

Napoleon fought and defeated Bluecher at Ligny on June 16, attacking
Quatre Bras at the same time, so as to occupy the English. Wellington
visited Bluecher's lines before the fight began, and said to him, "Every
general knows his own men, but if my lines were drawn up in this
fashion I should expect to get beaten;" and as he cantered back to his
own army he said to those about him, "If Bonaparte be what I suppose he
is, the Prussians will get a ---- good licking to-day." Captain Bowles
was standing beside the Duke at Quatre Bras on the morning of the 17th,
when a Prussian staff-officer, his horse covered with sweat, galloped
up and whispered an agitated message in the Duke's ear. The Duke,
without a change of countenance, dismissed him, and, turning to Bowles,
said, "Old Bluecher has had a ---- good licking, and gone back to Wavre,
eighteen miles. As he has gone back, we must go too. I suppose in
England they will say we have been licked. I can't help it! As they
have gone back, we must go too." And in five minutes, without stirring
from the spot, he had given complete orders for a retreat to Waterloo.

The low ridge on which the Duke took up his position runs east and
west. The road from Brussels to the south, just before it crosses the
crest of the ridge, divides like the upper part of the letter Y into
two roads, that on the right, or westward, running to Nivelles, that