The battlefield named in history after the village of Ligny consists of a number of communes, of which that village is the central one. The Prussian army held the villages marked on the map by the names of Tongrinelle and Tongrinne, to the east of Ligny; it held Brye, St Amand, and Wagnelée to the east. It held also the heights behind upon the great road leading from Nivelles to Namur. When Napoleon had at last got his latest troops over from beyond the Sambre on to the field of battle, which was not until just on two o'clock in the afternoon, the plan he formed was to hold the Prussian left and centre by a vigorous attack, that is, to pin the Prussians down to Tongrinne, Tongrinelle, and Ligny, while, on the other front, the east and south front of the Prussians, another vigorous attack should be driving them back out of Wagnelée and St Amand. [Illustration] The plan can be further elucidated by considering the elements of the battle as they are sketched in the map over leaf. Napoleon's troops at C C C were to hold the Prussian left at H, to attack the Prussian right at D, with the Guard at E left in reserve for the final effort. By thus holding the Prussians at H and pushing them in at D, he would here begin to pen them back, and it needed but the arrival on the field of a fresh French force attacking the Prussians along A B to destroy the force so contained and hemmed in. For that fresh force Napoleon depended upon new and changed instructions which he despatched to Ney when he saw the size of the Prussian force before him. During Napoleon's main attack, some portion of Ney's force, and if possible the whole of it, should appear unexpectedly from the north and west, marching down across the fields between Wagnelée and the Nivelles-Namur road, and coming on the north of the enemy at A B, so as to attack him not only in the flank but in the rear. He would then be unable to retreat in the direction of _Wavre_ (W)--a broken remnant might escape towards Namur (N). But it was more likely that the whole force would be held and destroyed. [Illustration: Elements of Ligny.] Supposing that Napoleon's 63,000 showed themselves capable of holding, let alone partially driving in, the 80,000 in front of them, the sudden and unexpected appearance of a new force in the height of the action, adding another twenty or thirty thousand to the French troops already engaged, coming upon the flank and spreading to the rear of the Prussian host, would inevitably have destroyed that host, and, to repeat Napoleon's famous exclamation, "not a gun would have escaped." The reader may ask: "If this plan of victory be so obvious, why did Napoleon send Ney off with a separate left wing of forty to fifty thousand men towards Quatre Bras?" The answer is: that when, upon the day before, the Thursday, Napoleon had made this disposition, and given it as the general orders for that Friday, he had imagined only one corps of Prussians to be before him.