Had Napoleon, when he had come to entertain the apprehension that the Prussians might be intending to unite with the English, followed on the 17th the same general plan which he had adopted on the 15th, and, leaving, say, Pajol with the division of Teste, to find out where the Prussians had gone and what they were proposing to do, had taken the rest of the army with him, sending Grouchy at daybreak of the 18th with one, or perhaps both, of his corps to St. Lambert, with instructions to delay the Prussians in every way possible should they come from Wavre either to attack the main army or to reinforce Wellington, he would have taken no serious risk, and he would have had his whole army under his own eye and subject to his immediate control on the day of the great battle. In this case Grouchy would have performed at St. Lambert the task which Ney performed at Quatre Bras,—of preventing the intervention of the other allied army in the battle then in progress. There is not the least reason to suppose that this course would have affected the decision either of Wellington to accept battle or of Blücher to support him. But the chances in favor of Napoleon’s success in the battle would have been vastly greater than they actually were. 2. We have expressed the doubt whether, even if the Prussians were known to be separating from the English, it would not have been wiser if Napoleon had given Grouchy only one corps wherewith to pursue them. But while this may be true, we cannot agree with Sir James Shaw-Kennedy in his reasons for criticising the detachment of Grouchy’s force from the main army. He says:—[638] “His (Napoleon’s) great difficulty—as he ought well to have known from the experience of a whole succession of disastrous campaigns to his armies in Spain—was the overthrow of the Anglo-Allied army; and against it he should have led his last man and horse, even had the risk been great in the highest degree; which, as has been seen,[639] it clearly was not. Had Napoleon attacked the Anglo-Allied army with his whole force, and succeeded in defeating it, there could be little question of his being able to defeat afterwards the Prussian army when separated from Wellington.” And again:—[640] “If Grouchy’s proper place was on the field of battle at Waterloo, then Napoleon should have sent for him at daylight on the morning of the 18th, when he saw the Anglo-Allied army in position and determined to attack it.”