Footnotes:
[1] I use the word “English” here to emphasise the character of Wellington’s command; for though even this second half of the allied line was not in its majority of British origin, yet it contained a large proportion of British troops; the commander was an Englishman, the Duke of Wellington, and the best elements in the force were from these islands.
[2] Rather more than 106,000; guns 204.
[3] Surely an error in judgment, for thus the whole mass of the army, all of it except the First and Second Corps, would be crossing the Sambre at that one place, with all the delay such a plan would involve. As a fact, the Fourth Corps, or right wing of the advance, was at last sent over the river by Châtelet, but it would have been better to have given such orders at the beginning.
[4] There were some five hundred Prussian prisoners.
[5] See ante, pp. [27] and [32].
[6] A lengthy digression might here be admitted upon the question of how defence against aerial scouting will develop. That it will develop none can doubt. Every such advantage upon the part of one combatant has at last been neutralised by the spread of a common knowledge and a common method to all.
[7] To be accurate, not quite five-twelfths.
[8] It is worth remarking that Perponcher had been told by Wellington, when he first heard of Napoleon’s approach, to remain some miles off to the west at Nivelles. Wellington laboured, right up to the battle of Waterloo, under the fantastic impression that the French, or a considerable body of them, were, for some extraordinary reason, going to leave the Brussels road, go round westward and attack his right. He was, as might be expected of a defensive genius, nervous for his communications. Luckily for Wellington, Perponcher simply disobeyed these orders, left Nivelles before dawn, was at Quatre Bras before sunrise, and proceeded to act as we shall see above.
[9] Or at the most sixteen.