[525] _Ante_, p. 144. [526] He was exactly seventy-two years and six months old on the day of the battle of Ligny. [527] Ollech, p. 157. [528] Siborne, vol. 1, p. 241, n. [529] Stanhope, p. 110. [530] Maurice, p. 355: July, 1890. Colonel Maurice is inclined to believe that the above incident “must have taken place in Wavre, after the receipt of Wellington’s offer to remain and fight at Waterloo, if Blücher would join him with one or two corps.” This is certainly very possible. The incident reported in Stanhope’s work, however, is stated to have occurred the night after the battle, which, as we know from the Prussian historians, Blücher spent at Mellery. Ollech, p. 157. Very possibly there may have been a second discussion at Wavre on the 17th. [531] Ollech, pp. 166 _et seq._ [532] Ollech, p. 166. These troops were afterwards replaced by two battalions of infantry, a regiment of cavalry, and two batteries, under Lieutenant-Colonel Ledebur. See _post_, p. 260; Ollech, p. 168; Siborne, vol. 1, p. 285. [533] Ollech, p. 168. [534] Ib., p. 169. [535] Waterloo Letters: Vivian, p. 153. [536] Ollech, p. 179. [537] Müffling: Passages, pp. 238, 239. [538] For a capital story connected with this incident, see the “Letters of the First Earl of Malmesbury,” vol. 2, p. 447. London, 1870. App. C, xxix; _post_, p. 386. See also Waterloo Letters, pp. 154, 167. [539] Müffling Passages, p. 241; Ollech, p. 180. [540] Ollech, p. 187. [541] It arrived about 5 P.M. See _ante_, p. 232. [542] _Contra_: Siborne, vol. 1, p. 279. This subject will be considered in the Notes to this chapter. [543] Gneisenau, vol. 4, p. 393. [544] In point of fact Wellington supposed that only the 3d Corps had been detached for the pursuit of the Prussians. See his Official Report, Jones, p. 307. [545] See _post_, p. 243. _NOTES TO CHAPTER XIV._ 1. Colonel Maurice has recently examined the evidence in reference to the communications which passed between the Duke of Wellington and Marshal Blücher on the subject of the support to be given to the English army by the Prussians.[546] We think he has shown that the account given in Siborne is not altogether correct, and we have followed Colonel Maurice in preferring the statements of Müffling and Ollech. Siborne says[547] that the Duke, on the morning of the 17th, sent back the Prussian officer[548] who first brought him the news of Blücher’s defeat, with a letter to the Field Marshal, “proposing to accept a battle on the following day in the position in front of Waterloo, provided the Prince would detach two corps to his assistance”; and that, in the course of the evening[549] he received from Blücher a reply in these terms:— “I shall not come with two corps only, but with my whole army; upon this understanding, however, that, should the French not attack us on the 18th, we shall attack them on the 19th.”