Wavre, where they could easily be united with the two unbroken corps, could hardly have any other object than a junction with the English army, retiring, as that army was sure to do, from Quatre Bras towards Brussels. Before Napoleon left the field of battle for Marbais, shortly before twelve o’clock, he called Grouchy to him and gave him instructions by word of mouth. Up to this time no further information had been received since Pajol had reported the capture of guns and prisoners on the Namur road. The Emperor at first simply told him to take the 3d and 4th Corps and the cavalry of Pajol and Exelmans and to pursue the enemy. “I replied to him,” says Marshal Grouchy, whose account[465] we are now giving, “that the Prussians had commenced their retreat at ten o’clock the evening before; that much time must elapse before my troops, who were scattered over the plain, were cleaning their guns and making their soup, and were not expecting to be called upon to march that day, could be put in movement; that the enemy had seventeen or eighteen hours the start of the troops sent in pursuit; that although the reports of the cavalry gave no definite information as to the direction of the retreat of the mass of the Prussian army, it was apparently on Namur that they were retiring; and that thus, in following them, I should find myself isolated, separated from him, and out of the range of his movements. These observations,” Marshal Grouchy goes on to say, “were not well received; the Emperor repeated his orders, adding that it was for me to discover the route taken by Marshal Blücher; that he himself was going to fight the English, ‘if they will stand on this side of the Forest of Soignes’[466] that it was for me to complete the defeat of the Prussians in attacking them as soon as I should have caught up with them, and that I must communicate with him by the paved road,”[467]—the Namur-Quatre-Bras turnpike.