pression of little more than a rolling
plain. This is because, in comparison with the scale of the landscape as a
whole, the elevations and depressions are slight.

Upon this rolling mass of high land there stand out, as I have said, those
two slight ridges, and these ridges lie, roughly speaking, east and
west--perpendicular to the great Brussels road, which cuts them from south
to north. It was upon this great Brussels road that both Wellington and
Napoleon took up, at distances less than a mile apart, their respective
centres of position for the struggle. Though this line of the road did not
precisely bisect the two lines of the opposing armies, the point where it
crossed each line marked the tactical centre of that line: both Wellington
and Napoleon remained in person upon that road.

Now it must not be imagined that the shallow depression between the ridges
stretches of even depth between the two positions taken up by Wellington
and Napoleon, with the road cutting its middle; on the contrary, it is
bridged, a little to the west of the road, by a "saddle," a belt of fields
very nearly flat, and very nearly as high as each ridge. The eastern half
of the depression therefore rises continually, and gets shallower and
shallower as it approaches the road from east westward, and the road only
cuts off the last dip of it. Then, just west of the road there is the
saddle; and as you proceed still further westward along the line midway
between the French and English positions you find a second shallow valley
falling away. This second valley does not precisely continue the direction
of the first, but turns rather more to the north. In the first slight
decline of this second valley, and a few hundred yards west of the road,
lies the country-house called Hougomont, and just behind it lay the
western end of Wellington's line. The whole position, therefore, if it
were cut out as a model in section from a block of wood, might appear as
does the accompanying plan.

[Illustration]

In such a model the northern ridge P--Q some two miles in length is that
held by Wellington. The southern one M--N is that held by Napoleon.
Napoleon commanded from the point A, Wellington from the point B, and the
dark band running from one to the other represents the great Brussels High
Road. The subsidiary ridge O--O is that on which Napoleon, as we shall
see, planted his great battery preparatory to the assault. The enclosure H
is Hougomont, the