Thus terminated the fight of Quatre Bras, and a more glorious victory was never won by British bravery. Night closed the battle, and when the limited number of the allied troops actually engaged is considered, this sanguinary conflict will stand almost without a parallel. At the opening of the action at half-past two, the Duke’s force could not have exceeded sixteen thousand, his whole army consisting of some Brunswick hussars, supported by a few Belgian and Hanoverian guns, and the great distance of their cantonments from the field of battle prevented the British cavalry and horse artillery arriving until late in the evening. Vivian’s brigade (1st Hanoverian, and 10th and 18th hussars) came up at seven o’clock, but the rest only reached Quatre Bras at the close of the action, having made a forced march from behind the Dender, over bad roads for more than forty miles. Ney, by his own account, commenced the battle with the second corps and Excelman’s cavalry, the former numbering thirty thousand strong in artillery, and its cavalry, that of the second corps included, amounting to three thousand six hundred. The French marshal complains that the first corps, originally assigned to him, and which he had left at Frasnes in reserve, had been withdrawn by Napoleon without any intimation, and never employed during the entire day, and thus, as Ney writes to Fouche, “twenty-five or thirty thousand men were, I may say, paralysed, and idly paraded during the battle, from the right to the left, and the left to the right, without firing a shot.” All this admitted, surely his means were amply sufficient to have warranted a certain victory. In numbers his cavalry were infinitely superior, his artillery was equally powerful, while in those important arms, Wellington was miserably weak, and all he had to oppose to his stronger antagonist were the splendid discipline and indomitable courage of British infantry. The loss sustained by the British and their allies in this glorious and hard-contested battle amounted to three thousand seven hundred and fifty, _hors de combat_. Of course, the British suffered most severely, having three hundred and twenty men killed, and two thousand one hundred and fifty-five wounded. The Duke of Brunswick fell in the act of rallying his troops, and an immense number of British officers were found among the slain and wounded. During an advanced movement, the 92nd, while repulsing an attack of both cavalry and infantry, met a French column, retreating to the wood, which halted and turned its fire on the Highlanders, already assailed by a superior force. Notwithstanding, the regiment bravely held its ground until relieved by a regiment of the Guards, when it retired to its original position. In this brief and sanguinary conflict, its loss amounted to twenty-eight officers, and nearly three hundred men.