The first shots were fired at 11.50 to cover the assault on the wood of Hougoumont by Prince Jerome Bonaparte’s division of Reille’s corps.  The Nassauers and Hanoverians briskly replied, and Cleeve’s German battery opened fire with such effect that the leading column fell back.  Again the assailants came on in greater force under shelter of a tremendous cannonade:  this time they gained a lodgment, and step by step drove the defenders back through the copse.  Though checked for a time by the Guards, they mastered the wood south of the house by about one o’clock.  There they should have stopped.  Napoleon’s orders were for them to gain a hold only on the wood and throw out a good line of skirmishers:  all that he wanted on this side was to prevent any turning movement from Wellington’s advanced outposts.  Reille also sent orders not to attack the chateau; but the Prince and his men rushed on at those massive walls, only to meet with a bloody repulse.  A second attack fared no better; and though some 12,000 of Reille’s men finally attacked the mansion on three sides, yet our Guards, when reinforced, beat off every onset of wellnigh ten times their numbers.

For some time the Emperor paid little heed to this waste of energy; at 2 p.m. he recalled Jerome to his side.  He now saw the need of husbanding his resources; for a disaster had overtaken the French right centre.  He had fixed one o’clock for a great attack on La Haye Sainte by D’Erlon’s corps of nearly 20,000 men.  But a delay occurred owing to a cause that we must now describe.

Before his great battery of eighty guns belched forth at the centre and blotted out the view, he swept the horizon with his glass, and discerned on the skirts of the St. Lambert wood, six miles away, a dark object.  Was it a spinney, or a body of troops?  His staff officers could not agree; but his experienced eye detected a military formation.  Thereupon some of the staff asserted that they must be Bluecher’s men, others that they were Grouchy’s.  Here he could scarcely be in a doubt.  Not long after 10 a.m. he received from Grouchy a despatch, dated from Gembloux at 3 a.m., reporting that the Prussians were retiring in force on Brussels to concentrate or to join Wellington, and that he (Grouchy) was on the point of starting for Sart-a-Walhain and Wavre.  He said nothing as to preventing any flank march that the enemy might make from Wavre with a view to joining their allies straightway.  Therefore he was not to be looked for on this side of Wavre, and those troops must consequently be Prussians.[511]

All doubts were removed when a Prussian hussar officer, captured by Marbot’s vedettes near Lasne, was brought to Napoleon.  He bore a letter from Buelow to Mueffling, stating that the former was on the march to attack the French right wing.  In reply to Napoleon’s questions the captain stated that Buelow’s whole corps was in motion, but wisely said nothing about the other two corps that were following.  Such