The advance across the valley, as will be apparent from the map, had upon its right the village of Papelotte, upon its left the farm of La Haye Sainte, and for its objective that highway which runs along the top of the ridge, and of which the most part was in those days a sunken road, as effective for defence as a regular trench. Following a practice which he never abandoned, which he had found universally successful, and upon which he ever relied, the Duke of Wellington had kept his British troops, the nucleus of his defensive plan, for the last and worst of the action. He had stationed to take the first brunt those troops upon which he least relied, and these were the first Dutch-Belgian brigade under Bijlandt. This body was stationed in front of the sunken road (at the point marked A in red upon the map). Behind it he had put Pack's brigade and Kemp's, both British; to the left of it, but also behind the road, Best's Hanoverian brigade. Papelotte village he held with Perponcher's Belgians. It will be seen that the crushing fire of the French eighty guns maintained for half an hour had fallen full upon the Dutch-Belgians, standing exposed upon the forward slope at a range of not more than 800 yards.[20] At the French charge, though that was delivered through high standing crops and over drenched and slippery soil up the slope, Bijlandt's brigade broke. It is doubtful indeed whether any other troops would not have broken under such circumstances. Unfortunately the incident has been made the subject of repeated and most ungenerous accusation. A body purposely set forward before the whole line to stand such fearful pounding and to shelter the rest; one, moreover, which in two days of fighting certainly lost one-fourth of its number in killed and wounded, and probably lost more than one-third, is deserving of a much more chivalrous judgment than that shown by most historians in its regard. Anyhow, Kemp's brigade quickly filled the gap left by the failure of the Netherlanders, and began to press back the French charge.