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The French, then, began the assault by an advance to the right or east of the Brussels road. They cleared out the defenders from Gemioncourt; they occupied that walled position; they poured across the stream, and were beginning to take the rise up to Quatre Bras when, at about three o’clock, Wellington, who had been over at Ligny discussing the position with Blucher, rode up and saw how critical the moment was.

In a few minutes the first French division might be up to the cross-roads at Q.

Bossu Wood, with the four battalions holding it, had not yet been attacked by the French, because their second division of Reille’s Second Corps (under Napoleon’s brother Jerome), had not yet come up; Erlon’s First Corps was still far off, down the road. The men in the Bossu Wood came out to try and stop the French advance. They were thrown back by French cavalry, and even as this was proceeding Jerome’s division arrived, attacked the south of Bossu Wood, and brought up the whole of Ney’s forces to some 19,000 or 20,000 men.

The French advance, so continued, would now undoubtedly have succeeded against the 8000 Dutch at this moment of three o’clock (and Wellington’s judgment that the situation was critical at that same moment was only too sound) had there not arrived precisely at that moment the first of his reinforcements.

A brigade of Dutch cavalry came up from the west along the Nivelles road, and three brigades of infantry appeared marching hurriedly in from the north, along the Brussels road; two of these brigades were British, under the command of Kemp and of Pack, and they formed Picton’s division. The third were a brigade of Hanoverians, under Best. The British and the Hanoverians formed along the Namur road at M N, protected by its embankment, kneeling in the high wheat, and ready to fire when the enemy’s attacking line should come within close range of their muskets.

The newly arrived Dutch cavalry, on the other side of the road, charged the advancing French, but were charged themselves in turn by French cavalry, overthrown, and in their stampede carried Wellington and his staff in a surge past the cross-roads; but the French cavalry, in its turn, was compelled to retire by the infantry fire it met when it had ridden too far. Immediately afterwards the French infantry as they reached the Namur road came unexpectedly upon the just-arrived British and Hanoverians, and were driven back in disorder by heavy volleying at close range from the embankment and the deep cover beyond.

The cavalry charge and countercharge (Jerome beginning to clear the south of the Bossu Wood), the check received by the French on the right from Picton’s brigade and the Hanoverians occupied nearly an hour. It was not far short of four o’clock when Ney received that first urgent dispatch from Napoleon which told him to despatch the enemy’s resistance at Quatre Bras, and then to come over eastward to Ligny and help against the Prussians.

Ney could not obey. He had wasted the whole of a precious morning, and by now, close on four o’clock in the afternoon, yet another unit came up to increase the power of the defence, and to make his chance of carrying the Quatre Bras cross-roads, of pushing back Wellington’s command, of finding himself free to send men to Napoleon increasingly doubtful.

The new unit which had come up was the corps under the Duke of Brunswick, and when this arrived Wellington had for the first time a superiority of numbers over Ney’s single corps (there was still no sign of Erlon) though he was still slightly inferior in guns.