The affair of Quatre Bras was sustained with admirable firmness by the allied English and Netherland forces, against an enemy infinitely superior in number, and commanded by one of the best generals in France.  The Prince of Orange, with only nine thousand men, maintained his position till three o’clock in the afternoon, despite the continual attacks of Marshal Ney, who commanded the left of the French army, consisting of forty-three thousand men.  But the interest of this combat, and the details of the loss in killed and wounded, are so merged in the succeeding battle, which took place on the 18th, that they form in most minds a combination of exploits which the interval of a day can scarcely be considered to have separated.

The 17th was occupied by a retrograde movement of the allied army, directed by the duke of Wellington, for the purpose of taking its stand on the position he had previously fixed on for the pitched battle, the decisive nature of which his determined foresight had anticipated.  Several affairs between the French and English cavalry took place during this movement; and it is pretty well established that the enemy, flushed with the victory over Blucher of the preceding day, were deceived by this short retreat of Wellington, and formed a very mistaken notion of its real object, or of the desperate reception destined for the morrow’s attack.

The battle of Waterloo has been over and over described and profoundly felt, until its records may be said to exist in the very hearts and memories of the nations.  The fiery valor of the assault, and the unshakable firmness of the resistance, are perhaps without parallel in the annals of war.  The immense stake depending on the result, the grandeur of Napoleon’s isolated efforts against the flower of the European forces, and the awful responsibility resting on the head of their great leader, give to this conflict a romantic sublimity, unshared by all the manoeuvring of science in a hundred commonplace combats of other wars.  It forms an epoch in the history of battles.  It is to the full as memorable, as an individual event, as it is for the consequences which followed it.  It was fought by no rules, and gained by no tactics.  It was a fair stand-up fight on level ground, where downright manly courage was alone to decide the issue.  This derogates in nothing from the splendid talents and deep knowledge of the rival commanders.  Their reputation for all the intricate qualities of generalship rests on the broad base of previous victories.  This day was to be won by strength of nerve and steadiness of heart; and a moral grandeur is thrown over its result by the reflection that human skill had little to do where so much was left to Providence.