 French left would still have
been outnumbered. But Wellington, writes the ablest critic of this
momentous campaign, “at dusk, thirty hours after his first warning, had
only present at Quatre Bras three-eighths of his infantry, one-third of
his guns, and one-seventh of his cavalry. Truly, in holding his own,
the great Englishman owed something that day to fortune.”[46]

This is really the gravamen of Gneisenau’s charge. During the night
the Allied right wing was reinforced to 45,000 men, but, short as
the distance between the wings was, showing how less intimate the
connection between the Allied armies was than it should have been,
Blucher’s left wing was beaten and in full retreat, and the English
general did not know the fact till late.

So retreat was unavoidable, and was begun at 10 a.m. on the 17th.
Wellington was to fall back on the known position of Waterloo. Blucher
had promised to come with his whole army if he could. Napoleon had
despatched Grouchy with 33,000 men to prevent this, and keep the
Prussians on the move; but the emperor’s own ill health and failing
strength had again caused delay; so Grouchy started late, and Napoleon
wasted his time in rest and a review.

The British retreat was well conducted in wretched weather, and despite
the heavy ground, there was some rearguard fighting, chiefly by the
cavalry on both sides. At length, on the sodden ground about Mont St.
Jean, both armies settled down for what rest was possible, and waited
for the dawn. Thus the British prepared for battle, with the hope that
Blucher, or the certainty that night, would come on the 18th June 1815.

But still, with a firmness that seems degenerating into obstinacy,
Wellington persisted in his nervous anxiety for his right flank, as he
had done throughout, and stationed some 10,000 men out of his small
army at Hal. His excuse that the troops were inferior is futile, for he
had battalions of a precisely similar character on the battlefield of
Waterloo. He must have known, from the extent of front occupied, that