Ambition, still the tempter, assailing, soon prevailed. Eluding the vigilance of the British fleet, he succeeded in escaping into France, accompanied by a few of his old Guard, who had shared his exile. The mind of the people, which for more than twenty years had lived amid a wild delirium of excitement, still lingering upon the threshold of the mighty past, had not yet learned to submit to the more benignant rule of peace. The army, unwisely disbanded, or despoiled of those symbols of glory which their valour had so nobly won—trophies which, to a soldier, must ever be dear as life itself—were being consumed by the ennui of idleness, longed for new employment. Hence the return of Napoleon paralysed resistance as recalling the military glory of the Empire; awakening new hopes, promising revenge for the past, employment for the present, and glory for the future, it stirred within the bosom of the soldier and the lower classes of the people a reverence and adoration, almost amounting to idolatry. Rapidly advancing from stage to stage, as on a triumphal march, Napoleon found himself once more at Paris—hailed Emperor—it is true, doubted by the better classes of the people, but worshipped by the army. His desperate efforts soon enabled him to take the field, at the head of a powerful and well-appointed army, with which he proposed to meet in detail, and so destroy, his numerous and returning enemies. Unfortunately for him, he chose the Netherlands to be the scene, and Britain and Prussia the objects, of his first, and, as the result proved, his last attack. For a moment a gleam of sunshine shone upon his path, as he attained the victory of Ligny, over the Prussians under Marshal Blucher. Luring him to destruction, this flash of success was only the precursor to the dread thunder of Waterloo. Alarmed by the disastrous intelligence of the Prussian defeat and the rapid advance of the French, Wellington, who commanded the British and other auxiliaries, quickly concentrated his army near the village of Waterloo. But ere he could accomplish this, Marshal Ney, at the head of the second French division, had surprised and fallen upon, with great fury, the British, as they advanced upon Quatre Bras, on the same day that Ligny was won. The action was honourably sustained by a few British Regiments, especially the Twenty-eighth, and the Forty-second, Seventy-ninth and Ninety-second Highland Regiments. The heroic stand made by these gave time for the arrival of other corps, including the Guards—the Scots Fusilier Guards—who succeeded, after a desperate struggle, in effectually checking the progress of the French Marshal, and thus depriving him of a most favourable opportunity of cutting to pieces in detail our army. Two days later, on the 18th of June, the Duke had successfully accomplished the concentration of his forces, which, drawn up in battle array at Waterloo, waited the arrival of the Prussians, to begin the fight.