To finish now with Napoleon’s intentions and expectations in regard to his left wing. He may well have expected that Ney had, in advance of receiving the formal order, sent Reille to Frasnes with his two divisions, which Ney’s reply to his early morning inquiry had informed him were then all ready to march, thus uniting the entire 2d Corps, _minus_ Girard’s division; also, that the leading divisions of the 1st Corps would be gotten under arms without delay in Gosselies, so as to be ready to march at once. He must have expected his order to reach Gosselies by 10 A.M., and Frasnes by 11 A.M., and he may well have thought it quite possible,—as indeed it would have been,—that Ney, at the head of three divisions of infantry and one of cavalry, might be able to drive out of Quatre Bras the Dutch-Belgians who had been encountered the evening before, unless, indeed, they had been largely reinforced. At or about 1 P.M., however, the 1st Corps ought to be arriving at Quatre Bras, as its leading divisions would leave Gosselies—as Napoleon would have a right to suppose—between 10 and 11 A.M.; so that, by 2, or, at any rate, by 3 P.M., Marshal Ney would have his entire command at Quatre Bras, well in hand, and, pretty certain,—at least so Napoleon would be likely to think,—to be successful over any troops they might encounter. On these expectations, which, as we have seen, were quite warranted by the information he had received, he based his calculations for the day’s doings. While Napoleon was thus awaiting at Charleroi definite news of the progress and condition of the left wing of his army, he employed his time,—or a part of it, at least,—in determining on the lines of action he would pursue in view of possible emergencies. As we have already seen, he desired nothing so much as to join battle with Marshal Blücher on the 16th of June. It had been his expectation[297] that the Prussian general would assemble his army near Sombreffe, and fight a battle, somewhere to the south of that village, for the preservation of his line of communications with the Duke of Wellington,—the Namur-Nivelles turnpike. At the same time, it was, of course, perfectly possible that the allied commanders had made other arrangements.[298] It was not impossible, for instance, that Napoleon’s concentration had been such a surprise to them that they were purposing to fall back, for the present at least, either divergently towards their respective bases, or in a northerly direction by parallel lines. In any event it would be manifestly desirable to inform the commanders of the right and left wings of the army of the Emperor’s probable course in any such event, so that every advantage might be promptly taken of the situation. It was certainly true, that instructions of this nature might not be required; they would assuredly not be required if Blücher should do what Napoleon had thought it likely he would do. In that case there