“Je ne vois pas beaucoup de l’ennemi en avant de nous, et j’attends les nouvelles de votre Altesse; et l’arrivée des troupes pour decider mes operations pour la journée. “Rien n’a paru du côté de Binche ni sur notre droit.--Votre très obeissant serviteur, “WELLINGTON.” Much capital is made out of this document. It is assumed that Wellington made a promise which he must have known could not be fulfilled. And the still graver charge is implied that the letter was intentionally misleading. It seems scarcely credible that such a view could be maintained, knowing the good feeling that obtained between him and all the Prussian leaders except Gneisenau. Moreover, Wellington’s own army was not so good, so homogeneous, or even so numerically superior to that of the French as to render his chance of fighting the emperor single-handed, when his troops were flushed with victory, a successful one. The political feeling of the Belgians, the sympathy undoubtedly felt by many with the French, a sympathy only half concealed in many cases, would be an additional reason for his being very far from desirous of in any way opposing the concentration of the Allied armies. At the time specified there was, judging from his own statement as to the reconnaissance, little doubt in his mind but that no serious attack would be made on Quatre Bras; and he evidently intended to move to Ligny unless prevented. As to the actual position of his corps, he seemed to have indicated where they might possibly be by the time when the letter was written, rather than where they actually were; the errors in position of the different corps averaging ten miles. He seems to have forgotten, however, that by the after order of 10 p.m. on the 15th June, Picton had been directed to march along the Namur road, only “to the point where the road to Nivelles separates,” _i.e._ near Mont St. Jean. Clausewitz’s view that the halt there was designedly made until after the interview with Blucher is, as Colonel Chesney remarked, “obviously inconsistent” with the known time of Picton’s appearance with the leading division at Quatre Bras. As a matter of fact, he apparently overrated his power of concentration and the movement of his brigades, though there seems no reason to doubt but what they might have been, on the whole, very nearly in the positions assigned had they moved with ordinary speed.