[10] This first division of the Guards consisted of the two brigades of Maitland and of Byng.
[11] Let it be remembered, for instance, that Ziethen’s corps, which helped to turn the scale at Waterloo, two days later, only arrived, on the field of battle less than half an hour before sunset.
[12] I have in this map numbered separate corps and units from one to ten, without giving them names. The units include the English cavalry and Dornberg’s brigade, with the Cumberland Hussars, the First, Second, Third, and Fifth Infantry Divisions, the corps of Brunswick, the Nassauers, and the Second and Third Netherlands Divisions. All of these ultimately reached Quatre Bras with the exception of the Second Infantry Division.
[13] In which 15,000, as accurate statistics are totally lacking, and the whole thing is a matter of rough estimate, we may assign what proportion we will to killed, to wounded, and to prisoners respectively.
[14] The reason he was thus ignorant of what had really happened to the Prussians was, that the officer who had been sent by the chief of the Prussian staff to the Duke after nightfall to inform him of the Prussian defeat had never arrived. That officer had been severely wounded on the way, and the message was not delivered.
[15] There has arisen a discussion as to the whole nature of this retreat between the French authorities, who insist upon the close pursuit by their troops and the precipitate flight of the English rearguard, and the English authorities, who point out how slight were the losses of that rearguard, and how just was Wellington’s comment that the retreat, as a whole, was unmolested.
This dispute is solved, as are many disputes, by the consideration that each narrator is right from his point of view. The French pursuit was most vigorous, the English rearguard was very hard pressed indeed; but that rearguard was so well handled that it continually held its own, gave back as good as it got, and efficiently protected the unmolested retreat of the mass of the army.
[16] “Dead” ground means ground in front of a position sheltered by its very steepness from the fire of the defence upon the summit. The ideal front for a defence conducted with firearms is not a very steep slope, but a long, slight, open and even one.
[17] Almost exactly ten per cent.
[18] It is from thirty to fifty feet above the spur on which he had just ranged his guns in front of the army, some twenty-five feet higher than the crest occupied a mile off by the allied army, and a few feet higher than the bare land somewhat more than four miles off, upon which Napoleon first discerned the arriving Prussians.