The following year witnessed the escape of Napoleon from Elba, his return to France, and the general and disgraceful desertion of the French army to their old chief. This untoward event at once arrested the retiring armies of the allies, and recalled them again in haste to Paris. The promptitude and harmony of the measures adopted by the Cabinets of Britain and Prussia enabled their armies forthwith to take the field, and so stemming the returning tide of French despotism, for ever crush the might of the tyrant whose restless ambition, like an evil spirit, had so long troubled Europe. They were honoured side by side to fulfil the first and last act in the short but decisive campaign which followed. Six troops of the Greys were ordered to the theatre of war, and, landing in the Netherlands in 1815, were brigaded with the Royals and their old comrades the Inniskillings, under Sir William Ponsonby. Anticipating no immediate attack from the French, and the better to obtain supplies, the Duke of Wellington had disposed his army as a chain of posts to watch the movements of the enemy. While separated from the Prussians, under Blucher, both armies narrowly escaped destruction. The immediate and personal presence of so able and enterprising a General as Napoleon, at the head of a powerful and well-appointed army—consisting largely of the veterans who, smarting under the disasters of a previous year, burned for revenge, or of those who, so unfortunately for their chief, had been too long incarcerated as garrisons in the distant fortresses of the Oder and Vistula, but who, released on the conclusion of the late peace, gladly welcomed their old commander, and followed him to the field with high hopes to retrieve the defeats of the past—the immediate presence of such an army rendered the position of the allies one of considerable danger. On the night of the 15th of June the Greys were unexpectedly awakened at the village of Denderhautem, to learn that the enemy was rapidly advancing to surprise and destroy the scattered fragments of the army in detail. Accordingly, immediate orders were issued to the various corps to concentrate in the vicinity of WATERLOO. A rapid march of fifty miles brought the Scots Greys, on the evening of the 16th, to Quatre Bras, where some of the British troops were surprised by a portion of the French army, under Marshal Ney, and all but cut to pieces. As the eventful morning of the 18th of June dawned, the British army, having completed its concentration, was drawn up in all the magnificence of battle array, and anxiously waited the arrival of their allies. The Prussians, however, had in the interim been attacked by Napoleon himself at Ligny, and nearly overthrown.