If he has only to deal in front of Abingdon with this second or western half, which hurried up too late to help the defeated eastern half, he has very fair chances of success. He is slightly superior numerically; he has, upon the whole, better troops and he has more guns. But the eastern half of the defending army, which has been beaten at Newbury, though beaten, was neither destroyed nor dispersed, nor thrust very far back from the line of operations. It has retreated to Wallingford, that is towards the north, parallel to the retreat of the western half; and a few hours after this western half is engaged in battle with the invader in front of Abingdon, the eastern half appears upon that invader’s right flank, joins forces with the line of the defenders at Abingdon, and thus brings not only a crushing superiority of numbers upon the field against the invader, but also brings it up in such a manner that he is compelled to fight upon two fronts at once. He is, of course, destroyed by such a combination, and his army routed and dispersed. An action of this sort fought at Abingdon would correspond to the action which was fought upon the field of Waterloo, supposing, of course, for the purpose of this rough parallel, an open countryside without the obstacle of the river.
The actual positions of the two combined commands, the command of Blucher and the command of Wellington, which between them held the long line between Tournay and Liège, will be grasped from the sketch map upon the next page.
The reader who would grasp the campaign in the short compass of such an essay as this had best consider the numbers and the positions in a form not too detailed, and busy himself with a picture which, though accurate, shall be general.
Let him, then, consider the whole line between Liège and Tournay to consist of the two halves already presented: a western half, which we will call the Duke of Wellington’s, and an eastern half, which we will call Blucher’s: of these two the Duke of Wellington was Commander-in-chief.
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Next, note the numbers of each and their disposition. The mixed force under the Duke of Wellington was somewhat over 100,000 men, with just over 200 guns.[2] They consisted in two corps and a reserve. The first corps was under the Prince of Orange, and was mainly composed of men from the Netherlands. Its headquarters were at Braine le Comte. The second corps was under Lord Hill, and contained the mass of the British troops present. Its headquarters were at Ath. These two between them amounted to about half of Wellington’s command, and we find them scattered in cantonments at Oudenarde, at Ath, at Enghien, at Soignies, at Nivelles, at Roeulx, at Braine le Comte, at Hal. A reserve corps under the Duke’s own command was stationed at Brussels, and amounted to more than one-fifth, but less than one-quarter, of the whole force. The remaining quarter and a little more is accounted for by scattered cavalry (mainly in posts upon the river Dender), by the learned arms, gunners and sappers, distributed throughout the army, and by troops which were occupying garrisons—in numbers amounting to rather more than ten per cent. of the force.
The eastern Prussian or left half of the line was, as is apparent in the preceding map, somewhat larger. It had a quarter more men and half as many guns again as that under the Duke of Wellington, and it was organised into four army corps, whose headquarters were respectively Charleroi, Namur, Ciney, and Liège.
The whole line, therefore, which was waiting the advance of Napoleon, was not quite two and a third hundred thousand men, with rather more than 500 guns. Of this grand total of the two halves, Wellington’s and Blucher’s combined, about eighteen per cent. came from the British Islands, and of that eighteen per cent., again, a very large proportion—exactly how large it is impossible to determine—were Irish.