Napoleon's plan was to thrust his army between Blucher and Wellington and defeat them in succession. On the evening of June 15th, news was brought to the Duke at Brussels that the enemy had passed the frontier and were engaging the Prussian outposts. He at once gave the necessary orders for the advance, and after midnight showed himself at the now famous ball of the Duchess of Richmond. At eleven the next forenoon he was at QuatreBras, where his army was engaged in beating off an attack by Marshal Ney, while Blucher was being pounded by Napoleon a few miles to the eastward at Ligny. Both the allies retreated, but instead of separating as Napoleon hoped and believed, they retired along converging lines, the English to Waterloo, the Prussians to Wavre, the positions being connected by a roadway. Through the rain of Saturday, June 17th, Wellington disposed his sixty-nine thousand men and one hundred and fifty-six guns on both sides of the Brussels highway, along which Napoleon advanced on the morrow with seventy-two thousand men and two hundred and forty cannon. The action opened near noon on the 18th, the French making a vain effort to carry the Château of Hougomont on the British right. Next an army corps was hurled at the center, only to be stopped by Wellington's cavalry with appalling loss. In the afternoon the Emperor delivered a series of cavalry attacks upon the allied center. Twelve thousand horsemen thundered up the gentle slope past the English guns, only to break against the bayonet-hedged squares of the infantry. At the end of eight hours' fighting the French center had advanced to within sixty yards of the British position, but the line still held, and Blucher's Prussians were rapidly coming up on the right flank. Marshal Grouchy having failed to prevent this fatal manoeuver, Napoleon shot his last bolt, sending Ney with the Old Guard against the British right. But "the bravest of the brave had fought his last battle," and as his ten battalions were flung back in disorder, Wellington gave the word to his whole line to advance. The rush of his reserves of horse scattered the remnants of the tired and disheartened host. The wreck of the grand army drifted back over the border, and the dispirited Emperor, having risked everything in one bold experiment and lost, hastened to Paris, and after a vain attempt to rally the nation once more about his standard, abandoned hope and sought refuge on board the "Bellerophon," British man-of-war (July 15, 1815). At nine o'clock in the evening of the memorable day of Waterloo, Blucher and Wellington met. The grizzled Prussian kissed the grave Englishman on both cheeks in the exuberance of his joy. Without the timely support of his Germans, that day might have had another ending.