One sector of the battlefield swallows up more combatants than another, just as water drains away more or less rapidly according to the nature of the soil. More men have to be sent to a particular point than was originally intended, the line writhes and wavers like a thread blowing in the wind. There is no logic in the flow of blood; the army fronts are like waves on the seashore, advancing and retreating regiments forming bays and headlands, impermanent as a shifting sand. Where there was infantry, artillery appears; artillery is replaced by cavalry; battalions are like puffs of smoke. At a given place there was a given object: look for it again and it is gone. The light shifts, the dark patches advance and retreat, a graveyard wind blows, driving and scattering the tragic multitude of men. All is movement and oscillation. The immobility of a mathematical plan or diagram may present a moment but never a day. To depict a battle we need a painter with chaos in his brush. Rembrandt is better than Van der Meulen; he who was accurate at noon is a liar by three o’clock. Geometry is misleading; only the tempest is true. And there comes a stage in every battle when it degenerates into hand-to-hand combat, dissolves in fragments, innumerable separate episodes concerning which Napoleon himself said that they belong more to regimental records than to the history of an army. Thus the historian has a right to summarize. He can do no more than grasp the broad outline. No narrator, be he never so conscientious, can fix the exact shape of that ugly cloud that is called a battle.

This, which is true of all great clashes between armies, applies particularly to Waterloo. Nevertheless there came a point, during the afternoon, when the shape of the battle was defined.

Four o’clock in the afternoon

At about four o’clock Wellington’s army was in serious trouble. The Prince of Orange was in command of the centre, with Hill commanding the right wing and Picton the left. The Prince, gallant and despairing, was calling upon his lowlanders, the men of Nassau and Brunswick, to stand fast. Hill, greatly weakened, was falling back upon Wellington and the reserve. Picton was dead, killed by a ball through the head at the moment when the colours of the French 105th regiment of the line had been captured by the English. For Wellington there were two critical points, Hougomont and La-Haie-Sainte. Hougomont was still holding out, but in flames. La-Haie-Sainte had fallen. Three thousand men had died in that farm. Of the German battalion which was among its defenders only five officers and forty-two men survived. The cavalry force of 1200 horses had lost half its strength, the Scots Greys and Ponsonby’s heavy dragoons having been overwhelmed by Bro’s lancers and Travers’s cuirassiers. Most of its officers had fallen. Two infantry divisions, the fifth and sixth, had been virtually destroyed.

With Hougomont breached and La-Haie-Sainte captured, only one strong-point remained, the centre. This was still holding, and Wellington reinforced it, bringing in Hill, who was at Merbe-Braine, and Chassé, who was at Braine-l’Alleud.

The English centre, slightly concave, very dense and compact, was in a strong position. It occupied the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean, with the village behind it and a steep slope in front.