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Updated: June 21, 2025
He told us also that there was a broad road, bordered with trees, running two good leagues along our left; that the Belgians and Hanoverians had posts at Gosselies and at Quatre-Bras; that it was the high-road to Brussels, where the English and Hanoverians and Belgians had all their forces; while the Prussians, four or five leagues at our right, occupied the route to Namur, and that between them and the English, there was a good road running from the plateau of Quatre-Bras to the plateau of Ligny in the rear of Fleurus, over which their couriers went and came from morning till night, so that the Prussians and English were in perfect communication, and could support each other with men, guns, and supplies when necessary.
On the 16th was fought the bloody battle of Ligny, in which the Prussians sustained a decided defeat; but they retreated in good order on the little river Lys, followed by Marshal Grouchy with thirty thousand men detached by Napoleon in their pursuit.
This stout resistance enabled Blucher to bring up two out of his other three corps, Bulow, whose corps was at Liege, forty miles away, receiving his orders too late to march that day. The rest of the Prussian army concentrated round the villages of Fleurs and Ligny.
Accordingly he was delivered to Ligny, who treated him with all respect, and provided him with a horse and apparel suited to his rank. It is said that at first he declined to meet Trivulzio, but the chronicler Prato describes an interview which took place between the duke and his former captain soon afterwards.
The mystery as to the movements of D'Erlon and his 20,000 men has never been fully cleared up. The evidence collected by Houssaye leaves little doubt that, as soon as the Emperor realized the serious nature of the conflict at Ligny, he sent orders to D'Erlon, whose vanguard was then near Frasnes, to diverge and attack Blücher's exposed flank.
All was bathed in the shimmering, sultry heat of midsummer, the harbinger, as it proved, of a violent thunderstorm. The Prussian position was really stronger than it seemed. Napoleon could not fully see either the osier beds that fringed the Ligny brook, or its steep banks, or the many strong buildings of Ligny itself.
It's of no use to keep it back particularly in this abysmal vehicle, and here it comes: I am a Marquis a French Marquis; French, because the peerage is not so well known, and the country is better adapted to romantic incident a Marquis, because the democratic reader delights in the nobility. My name is something LIGNY. I am coming from Paris to my country seat at St. Germain.
Amand, and the remoteness of its left wing, which Grouchy's horsemen still held in check; and he now planned that, while Blücher assailed St. Amand and its hamlets, the Imperial Guard should crush the Prussian centre at Ligny, thrust its fragments back towards St. Amand, and finally shiver the greater part of the Prussian army on the anvil which D'Erlon's corps would provide further to the west.
But when, having questioned Monsieur de Ligny, she learnt that he had dragged the body into the front room, she could not conceal from him that such behaviour was imprudent and might expose him to unpleasantness. "You ought not to have done it," she told him. "When anyone has killed himself, you must never touch him before the police come." Ligny thereupon went off to notify the commissary.
"I am quite willing," said the Sire de Ligny; "but you must first take leave of the King, and I will bring you to him after dinner." Which was done, and the youth was thus presented: "Sire, here is your Picquet, who is going to see his companions in Picardy, and he is come to say good-bye to you."
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