counter charge, called on Napoleon for reinforcements, and the latter at that moment, changing his plan of battle, determined to make the principal charge on the British centre, saying, however, “It is an hour too soon.”  The support which he sent to Ney was not as heavy as it should have been, but the Marshal concluded that the crisis was at hand, and Napoleon sought to support him with Milhaud’s cuirassiers and a division of the Middle Guard.  Under this counter charge the British lines reeled and staggered, but still clung desperately to their position.  They gave a little, and then hung fast and could be moved no farther.  In another part of the field Durutte carried the allied position of Papelotte, and Lobau routed Buelow from Planchenois.  At half-past four everything seemed to portend disaster to the allies and victory to the French.

If the tragedy of Waterloo had been left at that hour to work out its own results as between France and England it would appear that the latter must have gone to the wall; but destiny had prepared another end for the conflict.  Waterloo was a point of concentration.  Several tides had set thither, and some of them had already arrived and broken on the rocks.  Other tides were rolling in.  The British wave had been first, and this had now been rolled back by the tide of France.  A German wave was coming, however, and another French billow, either or both of which might break at any moment.

On the morning of June 18, at the little town of Wavre, fifteen miles southeast of Brussels and about eight or ten miles from Waterloo, a battle had been fought between the French contingent under Marshal Grouchy and the Prussian division under Thielmann, who commanded the left wing of Marshal Bluecher’s army.  That commander had a force of fully forty thousand men under him, and was on his way to join his forces with those of Wellington on the plateau of Mont St. Jean.  Grouchy had at this time between thirty and forty thousand men, and was under orders from Napoleon to keep in touch with his right wing, watching the Prussians and joining himself to the main army according to the emergency.

These two divisions—­Bluecher’s and Grouchy’s—­were sliding along toward Waterloo, and on the afternoon of the eighteenth it became one of the great questions in the history of this century which would first arrive on the field.  Napoleon believed that Grouchy was at hand.  Wellington in his desperation breathed out the wish that either night or Bluecher would come.  The ambiguous result of the principal conflict made it more than ever desirable to both of the commanders to gain their reinforcements, each before the other.  The event showed that the arrival of Buelow’s contingent was really the signal for the oncoming of the whole Prussian army.  The French Emperor, however, remained confident, and at half-after four he felt warranted in sending a preliminary despatch of victory to Paris.