The French advance, so continued, would now undoubtedly have succeeded against the 8000 Dutch at this moment of three o'clock (and Wellington's judgment that the situation was critical at that same moment was only too sound) had there not arrived precisely at that moment the first of his reinforcements. A brigade of Dutch cavalry came up from the west along the Nivelles road, and three brigades of infantry appeared marching hurriedly in from the north, along the Brussels road; two of these brigades were British, under the command of Kemp and of Pack, and they formed Picton's division. The third were a brigade of Hanoverians, under Best. The British and the Hanoverians formed along the Namur road at M N, protected by its embankment, kneeling in the high wheat, and ready to fire when the enemy's attacking line should come within close range of their muskets. The newly arrived Dutch cavalry, on the other side of the road, charged the advancing French, but were charged themselves in turn by French cavalry, overthrown, and in their stampede carried Wellington and his staff in a surge past the cross-roads; but the French cavalry, in its turn, was compelled to retire by the infantry fire it met when it had ridden too far. Immediately afterwards the French infantry as they reached the Namur road came unexpectedly upon the just-arrived British and Hanoverians, and were driven back in disorder by heavy volleying at close range from the embankment and the deep cover beyond. The cavalry charge and countercharge (Jerome beginning to clear the south of the Bossu Wood), the check received by the French on the right from Picton's brigade and the Hanoverians occupied nearly an hour. It was not far short of four o'clock when Ney received that first urgent dispatch from Napoleon which told him to despatch the enemy's resistance at Quatre Bras, and then to come over eastward to Ligny and help against the Prussians. Ney could not obey. He had wasted the whole of a precious morning, and by now, close on four o'clock in the afternoon, yet another unit came up to increase the power of the defence, and to make his chance of carrying the Quatre Bras cross-roads, of pushing back Wellington's command, of finding himself free to send men to Napoleon increasingly doubtful. The new unit which had come up was the corps under the Duke of Brunswick, and when this arrived Wellington had for the first time a superiority of numbers over Ney's single corps (there was still no sign of Erlon) though he was still slightly inferior in guns. However, the French advance was vigorously conducted. Nearly the whole of the Wood of Bossu was cleared. The Brunswickers, who had been sent forward along the road between Quatre Bras and Gemioncourt, were pushed back as to their infantry; their cavalry broke itself against a French battalion.