amples of endurance so tenacious and organisation so
excellent in the moving so large a body under such conditions in the whole
history of war.

* * * * *

When the Fourth Prussian Corps debouched from the Wood of Fischermont and
began its two-mile approach towards his flank, Napoleon, who had already
had it watched by a body of cavalry, ordered Lobau with the Sixth French
Army Corps, or rather with what he had kept with him of the Sixth Army
Corps, to go forward and check it.

It could only be a question of delay. Lobau had but 10,000 against the
30,000 which Bulow could ultimately bring against him when all his
brigades had come up; but delay was the essential of the moment to
Napoleon. To ward off the advancing Prussian pressure just so long as
would permit him to carry the Mont St Jean was his most desperate need.
Lobau met the enemy, three to two, in the hollow of Plancenoit,[24] was
turned by such superior numbers, and driven from the village.

All this while, during the Prussian success which brought that enemy's
reinforcement nearer and nearer to the rear of the French army and to the
Emperor's own standpoint, the wasted though magnificent action of the
French cavalry was continuing against Wellington's right centre, west of
the Brussels road. Kellerman had charged for the third time; the plateau
was occupied, the British guns abandoned, the squares formed. For the
third time that furious seething of horse against foot was seen from the
distant height of the Belle Alliance. For the third time the sight carried
with it a deceptive appearance of victory. For the third time the cavalry
charge broke back again, spent, into the valley below. Ney, wild as he had
been wild at Quatre Bras, failing in judgment as he had failed then,
shouted for the last reserve of horse, and forgot to call for that 6000
untouched infantry, the bulk of Reille's Second Corps, which watched from
the height of the French ridge the futile efforts of their mounted
comrades.

Folly as it was to have charged unbroken infantry with horse alone, the
charges had been so repeated and so tenacious that, _immediately_
supported by infantry, they might have succeeded. If those 6000 men of
Reille's, the mass of the Second Army Corps, which stood to arms unused
upon the ridge to the west of the Brussels road, had been ordered to
follow hard upon the last cavalry charge, Napoleon might yet have snatched
victory from suc