The Duke went in person at daylight in the morning of the 16th to Quatre Bras, where he found some Netherland troops, cavalry, infantry, and artillery, which had been engaged with the enemy, but lightly; and he went on from thence to the Prussian army,[843] which was in sight, formed on the heights behind Ligny and St. Amand. He there communicated personally with Marshal Prince Blücher and the headquarters of the Prussian army.
In the meantime the reserve of the Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington arrived at Quatre Bras. The historian asserts that the Duke of Wellington had ordered these troops to halt at the point at which they quitted the Forêt de Soignies. He can have no proof of this fact,[844] of which there is no evidence;[845] and in point of fact the two armies were united about mid-day of the 16th of June, on the left of the position of the Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington. These troops, forming the reserve, and having arrived from Bruxelles, were now joined by those of the 1st division of infantry,[846] and the cavalry; and notwithstanding the criticism of the Prussian historian on the positions occupied by the army under the command of the Duke of Wellington, and on the march of the troops to join with the Prussian army, it is a fact, appearing upon the face of the History, that the Allied British and Netherland army was in line at Quatre Bras, not only twenty-four hours sooner than one whole corps of the Prussian army under General Bülow, the absence of which is attributed by the historian to an accidental mistake, but likewise before the whole of the corps under General Zieten, which had been the first attacked on the 15th, had taken its position in the line of the army assembled on the heights behind Ligny, and having their left at Sombref.
It was perfectly true that the Duke of Wellington did not at first give credit to the reports of the intention of the enemy to attack by the valleys of the Sambre and the Meuse.
The enemy had destroyed the roads leading through those valleys, and he considered that Buonaparte might have made his attack upon the Allied armies in the Netherlands and in the provinces on the left of the Rhine by other lines with more advantage. But it is obvious that, when the attack was made, he was not unprepared to assist in resisting it: and, in point of fact, did, on the afternoon and in the evening of the 16th June, repulse the attack of Marshal Ney upon his position at Quatre Bras, which had been commenced by the aid of another corps d’armée under General Reille. These were the troops which had attacked on the 15th, at daylight, the Prussian corps under General Zieten, which corps the Allied troops, under the Duke of Wellington, relieved in resistance to the enemy.
XVI.
WELLINGTON’S LETTER TO BLÜCHER: 10.30 A.M.,
June 16, 1815.
Ollech, opposite p. 124.
Sur les hauteurs derrière
Frasne le 16me Juin 1815
à 10 heures et demi.
Mon cher Prince:
Mon armée est situé comme il suit: