As to the temper of the Emperor, that was good.  Hugo says of him:  “From the morning his impenetrability had been smiling, and on June 18, 1815, this profound soul, coated with granite, was radiant.  The man who had been sombre at Austerlitz was gay at Waterloo.  The greatest predestined men offer these contradictions; for our joys are a shadow and the supreme smile belongs to God.

“‘Caesar laughs, Pompey will weep,’ the legionaries of the Fulminatrix legion used to say.  On this occasion Pompey was not destined to weep, but it is certain that Caesar laughed.

“At one o’clock in the morning, amid the rain and storm, he had explored with Bertrand the hills near Rossomme, and was pleased to see the long lines of English fires illumining the horizon from Frischemont to Braine l’Alleud.  It seemed to him as if destiny had made an appointment with him on a fixed day and was punctual.  He stopped his horse and remained for some time motionless, looking at the lightning and listening to the thunder.  The fatalist was heard to cast into the night the mysterious words, ‘We are agreed.’  Napoleon was mistaken; they no longer agreed.”

The arena of Waterloo is an undulating plain.  Strategically it has the shape of an immense harrow.  The clevis is on the height called Mont St. Jean, where Wellington was posted with the British army.  Behind that is the village of Waterloo.  The right leg of the harrow terminates at the hamlet of La Belle Alliance.  The left leg is the road from Brussels to Nivelles.  The cross-bar intersects the right leg at La Haie Sainte.  The right leg is the highway from Brussels to Charleroi.  The intersection of the bar with the left leg is near the old stone chateau of Hougomont.  The battle was fought on the line of the cross-bar and in the triangle between it and the clevis.

The conflict began just before noon.  The armies engaged were of equal strength, numbering about 80,000 men on each side.  Napoleon was superior in artillery, but Wellington’s soldiers had seen longer service in the field.  They were his veterans from the Peninsular War, perhaps the stubbornest fighters in Europe.  Napoleon’s first plan was to double back the allied left on the centre.  This involved the capture of La Haie Sainte, and, as a strategic corollary, the taking of Hougomont.  The latter place was first attacked.  The field and wood were carried, but the chateau was held in the midst of horrid carnage by the British.

Early in the afternoon a Prussian division under Billow, about 10,000 strong, came on the field, and Napoleon had to withdraw a division from his centre to repel the oncoming Germans.  For two or three hours, in the area between La Haie Sainte and Hougomont, the battle raged, the lines swaying with uncertain fortune back and forth.  La Haie Sainte was taken and held by Ney.  On the whole, the British lines receded.  Wellington’s attempt to retake La Haie Sainte ended in a repulse.  Ney, on the