ed
to make it.

The Prussians retreated. They had to. But they retreated in good
order. Bluecher having been unhorsed and temporarily incapacitated in a
charge, the command and direction of the retreat devolved upon
Gneisenau. His chief claim to military distinction lies in the fact
that he did not do what Napoleon expected, and what Bluecher would have
done. He retreated to the north instead of the east! A pursuit was
launched, but it did not pursue the Prussians. It went off, as it
were, into thin air. It pursued Napoleon's idea, his forecast, which
owing to the accident to Bluecher was wrong!

One reason why the victory of Ligny and the drawn battle at Quatre Bras
were not decisive was because of a strange lack of generalship and a
strange confusion of orders for which Napoleon and Ney are both
responsible. Ney was constructively a victor at Quatre Bras, finally.
That is, the English retreated at nightfall and abandoned the field to
him; but they retreated not because they were beaten but because
Wellington, finding his position could be bettered by retirement and
concentration, decided upon withdrawal. But Ney could have been the
victor in every sense, in spite of his indifferent tactics, if it had
not been for the same blunder that the Emperor committed.

D'Erlon, at the head of perhaps the finest corps in the army, numbering
twenty thousand men, through the long hours of that hot June day
marched from the vicinity of Quatre Bras to Ligny, whence he could
actually see the battle raging, only to be summoned back from Ligny to
Quatre Bras by orders from Ney. Retracing his course, therefore, he
marched back over the route he had just traversed, arriving at Quatre
Bras too late to be of any service to Ney! Like the famous King of
France who with twenty thousand men marched up the hill and then
marched down again, this splendid corps which, thrown into either
battle, would have turned the Prussian retreat into a rout on the one
hand, or have utterly cut to pieces Wellington on the other, did
nothing. The principal fault was Napoleon's. He saw d'Erlon's corps
approaching, but he sent no order and took no steps to put it into the
battle.

Well, in spite of the fact that the energies of d'Erlon had been spent
in marching instead of fighting, the Emperor was a happy man that
night. He had got himself safely placed between the two armies and he
had certainly severely if not decisively beaten one of them.