There are many proofs, however, that Wellington was surprised by Napoleon.  The narratives of Sir Hussey Vivian and Captain Mercer show that the final orders for our advance were carried out with a haste and flurry that would not have happened if the army had been well in hand, or if Wellington had been fully informed of Napoleon’s latest moves.[475] There is a wild story that the Duke was duped by Fouche, on whom he was relying for news from Paris.  But it seems far more likely that he was misled by the tidings sent to Louis XVIII. at Ghent by zealous royalists in France, the general purport of which was that Napoleon would wage a defensive campaign.[476] On the 13th June, Wellington wrote:  “I have accounts from Paris of the 10th, on which day he [Bonaparte] was still there; and I judge from his speech to the Legislature that his departure was not likely to be immediate.  I think we are now too strong for him here.”  And, in later years, he told Earl Stanhope that Napoleon “was certainly wrong in attacking at all”; for the allied armies must soon have been in great straits for want of food if they had advanced into France, exhausted as she was by the campaign of 1814.  “But,” he added, “the fact is, Bonaparte never in his life had patience for a defensive war.”

[Illustration:  PLAN OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN]

The Duke’s forces would, at the outset of the campaign, have been in less danger, if the leaders at the Prussian outposts, Pirch II. and Doernberg of the King’s German Legion, had warned him of the enemy’s massing near the Sambre early on the 15th.  By some mischance this was not done; and our leader only heard from Hardinge, at the Prussian headquarters, that the enemy seemed about to begin the offensive.  He therefore waited for more definite news before concentrating upon any one line.

About 6 p.m. on the 15th he ordered his divisions and brigades to concentrate at Vilvorde, Brussels, Ninove, Grammont, Ath, Braine-le-Comte, Hal, and Nivelles—­the first four of which were somewhat remote, while the others were chosen with a view to defending the roads leading northwards from Mons. Not a single British brigade was posted on the Waterloo-Charleroi road, which was at that time guarded only by a Dutch-Belgian division, a fact which supports Mr. Ropes’s contention that no definite plan of co-operation had been formed by the allied leaders.  Or, if there was one, the Duke certainly refused to act upon it until he had satisfied himself that the chief attack was not by way of Mons or Ath.  More definite news reached Brussels near midnight of the 15th, whereupon he gave a general left turn to his advance, namely, towards Nivelles.

Clausewitz maintains that he should already have removed his headquarters to Nivelles; had he done so and hurried up all available troops towards the Soignies-Quatre Bras line, his Waterloo fame would certainly have gained in solidity.  A dash of romance was added by his attending the Duchess of Richmond’s ball at Brussels on the night of the 15th-16th; lovers of the picturesque will always linger over the scene that followed with its “hurrying to and fro and tremblings of distress”; but the more prosaic inquirer may doubt whether Wellington should not then have been more to the front, feeling every throb of Bellona’s pulse.[477]