Ney brought in Lefebvre-Desnouettes with his lancers and chasseurs. The Mont-Saint-Jean plateau was taken, re-taken, and taken again. The squares still held, surviving a dozen assaults. Ney had four horses killed under him. Half the cuirassiers were left dead or wounded on the plateau. The struggle lasted two hours.

The English army was profoundly shaken. There can be no doubt that had their first attack not been weakened by the tragedy of the sunken lane the cuirassiers would have broken the centre and gained the day. Clinton, who had seen Talavera and Badajoz, was amazed by that remarkable cavalry, and Wellington, more than half defeated, stoically murmured, ‘Splendid!’

The cuirassiers broke seven squares out of the thirteen, captured or spiked sixty guns, and captured six regimental standards which were presented to the Emperor outside the Belle-Alliance farm by a party of three cuirassiers and three chasseurs of the Guard.

Wellington’s position had decidedly worsened. That battle was like a duel between two grievously wounded men, each with the blood draining out of him, neither willing to yield. The question was, which would be the first to fall?

And still the struggle for the plateau continued. As to exactly how far the cuirassiers penetrated, no one can say, but it is known that the body of a cuirassier, with that of his horse, was found in the toll weighing-shed at the point where the four roads meet – those from Nivelles, Genappe, La Hulpe, and Brussels – having ridden right through the English lines. One of the men who carried the body away is still living at Mont-Saint-Jean, a man named Dehaze who was then eighteen.

Wellington knew that he was near to disaster. In a sense the cuirassiers had failed to achieve their objective, since they had not broken the English centre. Both sides were lodged on the plateau, but neither held it, and in fact the English still occupied the greater part. They had the village and its surrounding land, whereas Ney had only the ridge and its slopes. Both sides seemed to have taken root in that fateful soil.

But the weakness of the English seemed past remedy. Their losses had been appalling. Kempt, on the left wing, cried out for reinforcements, to which Wellington replied that there were none – ‘they must fight till they drop’. And at almost the same moment, by a coincidence which illustrates the exhaustion of both armies, Ney was asking Napoleon for infantry and Napoleon was exclaiming: ‘Where does he think I can get any? Does he expect me to manufacture them?’

Wellington’s case was even worse. His infantry had been so badly mauled by the cuirassiers that in some sectors only a few men grouped round the colours marked the remains of a regiment. Battalions were commanded by captains or lieutenants, and indeed the list of senior officers killed or wounded on both sides was hideously long. Moreover Cumberland’s Hanoverian Hussars, a whole regiment under their commander, Colonel Hacke (who was later court-martialled and cashiered), took to their heels and bolted into the forest of Soignes, spreading the news of disaster as far as Brussels. Baggage waggons, ammunition-limbers, carts of wounded, seeing the French gain ground and draw near the forest, followed them; and the Dutch cried havoc. By the account of eye-witnesses still living, the train of fugitives stretched five miles and more in the direction of Brussels. So great was the panic that it reached the Prince de Condé at Malines and Louis XVIII at Ghent. Except for a small reserve stationed behind the field hospital set up in the Mont-Saint-Jean farm, and Vivian’s and Vandeleur’s brigades on his left wing, Wellington had no more cavalry, and a large number of his guns were out of action. These facts are reported by Siborne, and Pringle, somewhat exaggerating, claims that the Anglo-Dutch strength was reduced to 34,000 men. The Iron Duke remained calm but he was white-lipped. The Austrian and French military attachés, who were with the English headquarters staff, believed that the day was lost. At five o’clock Wellington looked at his watch and was heard to murmur: ‘Blücher – or darkness.’

It was at about this moment that a line of bayonets came into view in the distance, twinkling on the heights round Frischemont.

This was the turning-point.

The two guides

Napoleon’s tragic miscalculation is known to everyone: he looked for Grouchy but it was Blücher who came – death instead of life.