It may perhaps be, that Grouchy’s expressed intention that he would try to prevent Blücher from joining Wellington was held by both the Emperor and his chief-of-staff as indicating with sufficient certainty that, if he found that the Prussians were retiring on Wavre, he would proceed at once to cross the Dyle at Moustier or Limale, and operate on the left bank of that river, on the right of the main army.[566] This course was almost necessarily implied in an attempt to prevent the Prussians at Wavre from joining the English, as we have just pointed out; it may be, therefore, that the Emperor thought another order needless. But whatever the reason, no order was sent to Grouchy till 10 A.M. the next morning. This did not reach him till 4 P.M.[567] that afternoon, when he was fighting in front of Wavre. Marshal Grouchy, then, acted up till 4 o’clock of the 18th of June under the order dictated the previous day by the Emperor to Count Bertrand. This fact we desire distinctly to bring out, so that there shall be no possibility of further mistake on this subject. The history of this day, from the very first narratives down to the very last, has been illustrated by the mistakes of historians and critics as to the orders under which Marshal Grouchy acted. Not only did Grouchy himself deliberately deny for nearly thirty years that he received any written order on the 17th, thereby misleading the most sagacious critics and rendering their criticisms on this part of the campaign in great part valueless, but even long after the fact was universally acknowledged that he did get a written order in the shape of the Bertrand letter, a certain unwillingness or inability to take in the meaning of this written order, to recognize that it imposed a different task on Marshal Grouchy from that laid upon him by the verbal orders which had previously been given him, has, nevertheless, strangely enough existed. We have pointed this out in the Notes to Chapter XIII; but we will add one or two more instances here.