nce."

"In what part of the field is Buonaparte?"

"Nearly opposite to where we stand."

"I told you, gentlemen, Hougoumont never was the great attack. The
battle must be decided here," pointing, as he spoke, to the plain
beneath us, where still Ney poured on his devoted columns, where yet the
French cavalry rode down upon our firm squares.

As he spoke an aid-de-camp rode up from the valley.

"The ninety-second requires support, my lord: they cannot maintain their
positions half an hour longer, without it."

"Have they given way, Sir?"

"No----"

"Well, then, they must stand where they are. I hear cannon towards the
left; yonder, near Frischermont."

At this moment the light cavalry swept past the base of the hill on
which we stood, hotly followed by the French heavy cuirassier brigade.
Three of our guns were taken; and the cheering of the French infantry,
as they advanced to the charge, presaged their hope of victory.

"Do it, then," said the Duke, in reply to some whispered question of
Lord Uxbridge; and shortly after the heavy trot of advancing squadrons
was heard behind.

They were the Life Guards and the Blues, who, with the first Dragoon
Guards and the Enniskilleners, were formed into close column.

"I know the ground, my Lord," said I to Lord Uxbridge.

"Come along, Sir, come along," said he, as he threw his hussar jacket
loosely behind him, to give freedom to his sword-arm.--"Forward, my men,
forward; but steady, hold your horses in hand; threes about, and
together charge."

"Charge!" he shouted; while, as the word flew from squadron to squadron,
each horseman bent upon his saddle, and that mighty mass, as though
instinct with but one spirit, dashed like a thunder-bolt upon the column
beneath them. The French, blown and exhausted, inferior beside in weight
both of man and horse, offered but a short resistance. As the tall corn
bends beneath the sweeping hurricane, wave succeeding wave, so did the
steel-clad squadrons of France fall before the nervous arm of Britain's
cavalry. Onward they went, carrying death and ruin before them, and
never stayed their course, until the guns were recaptured, and the
cuirassiers, repulsed, disordered, and broken, had retired beneath the
protection of their artillery.

There was, as a brilliant and eloquent writer on the subject
mentions, a terrible sameness in the whole of this battle. Incessant
charges of cavalry upon the squares of our infantry, whose sole