The next column, again, the third, came upon the British Guards; and the Guards, reserving their fire until the enemy were at a stone's-throw, fired point-blank and threw the French into confusion. During that confusion the brigade of Guards charged, pursued the enemy part of the way down the slope, were closed upon by the enemy and driven back again to the ridge. The fourth column of the French was now all but striking the extremity of the British line. Here Adams' brigade, a battalion of the 95th, the 71st, and the 52nd regiments, awaited the blow. The 52nd was the inmost of the three. It stood just where the confusion of the Guards as they were thrown back up the hill joined the still unbroken ranks of Adams' extremity of the British line. The 52nd determined the crisis of that day. And it was then precisely that the battle of Waterloo was decided, or, to be more accurate, this was the moment when the inevitable breaking-point appeared. Colborne was its commander. Instead of waiting in the line, he determined to run the very grave risk of leaving it upon his own initiative, and of playing a tremendous hazard; he took it upon himself to bring the 52nd out, forward in advance of and perpendicular to the defending line, and so to bring a flank fire upon the last French charge. [Illustration] The peril was very great indeed. It left a gap in the English line; the possibility, even the chance, of a French advance to the left against that gap and behind the 52nd meant ruin. It was the sort of thing which, when men do it and fail, is quite the end of them. Colborne did it and succeeded. No French effort was made to the left of the 52nd. It had therefore but its front to consider; it wheeled round, left that dangerous gap in the English line, and poured its fire in flank upon the last charge of the fourth French column. That fire was successful. The assault halted, wavered, and began to break. The French line to the right, advancing in support of the efforts of the Guard, saw that backward movement, and even as they saw it there came the news of Ziethen's unchecked and overwhelming pressure upon the north-east of the field, a pressure which there also had at last broken the French formation. The two things were so nearly simultaneous that no historical search or argument will now determine the right of either to priority. As the French west of the Brussels road gave way, the whole English line moved together and began to advance. As the remnants of the First French Army Corps to the east of the Brussels road were struck by Ziethen _they_ also broke. At which point the first flexion occurred will never be determined. The host of Napoleon, stretched to the last limit, and beyond, snapped with the more violence, and in those last moments of daylight a complete confusion seized upon all but two of its numerous and scattered units.