Perponcher, then, put a battalion and five guns in front of Gemioncourt, another battalion inside the walls of the farm, four battalions and a mounted battery before the Wood of Bossu and the farm of Pierrepont. Most of his battalions were thus stretched in front of the position of Quatre Bras, the actual Cross Roads where he left only two as a reserve. Against the Dutchmen, thus extended, the French order to advance was given, and somewhere between half-past two and a quarter to three the French attack began. It was delivered upon Gemioncourt and the fields to the right or east of the Brussels road. The action that followed is one simple enough to understand by description, but difficult to express upon a map. It is difficult to express upon a map because it consisted in the repeated attack of one fixed number of men against an increasing number of men. Ney was hammering all that afternoon with a French force which soon reached its maximum. The position against which he was hammering, though held at first by a force greatly inferior to his own, began immediately afterwards to receive reinforcement after reinforcement, until at the close of the action the defenders were vastly superior in numbers to the attackers. I have attempted in the rough pen sketch opposite this page to express this state of affairs on the allied side during the battle by marking in successive degrees of shading the bodies of the defence in the order in which they came up, but the reader must remember the factor of time, and how all day long Wellington's command at Quatre Bras kept on swelling and swelling by driblets, as the units marched in at a hurried summons from various points behind the battlefield. This gradual reinforcement of the defence gives all its character to the action. [Illustration] The French, then, began the assault by an advance to the right or east of the Brussels road. They cleared out the defenders from Gemioncourt; they occupied that walled position; they poured across the stream, and were beginning to take the rise up to Quatre Bras when, at about three o'clock, Wellington, who had been over at Ligny discussing the position with Blucher, rode up and saw how critical the moment was. In a few minutes the first French division might be up to the cross-roads at Q. Bossu Wood, with the four battalions holding it, had not yet been attacked by the French, because their second division of Reille's Second Corps (under Napoleon's brother Jerome), had not yet come up; Erlon's First Corps was still far off, down the road. The men in the Bossu Wood came out to try and stop the French advance. They were thrown back by French cavalry, and even as this was proceeding Jerome's division arrived, attacked the south of Bossu Wood, and brought up the whole of Ney's forces to some 19,000 or 20,000 men.