At 11.30 A.M., before the time arrived for beginning the main operation of the day, Napoleon ordered Reille to attack Hougomont with his left division, that of Prince Jerome.[702] This movement, intended only as a diversion, was undertaken without any sufficient examination of the enemy’s position, and in the most inconsiderate manner.[703] Neither Jerome, who commanded the division, nor Guilleminot, who, Charras maintains, really controlled its operations, took the pains to direct the boiling courage and superfluous energy of the men, which, skilfully used, might have resulted in obtaining at least partial success. For example, the western entrance of the Chateau was perfectly open to artillery fire, and, had a few heavy guns been employed, the doors and adjacent wall would have been demolished, and the building would probably have been taken,[704] although it is doubtful if it could have been held. Bags of powder, also, would have destroyed the garden wall, but no one thought of supplying them to the men.[705] In consequence of these neglects, the soldiers of Jerome’s division, after possessing themselves of the wood and orchard, were shot down by their opponents from behind the garden wall, and from the loopholes in the house and its outbuildings, and could make no further progress. This, of itself, was, perhaps, of no great consequence; but Reille, impatient of being thwarted, and still neglecting to ascertain the precise reasons of the ill-success of the attack, sent in the division of Foy to support that of Jerome. In fact, later in the day, the division of Bachelu was also employed in this useless and most costly attempt to get possession of Hougomont. When it is considered that the 2d Corps contained on this morning not far from 12,000 foot soldiers, and that very few of them assisted in the attacks on the main line of the English army, one gets an idea of the wasteful, and, in fact, inexcusable mismanagement of the resources of the French army on this day. Not more than half the above number of men were employed to maintain the position. The main operation of the day was to be, as we have said, an advance by the 1st Corps under d’Erlon to break the centre of the English line at and near the junction of the Wavre road with the turnpike. The great battery of seventy-eight pieces of cannon continued firing for an hour and a half at a distance of less than a third of a mile from the crest in front of which lay the brigade of Bylandt, and behind which lay the brigades of Kempt and Pack and Best of Picton’s division. At half-past one Napoleon ordered d’Erlon forward.