We may look down upon the scene of that frightful struggle.  It lies just below us.  Grass is growing there luxuriantly now.  A north wind sweeps over the plain.  A mournful requiem seems to whistle through the poplar trees.

If we look toward Hougoumont, French gunners are seen to have been slain.  Many cannon are silent.  With the chateau in flames, confusion reigns.  Napoleon, ordering a new cavalry attack, directs Jerome to advance with his infantry.  Immediately the Allies discharge grape and canister on the advancing host.  But no Frenchman wavers.  On the contrary, the French cavalry capture Wellington’s outward battalion and press onward toward his hollow squares of infantry.  All efforts to break these squares end in failure.  For a time the French abandon the attack, but only to renew it and then follows a remarkable scene.  The French charge with unprecedented fury, and the squares are partially broken, while friends and enemies, wounded or killed, are mingled in inextricable confusion.

Some of the Belgian troops take flight and in mad terror run back to Brussels, causing great consternation there by reporting a defeat for Wellington.  The squares maintain their ground to the end admirably, and with severe losses the French retire.  Hougoumont near by, all this time was not silent.  The attack being continued, the commander is killed and at last its heights are gained.  From elsewhere in the field, Wellington learns of his loss, places himself at the head of a brigade, and commands it to charge.  Amid the utmost enthusiasm of the Allies the French are driven back from Hougoumont.

Napoleon now turns his efforts against La Haye Sainte, a small height forward from Mont St. Jean, occupied by the enemy’s left wing.  Ney, in a furious cannonade, begins the attack, in which the Allies are overwhelmed and their ammunition is exhausted.  Masters of this point, the French again move on Hougoumont.  It is seven o’clock in the evening, with Napoleon in fair way to succeed, but his men are already exhausted and their losses are heavy.  Some of them plunge into that famous sunken road, unheeded of him and them, and still so great a mystery to historians.  It was a charging cavalry column that plunged in, unknowingly, rider and horse together, in indescribable confusion and dismay.  We may see that road to-day, for we have walked in a part of it when coming across the plain from the station—­a narrow road cut many feet deep, its bed paved with little stones.  Hugo’s words on that frightful scene are these: 

“There was the ravine, unlooked for, yawning at the very feet of the horses, two fathoms deep between its double slope.  The second rank pushed in the first, the third pushed in the second; the horses reared, threw themselves over, fell upon their backs, and struggled with their feet in the air, piling up and overturning their riders; no power to retreat; the whole column was nothing but a projectile.  The force acquired to crush the English crusht the French.  The inexorable ravine could not yield until it was filled; riders and horses rolled in together pell-mell, grinding each other, making common flesh in this dreadful gulf, and when this grave was full of living men, the rest marched over them and passed on.  Almost a third of the Dubois’ brigade sank into this abyss.”