He who was unjust to his own followers, can scarce be expected to be candid towards an enemy. The Duke of Wellington has, upon all occasions, been willing to render the military character of Napoleon that justice which a generous mind is scrupulously accurate in dispensing to an adversary, and has readily admitted that the conduct of Buonaparte and his army on this memorable occasion, was fully adequate to the support of their high reputation. It may be said that the victor can afford to bestow praise on the vanquished, but that it requires a superior degree of candour in the vanquished to do justice to the conqueror. Napoleon, at any rate, does not seem to have attained, in this particular, to the pitch of a great or exalted mind, since both he and the various persons whom he employed as the means of circulating his statements, concur in a very futile attempt to excuse the defeat at Waterloo, by a set of apologies founded in a great degree upon misrepresentation. The reader will find these scientifically discussed in a valuable article in the Appendix.[152] But it may be necessary, at the risk of some repetition, to take some notice of them here in a popular form. The allegations, which are designed to prove the incapacity of the British general, and to show that the battle of Waterloo was only lost by a combination of extraordinary fatalities, may be considered in their order. The first, and most frequently repeated, is the charge, that the Duke of Wellington, on the 15th, was surprised in his cantonments, and could not collect his army fast enough at Quatre-bras. In this his Grace would have been doubtless highly censurable, if Napoleon had, by express information, or any distinct movement indicative of his purpose, shown upon which point he meant to advance. But the chivalrous practice of fixing a field of combat has been long out of date; and Napoleon, beyond all generals, possessed the art of masking his own movements, and misleading his enemy concerning the actual point on which he meditated an attack. The Duke and Prince Blucher were, therefore, obliged to provide for the concentration of their forces upon different points, according as Buonaparte's selection should be manifested; and in order to be ready to assemble their forces upon any one position, they must, by spreading their cantonments, in some degree delay the movement upon all. The Duke could not stir from Brussels, or concentrate his forces, until he had certain information of those of the enemy; and it is said that a French statesman, who had promised to send him a copy of the plan of Buonaparte's campaign, contrived, by a trick of policy, to evade keeping his word.[153] We do not mean to deny the talent and activity displayed by Buonaparte, who, if he could have brought forward his whole army upon the evening of the 15th of June, might probably have succeeded in preventing the meditated junction of Blucher and Wellington. But the