on
the left, or eastward, to Charleroi. A country road, in parts only a
couple of feet deep, in parts sunk from twelve to fifteen feet,
traverses the crest of the ridge, and intersects the two roads just
named before they unite to form the main Brussels road. Two
farmhouses--La Haye Sainte, on the Charleroi road, and Hougoumont, on
that to Nivelles--stand out some 250 yards in advance of the ridge.
Thus the cross-road served as a ditch to Wellington's front; the two
farmhouses were, so to speak, horn-works guarding his right centre and
left centre; while in the little valley on the reverse side of the
crest Wellington was able to act on his favourite tactics of keeping
his men out of sight till the moment for action arrived. The ridge, in
fact, to the French generals who surveyed it from La Belle Alliance
seemed almost bare, showing nothing but batteries at intervals along
the crest, and a spray of skirmishers on the slopes below.

Looked at from the British ridge, the plain over which the great fight
raged is a picture of pastoral simplicity and peace. The crops that
Sunday morning were high upon it, the dark green of wheat and clover
chequered with the lighter green of rye and oats. No fences intersect
the plain; a few farmhouses, each with a leafy girdle of trees, and the
brown roofs of one or two distant villages, alone break the level floor
of green. The present writer has twice visited Waterloo, and the image
of verdurous and leafy peace conveyed by the landscape is still most
vivid. Only Hougoumont, where the orchard walls are still pierced by
the loop-holes through which the Guards fired that long June Sunday,
helps one to realise the fierce strife which once raged and echoed over
this rich valley with its grassy carpet of vivid green. Waterloo is a
battlefield of singularly small dimensions. The British front did not
extend for more than two miles; the gap betwixt Hougoumont and La Haye
Sainte, through which Ney poured his living tide of cavalry, 15,000
strong, is only 900 yards wide, a distance equal, say, to a couple of
city blocks. The ridge on which Napoleon drew up his army is less than
2000 yards distant from that on which the British stood. It sloped
steadily upward, and, as a consequence. Napoleon's whole force was
disclosed at a glance, and every combination of troops made in
preparation for an attack on the British line was clearly visible, a
fact which greatly assisted Wellington in his a