rated the Prussians higher than the English as fighters, and when
his officers, who had felt the power of the thin red line which had so
often wrecked the French column, explained to him that there were no
better defensive fighters on earth than the English, not even the
Russians, he had laughed them to scorn, attributing their warnings to the
fact that they had been beaten in Spain and had grown timid. The Emperor
did not purpose to be beaten in France or Belgium by the stolid English.

In more detail his first plan was to confuse Wellington, who held the
right of the allied line, then fall upon him before he had time to
concentrate, and beat him or contain him with a detachment under Ney,
while the Emperor in person thereafter put Bluecher to rout--and all of
these things he came very near accomplishing completely. Certainly, he
carried out his plans successfully and to the letter until the final day
of battle.

He reasoned that if he could beat Bluecher and threaten his
communications, what was left of the Prussian army, which Napoleon hoped
would not be much, would immediately retreat eastward; and that when
Bluecher had been thrown out of the game for the present, he could turn on
Wellington and his English and allies and make short work of him. It did
not occur to him that even if he beat Bluecher and beat Wellington,
provided the defeats did not end in utter routs, and they both retreated,
they might withdraw on parallel lines and effect a junction later when
even after the double defeat they would still so greatly outnumber him
that his chances of success would be faint indeed.

The possibility of their pursuing any other course than that he had
forecast for them never entered his mind. His own conception of their
action was, in fact, an obsession with him. Yet that which he thought
they would do they did not; and that which he was confident they would
not do they did!

CHAPTER XXIX

WATERLOO--THE FINAL REVIEW

In a romance like this, in which campaigns and marches, maneuvers and
battles, however decisive they may be in history, are only incidental
to the careers of the characters herein presented to the reader, it is
not necessary for the chronicler to turn himself into a military
historian, much as he would like it. Therefore, in great restraint, he
presses on, promising hereafter only so much history as may serve to
show forth the somber background.

In this setting of the scene of the gr