splitting timbers as doors are broken through, the
curses of the fighters, rise into the air, with shouts of "En
avant!" from the further side of the stream, and "Vorwarts!" from
the nearer.

The battle extends to the west by Le Hameau and Saint-Amand la Haye;
and Ligny becomes invisible under a shroud of smoke.

VOICES [at the base of the mill]

This sun will go down bloodily for us!
The English, sharply sighed for by Prince Blucher,
Cannot appear. Wellington words across
That hosts have set on him at Quatre-Bras,
And leave him not one bayonet to spare!

The truth of this intelligence is apparent. A low dull sound heard
lately from the direction of Quatre-Bras has increased to a roaring
cannonade. The scene abruptly closes.

SCENE VI

THE FIELD AT QUATRE-BRAS

[The same day. The view is southward, and the straight gaunt
highway from Brussels [behind the spectator] to Charleroi over
the hills in front, bisects the picture from foreground to
distance. Near at hand, where it is elevated and open, there
crosses it obliquely, at a point called Les Quatre-Bras, another
road which comes from Nivelle, five miles to the gazer's right
rear, and goes to Namur, twenty miles ahead to the left. At a
distance of five or six miles in this latter direction it passes
near the previous scene, Ligny, whence the booming of guns can
be continuously heard.

Between the cross-roads in the centre of the scene and the far
horizon the ground dips into a hollow, on the other side of which
the same straight road to Charleroi is seen climbing the crest,
and over it till out of sight. From a hill on the right hand of
the mid-distance a large wood, the wood of Bossu, reaches up
nearly to the crossways, which give their name to the buildings
thereat, consisting of a few farm-houses and an inn.

About three-quarters of a mile off, nearly hidden by the horizon
towards Charleroi, there is also a farmstead, Gemioncourt; another,
Piraumont, stands on an eminence a mile to the left of it, and
somewhat in front of the Namur road.]

DUMB SHOW

As this scene uncovers the battle is beheld to be raging at its
height, and to have reached a keenly tragic phase. WELLINGTON has
returned from Ligny, and the main British and Hanoverian position,
held by the men who marched out of Brussels in the morning, under