Thus while the Prussians were chasing Napoleon, Grouchy would have been chasing Wellington, with the net result that the Prussians, within a few days, would have been caught between Napoleon’s rallied troops and the victorious army of Grouchy. But it was not to be so. Grouchy did precisely what Blücher wanted him to do--spent the golden hours with Thielman at Wavre. After the cannonade of half an hour, Ney and D’Erlon led the grand attack on the English position. And a worse managed affair it would be difficult to imagine. Instead of forming columns of attack, admitting of easy and rapid deployment, the troops were massed in compact phalanxes, with a front of 166 to 200 files, with a depth of twenty-four men. The destruction which canister causes on dense masses like these, exposed in the open field, is something horrible to contemplate. The error was so glaring that one of the division commanders, Durutte, flatly refused to allow his men to be formed in that way. Where was the eagle glance of Napoleon that he did not detect the faulty formation which Ney and D’Erlon were making? Is such a detail beneath the notice of a commander-in-chief? If the Emperor saw the mistake he gave no sign, and the troops of D’Erlon, ashamed of not having been in the fights of the 16th, rushed into the valley shouting, “_Vive l’Empereur!_” “Into the jaws of death” they marched, for as they crossed the valley and mounted the slopes beyond, the English batteries cut long lanes through their deep, dense lines and they fell by the hundreds. A part of the attacking force was thrown against the walls and buildings of La Haye-Sainte, and here, as at Hougoumont, infantry were slaughtered from behind unbreached walls. But the great charge against the English position went on heedless of such detail as the attack on La Haye-Sainte. Through the rye, which was breast-high, and over ground into which they mired at every step, the columns of D’Erlon pressed upward, crying “_Vive l’Empereur!_” The defenders of the sand pit were driven out and thrown beyond the hedges. The Netherlanders and Dutch broke, and in their flight behind the hedges disordered the ranks of an English regiment. The Nassau troops, which held the Papelotte farm, were dislodged by the French under Durutte, and the great charge seemed to be on the point of succeeding. But the faulty formation of the attacking columns ruined all. When the attempt was made to deploy, so much time was consumed that the English gunners had only to fire at the dense mass of men to litter the earth with the wounded and the dead. The carnage was frightful. Picton, the English general, seeing the efforts of the French to deploy, seized the opportunity, led a brigade against the French column, delivered a volley, and then ordered a bayonet charge. Pouring from behind the hedges, the English rushed upon the confused mass of French, and a terrible fight at close quarters took place. It was here that Picton was killed.