We conclude, therefore, that Wellington would not have run any unwarrantable risk by ordering his army to assemble at Quatre Bras as soon as he had learnt of the French advance by way of Charleroi. And that this was the true course for him to take is virtually admitted by his own subsequent accounts of his doings,[204] on which we have commented above in our remarks on his “Memorandum on the Battle of Waterloo.” (_Ante_, p. 90.) Had the instructions which he actually gave been strictly carried out, had the brigade of Prince Bernhard of Saxe Weimar been withdrawn to Nivelles in obedience to the orders of 10 P.M., Ney might have occupied Quatre Bras without opposition, in the morning of the 16th. And although it is possible, and, in fact, probable, that he would have been attacked by the English during the afternoon, and while it would have been obviously out of the question for him to have advanced on Brussels, leaving the English army at Nivelles, yet, supposing that he had had both his corps with him, as he ought to have had, he assuredly would have been able to spare a part of his forces to take the Prussians in rear while they were fighting at Ligny, as the Emperor (as we shall see) desired him to do. C. As for Napoleon’s expectations in regard to the English occupation of Quatre Bras as given to us by Colonel Maurice, it must certainly be admitted by everybody that Napoleon considered the occupation of the cross-roads as of very great importance for himself, and that the reason why he gave Ney 45,000 men of all arms was in order to make a sure thing of it. Very possibly he did not expect that the English general would be able, scattered as his army was in its cantonments, to assemble a very large force there during the morning of the 16th. But it is evident that he thought that his adversary’s getting 30,000 or 40,000 men together, and either assisting the Prussians or attacking his left flank, was a thing so likely to occur, and so dangerous a thing, if it did occur, that he gave his two largest corps to his best fighting general in order to provide fully for this contingency by seizing and occupying the cross-roads of Quatre Bras. If the emergency arose, Napoleon was bound to be prepared for it. If he had regarded it as extremely improbable that the English would be encountered in force at or near Quatre Bras, he would probably have strengthened his main army with one of the corps which he gave to Ney. 5. That Wellington and Blücher erred in allowing their armies to remain in their widely extended cantonments until Napoleon attacked them is now generally admitted. Sir James Shaw-Kennedy’s remarks[205] on this point sum up the question forcibly:—