All writers agree that Blücher ordered the concentration of his army in the fighting position previously chosen in the event of the French advancing by Charleroi, "without," in Mr. Ropes's words, "any definite agreement or undertaking with Wellington that he was to have English aid in the impending battle." He was content to take his risk of the English general's possible inability for sundry obvious reasons, to come to his support. And while the Prussian army with the unfortunate exception of Bülow's corps, was on the 15th moving toward the chosen position of Ligny, where its right was to be on St. Amand, its centre on and behind Ligny, and its left about Balâtre, what was happening in the Anglo-Dutch army lying spread out westward of the Charleroi--Brussels chaussée? Wellington was at Brussels expecting the French invasion by or west of the Mons-Brussels road, to meet which he considered his army very well placed, but could expect no Prussian cooperation. His courier service, with his forces so dispersed, should have been well organised and alert, but it was neither; and Napoleon's secrecy and suddenness in taking the offensive were worthy of his best days. It has been freely imputed to Wellington that he was thereby in a measure surprised. There is the strange and probably mythical story in the work professing to be Fouché's _Memoirs_ to the effect that Wellington was relying on him for information of Napoleon's plans, and that he--Fouché--played the English commander false. "On the very day of Napoleon's departure from Paris," say the _Memoirs_, "I despatched Madame D----, furnished with notes in cipher, narrating the whole plan of the campaign. But at the same time I privately sent orders for such obstacles at the frontier, where she was to pass, that she could not reach Wellington's headquarters till after the event. This was the real explanation of the inactivity of the British generalissimo which excited such universal astonishment." Readers of the _Letters of the First Earl of Malmesbury_ will remember the apparently authentic statement of Captain Bowles, that Wellington, rising from the supper-table at the famous ball, whispered to ask the Duke of Richmond if he had a good map. The Duke of Richmond said he had, and took Wellington into his dressing-room. Wellington shut the door and said, "Napoleon has humbugged me, by God; he has gained twenty-four hours' march on me.... I have ordered the army to concentrate at Quatre Bras; but we shall not stop him there, and if so I must fight him _there_" (passing his thumb-nail over the position of Waterloo). The conversation was repeated to me by the Duke of Richmond two minutes after it occurred.