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Updated: May 4, 2025
The following were the respective positions on the 14th of June: Wellington's heterogeneous army, about 94,000 strong with 196 guns, lay widely dispersed in cantonments from the Scheldt to the Charleroi-Brussels chaussee, its front extending from Tournay through Mons and Binche to Nivelles and Quatre Bras.
Having at last been furnished with the requisite guarantees from the Holland cities for three months' pay, on the 27th of August, the day of the publication of his letter to the Emperor, he crossed the Meuse and took his circuitous way through Diest, Tirlemont, Sichem, Louvain, Mechlin, Termonde, Oudenarde, Nivelles. Many cities and villages accepted his authority and admitted his garrisons.
The wings of the two armies extended to the right and left of the two roads to Genappe and Nivelles; d'Erlon facing Picton, Reille facing Hill. Behind the tip of the A, behind the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean, is the forest of Soignes.
Between seven and eight o'clock we heard in the distance something like thunder. Some said: "It is a thunder-storm!" others, "It is cannon!" Great numbers of disbanded soldiers were following us. At eight o'clock we reached Quatre-Bras. There are two houses opposite each other at the intersection of the road from Nivelles to Namur with that from Brussels to Charleroi.
By amazing efforts he had raised an army of two hundred and fifty thousand men in the few months since his arrival in Paris; and in the opening of June 1815 one hundred and twenty thousand Frenchmen were concentrated on the Sambre at Charleroi, while Wellington's troops still lay in cantonments on the line of the Scheldt from Ath to Nivelles, and Blücher's on that of the Meuse from Nivelles to Liége.
Stoutly as the eight thousand British had fought deserted though they were by their allies against Ney's overpowering numbers, they could not much longer have stood their ground, when at the critical moment General Alten's division came up by the Nivelles road to their aid.
With this view, while Blucher was concentrating his force about Ligny, the French held on the main road to Brussels from Charleroi; beating in some Nassau troops at Frasnes, and followed them as far as Quatre-Bras, a farmhouse, so called, because it is there that the roads from Charleroi to Brussels, and from Nivelles to Namur, cross each other.
About 6 p.m. on the 15th he ordered his divisions and brigades to concentrate at Vilvorde, Brussels, Ninove, Grammont, Ath, Braine-le-Comte, Hal, and Nivelles the first four of which were somewhat remote, while the others were chosen with a view to defending the roads leading northwards from Mons.
Accordingly at ten o'clock in the evening orders were issued by Wellington for the third division to march at once from Braine-le-Comte to Nivelles, for the first to move from Enghien to Braine-le-Comte, and for the second and fourth divisions to march from Ath and Grammont on Enghien.
A few men clustered round a flag marked the post of a regiment; such and such a battalion was commanded only by a captain or a lieutenant; Alten's division, already so roughly handled at La Haie-Sainte, was almost destroyed; the intrepid Belgians of Van Kluze's brigade strewed the rye-fields all along the Nivelles road; hardly anything was left of those Dutch grenadiers, who, intermingled with Spaniards in our ranks in 1811, fought against Wellington; and who, in 1815, rallied to the English standard, fought against Napoleon.
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