, he bade them make a desperate
effort on the British left centre, near the farm of La Haye Sainte. This
guard advanced in two massy columns, leaving four battalions of the
old guard in reserve, near to the spot where Napoleon sat on his horse,
rigid as a statue, watching their motions. They moved on resolutely
under a destructive fire from the British position; and when within
fifty yards from the British line they attempted to deploy. The close
fire upon them, however, was too terrible to admit of this movement;
their flanks were enclosed by some of our guards; they got mixed
together in a mass; and in that mass they were broken and slaughtered,
or compelled to hasten down the hill in irretrievable confusion. The
grand army of Napoleon never again stood to face its enemies; it was in
fact destroyed, for "all the rest of the work was headlong, unresisted
pursuit, slaughter of fugitives who had entirely lost their military
formation, and capture of prisoners, artillery, and spoils." As the
imperial guards reeled from the British position, and just as Blucher
joined in person with a corps of his army to the left of the British
line, Wellington moved forward his whole line of infantry, supported by
the cavalry and artillery, and swept all before him. At every point
the attack succeeded. The French fled in the utmost confusion; Napoleon
himself setting them the example; and one hundred and fifty pieces
of cannon, with all their ammunition, fell into the hands of the
conquerors. Wellington and Marshal Blucher met at a farm-house, called
Maison Rouge; and here the duke gave orders for his troops to halt,
and left the task of pursuit to the Prussians. Blucher declared that he
would follow up the French with his last horse and his last man; and he
instantly started off with two Prussian corps in pursuit of them. The
fugitives dispersed all over the country; but the Prussians did fearful
execution upon them, knocking them down in heaps like cattle: at one
place eight hundred of them were thus dispatched. Many of the French ran
across fields and into woods, where numbers were afterwards found dead
or grievously wounded. As for the high-road it resembled the seashore
after some fearful shipwreck--cannon, caissons, carriages, baggage,
arms, and wreck of every kind were picked up by the pursuers. One of
the first hauls, indeed, which Blucher made, was sixty pieces of cannon
belonging to the imperial guard; and with these were capture