Be all this as it may, the battle of Quatre Bras began. At the cross roads there, at 2 p.m. on the 15th June, were 7000 Dutch Belgians and 16 guns, against 17,500 French infantry and cavalry and 38 guns, who speedily drove back the outposts at Frasnes, and were pressing them still farther back through the wood of Bossu on the Allied right when the first reinforcements came. These were Pack’s Brigade, composed of the 42nd, 44th, 92nd, and 95th; Kempt’s Brigade, of 28th, 32nd, 79th, and 1st, and a Hanoverian Brigade of four battalions, with two more batteries; and thus from 3.30 to 4.30 the Allies numbered 20,000 men with 28 guns, against 18,000 with 44 guns. Now, therefore, Picton, with whom the duke “was barely on speaking terms,” made a counter attack on the left, with the usual result that the fire of the line drove back the enemy’s skirmishers which covered the advance of their columns, and these, broken by fire against their mass and then charged with the bayonet, fell back too. But on the other wing, the right, there was some confusion. The Brunswickers there had fled, both horse and foot, and their duke was wounded. The 42nd in the tall rye grass were somewhat rolled up, as they were not in square, while the 44th, assailed in front as well as rear, faced both ranks outwards, and reserved their fire to twenty paces. So the enemy’s charge swept on across the field from right to left until the 92nd checked it and compelled it to retire. Meanwhile, the Bossu wood on the right was lost, and the French heavy cavalry in vain charged the British squares, but broke up the 69th, whose order to form square had been countermanded by the Prince of Orange. So the fight fluctuated until between 5 and 6 p.m., when the Allied troops now numbered 32,000 men and 68 guns (against 20,700 and 50 guns) by the arrival of the Guards and some Brunswickers. Then the whole force advanced, and victory rested with them. Thus the battle ended at about 6.30 p.m., and at that time, even if D’Erlon had joined Ney, the French left would still have been outnumbered. But Wellington, writes the ablest critic of this momentous campaign, “at dusk, thirty hours after his first warning, had only present at Quatre Bras three-eighths of his infantry, one-third of his guns, and one-seventh of his cavalry. Truly, in holding his own, the great Englishman owed something that day to fortune.”[46] This is really the gravamen of Gneisenau’s charge. During the night the Allied right wing was reinforced to 45,000 men, but, short as the distance between the wings was, showing how less intimate the connection between the Allied armies was than it should have been, Blucher’s left wing was beaten and in full retreat, and the English general did not know the fact till late.