Napoleon’s plan of penetrating into Belgium[292] was now so clearly ascertained, that Wellington determined to concentrate on the extreme point of his line of occupation. His march was accordingly directed on Quatre Bras, a small hamlet situated at the intersection of the road to Charleroi, by that leading from Namur to Nivelles. This village, which was fated to obtain a glorious but sanguinary celebrity, consists of a few mean houses, having a thick and extensive wood immediately on the right called Le Bois de Bossu. All around the wood and hamlet, rye-fields of enormous growth, and quite ready for the sickle, were extended. After a distressing march of twenty miles in sultry weather and over a country destitute of water, the British brigades reached the scene of action at two o’clock. They found the Prince of Orange with a division of his army endeavouring to hold the French in check, and maintain a position of whose great importance he was so well aware. The prince, unable to withstand the physical superiority of Ney’s corps, had gradually lost ground--the Hanoverians had been driven back--and the Bois de Bossu was won and occupied by the enemy.[293] To recover this most important wood, from which the French could debouche upon the road to Brussels, was the duke’s first object. The 95th were ordered to attack the tirailleurs who held it; the order was gallantly executed, and after a bloody and sustained resistance the French were forced to retire. On the left, the Royals and 28th were hotly engaged, and on the right the 44th and Highland regiments were simultaneously assailed. The battle now became general. Before the British could deploy, the French cavalry charged furiously--the tall rye masking their advance and favouring the attack. Generally these charges were unsuccessful-- and the perfect discipline and steady courage of the English enabled them to repel the enemy. Lancers and cuirassiers were driven back with desperate slaughter--while whole squadrons, shattered in their retreat, and leaving the ground covered with their dead and dying, proved with what fatal precision the British squares sustained their fusilade. The efforts of the French to break the squares, however, were fierce and frequent. Their batteries poured upon these unflinching soldiers a storm of grape--and when an opening was made by the cannon, the lancers were ready to rush upon the devoted infantry. But nothing could daunt the lion-hearted English--nothing could shake their steadiness. The dead were coolly removed, and the living occupied their places. Though numbers fell, and the square momentarily diminished, it still presented a serried line of glittering bayonets, through which lancer and cuirassier endeavoured to penetrate--but in vain.