Wellington, we may believe if we choose (the point is by no means certain), knew as early as three o'clock in the afternoon that the French had moved. It may have been as late as five, it may even have been six. But whatever the hour in which he received his information, it is quite certain that he had no conception of the gravity of the moment. As late as ten o'clock at night the Duke issued certain after-orders. He had previously given general orders (which presupposed no immediate attack), commanding movements which would in the long-run have produced a concentration, but though these orders were ordered to be executed "with as little delay as possible," there was no hint of immediate duty required, nor do the posts indicated betray in any way the urgent need there was to push men south and east at the top of their speed, and relieve the Prussians from the shock they were to receive on the morrow. These general orders given--orders that betray no grasp of the nearness of the issue--Wellington went off to the Duchess of Richmond's ball in what the impartial historian cannot doubt to be ignorance of the great stroke which Napoleon had so nearly brought off upon that very day, and would certainly attempt to bring off upon the next. In the midst of the ball, or rather during the supper, definite news came in that the French army had crossed the river Sambre, and had even pushed its cavalry as far up the Brussels road as Quatre Bras. The Duke does not seem to have appreciated even then what that should mean in the way of danger to the Prussians, and indeed of the breaking of the whole line. He left the dance at about two in the morning and went to bed. He was not long left in repose. In the bright morning sunlight, four hours afterwards, he was roused by a visitor from the frontier, and we have it upon his evidence that the Duke at last understood what was before him, and said that the concentration of his forces must be at Quatre Bras. In other words, Wellington knew or appreciated extremely tardily on that _Friday_ morning about six that the blow was about to fall upon his Prussian allies to the south and east, and that it was the business of his army upon the west to come up rapidly in succour. As will be seen in a moment, he failed; but it would be a very puerile judgment of this great man and superb defensive General to belittle his place in the history of war upon the basis of even such errors as these. True, the error and the delay were prodigious and, in a fashion, comic; and had Napoleon delivered upon the _Thursday_ afternoon, as he had intended, an attack which should have defeated the Prussians before him, Wellington's error and delay would have paid a very heavy price.