Crossing the frontier near Charleroi before dawn on 15 June, the French rapidly overran Coalition outposts, securing Napoleon's "central position" between Wellington's and Blücher's armies.

General Constant de Rebeque, commander of one of the Dutch divisions, disobeyed Wellington's orders to march to his previous chosen concentration area around Nivelles, and decided to hold the crossroads and send urgent messages to the prince and Perponcher.

Had these two generals obeyed his orders, Quatre-Bras in all probability would have fallen to the French giving them time to support Napoleon's attack on the Prussians in the Sombreffe area via the fast, cobbled road, and the history of the campaign would have been significantly different.

On the western side of the main road, and in front of the rest of Wellington's line, was the farmhouse and orchard of La Haye Sainte, which was garrisoned with 400 light infantry of the King's German Legion.

[81] Surprisingly, Jerome's overheard gossip aside, the French commanders present at the pre-battle conference at Le Caillou had no information about the alarming proximity of the Prussians and did not suspect that Blücher's men would start erupting onto the field of battle in great numbers just five hours later.

I had occupied that post with a detachment from General Byng's brigade of Guards, which was in position in its rear; and it was some time under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel MacDonald, and afterwards of Colonel Home; and I am happy to add that it was maintained, throughout the day, with the utmost gallantry by these brave troops, notwithstanding the repeated efforts of large bodies of the enemy to obtain possession of it.When I reached Lloyd's abandoned guns, I stood near them for about a minute to contemplate the scene: it was grand beyond description.

Here a waving mass of long red feathers could be seen; there, gleams as from a sheet of steel showed that the cuirassiers were moving; 400 cannon were belching forth fire and death on every side; the roaring and shouting were indistinguishably commixed—together they gave me an idea of a labouring volcano.

[98] The grande batterie was too far back to aim accurately, and the only other troops they could see were skirmishers of the regiments of Kempt and Pack, and Perponcher's 2nd Dutch division (the others were employing Wellington's characteristic "reverse slope defence").

[103] Grouchy was advised by his subordinate, Gérard, to "march to the sound of the guns", but stuck to his orders and engaged the Prussian III Corps rearguard, under the command of Lieutenant-General Baron von Thielmann, at the Battle of Wavre.

Cuirassiers concealed in a fold in the ground caught and destroyed it in minutes and then rode on past La Haye Sainte, almost to the crest of the ridge, where they covered d'Erlon's left flank as his attack developed.

They never consider the situation, never think of manoeuvring before an enemy, and never keep back or provide a reserve.At this crucial juncture, Uxbridge ordered his two brigades of British heavy cavalry—formed unseen behind the ridge—to charge in support of the hard-pressed infantry.

The Inniskillings routed the other brigade of Quoit's division, and the Scots Greys came upon the lead French regiment, 45e Ligne, as it was still reforming after having crossed the sunken road and broken through the hedge row in pursuit of the British infantry.

Nearly the whole leading rank fell at once; and the round shot, penetrating the column carried confusion throughout its extent ... the discharge of every gun was followed by a fall of men and horses like that of grass before the mower's scythe.

[170] However, there is no support for this incident in Dutch or Belgian sources,[ag] and Wellington wrote in his Dispatch to Secretary for War Bathurst on 19 June 1815 that General Trip had "conducted himself much to my satisfaction".

The French lost no time in taking advantage of this, by pushing forward infantry supported by guns, which enabled them to maintain a most destructive fire upon Alten's left and Kempt's right ...The success Napoleon needed to continue his offensive had occurred.

The saddle-bags, in many instances were torn from horses' backs ... One shell I saw explode under the two finest wheel-horses in the troop down they dropped[182][183]French tirailleurs occupied the dominant positions, especially one on a knoll overlooking the square of the 27th.

Meanwhile, with Wellington's centre exposed by the fall of La Haye Sainte and the Plancenoit front temporarily stabilised, Napoleon committed his last reserve, the hitherto-undefeated Imperial Guard infantry.

He ordered me to lead them on; generals, officers and soldiers all displayed the greatest intrepidity; but this body of troops was too weak to resist, for a long time, the forces opposed to it by the enemy, and it was soon necessary to renounce the hope which this attack had, for a few moments, inspired.

[209] This still did not stop the Guard's advance, so Chassé, who was affectionately called "Generaal Bajonet" by his soldiers, ordered his first brigade, commanded by Colonel Hendrik Detmers, to charge the outnumbered French with the bayonet.

There was not, however, a total rout, nor the cry of sauve qui peut, as has been calumniously stated in the bulletin.In the middle of the position occupied by the French army, and exactly upon the height, is a farm [sic], called La Belle Alliance.

There, too, it was that, by happy chance, Field Marshal Blücher and Lord Wellington met in the dark, and mutually saluted each other as victors.Other sources agree that the meeting of the commanders took place near La Belle Alliance, with this occurring at around 21:00.

[228][229] Waterloo cost Wellington around 17,000 dead or wounded, and Blücher some 7,000 (810 of which were suffered by just one unit: the 18th Regiment, which served in Bülow's 15th Brigade, had fought at both Frichermont and Plancenoit, and won 33 Iron Crosses).

[236] Royal Highness, – Exposed to the factions which divide my country, and to the enmity of the great Powers of Europe, I have terminated my political career; and I come, like Themistocles, to throw myself upon the hospitality (m'asseoir sur le foyer) of the British people.

[ap] In my opinion, four principal causes led to this disaster: The first, and most influential, was the arrival, skilfully combined, of Blücher, and the false movement that favoured this arrival;[aq] the second, was the admirable firmness of the British infantry, joined to the sang-froid and aplomb of its chiefs; the third, was the horrible weather, that had softened the ground, and rendered the offensive movements so toilsome, and retarded till one o'clock the attack that should have been made in the morning; the fourth, was the inconceivable formation of the first corps, in masses very much too deep for the first grand attack.The Prussian soldier, historian, and theorist Carl von Clausewitz, who as a young colonel had served as chief-of-staff to Thielmann's Prussian III Corps during the Waterloo campaign, expressed the following opinion: Bonaparte and the authors who support him have always attempted to portray the great catastrophes that befell him as the result of chance.

They seek to make their readers believe that through his great wisdom and extraordinary energy the whole project had already moved forward with the greatest confidence, that complete success was but a hair's breadth away, when treachery, accident, or even fate, as they sometimes call it, ruined everything.

He and his supporters do not want to admit that huge mistakes, sheer recklessness, and, above all, overreaching ambition that exceeded all realistic possibilities, were the true causes.Wellington wrote in his dispatch to London: I should not do justice to my own feelings, or to Marshal Blücher and the Prussian army, if I did not attribute the successful result of this arduous day to the cordial and timely assistance I received from them.

The Lion's Mound, a giant artificial hill, was constructed here using 300,000 cubic metres (390,000 cu yd) of earth taken from the ridge at the centre of the British line, effectively removing the southern bank of Wellington's sunken road.

A monument to the French dead, entitled L'Aigle blessé ("The Wounded Eagle"), marks the location where it is believed one of the Imperial Guard units formed a square during the closing moments of the battle.

[260] In December 2022, the historians Dr. Bernard Wilkin (Belgium) and Robin Schäfer (Germany), assisted by Belgian archaeologist Dominique Bosquet, discovered and recovered the largest assembly of remains of Waterloo battlefield casualties found in recent times.

[259] Bernard Wilkin and Robin Schäfer, supported by the British archaeologist Tony Pollard, concluded that in the aftermath of the conflict, local farmers dug up the corpses of horses and men and sold them to the Waterloo sugar factory.