But the Emperor looked upon his Guard as upon his own flesh and blood; if he had had them at Paris five days later, Lafayette and the rest of them would not have remained long in their chamber to depose him, but he had them no longer. This was why he waited so long before sending them; he hoped that Ney would succeed in overwhelming the enemy with the cavalry, or that the thirty-two thousand men under Grouchy would return, attracted by the sound of the cannon, and then he could send them in place of his Guard; because he could always replace thirty or forty thousand by conscription; but to have another such Guard, he must commence at twenty-five, and gain fifty victories, and what remained of the best, most solid, and the toughest would be _the Guard_. It came, and we could see it. Ney, old Friant, and several other generals, marched in front. We could see nothing but _the Guard_--the roaring cannon, the musketry, the cries of the wounded, all were forgotten. But the lull did not last long; the English perceived as well as we, that this was to be the decisive blow, and hastened to rally all their forces to receive it. That part of our field at our left was nearly deserted; there was no more firing, either because their ammunition was exhausted, or the enemy were forming in a new order. On the right, on the contrary, the cannonade was redoubled; the struggle seemed to have been transferred to that side, but nobody dared to say, "The Prussians are attacking us; another army has come to crush us." No! the very idea was too horrible; when suddenly a staff officer rushed past like lightning, shouting: "Grouchy, Marshal Grouchy is coming!" This was just at the moment when the four battalions of the Guard took the left of the highway in order to go up in the rear of the orchard, and commence the attack. How many times during the last fifty years I have seen it over again at night, and how many times I have heard the story related by others. In listening to these accounts you would think that only the Guard took part in the attack, that it moved forward like ranks of palisades; and that it was the Guard alone which received the showers of shot. But in truth this terrible attack took place in the greatest confusion; our whole army joined in it; all the remnant of the left wing and centre, all that was left of the cavalry exhausted by six hours of fighting; every one who could stand or lift an arm. The infantry of Reille which concentrated on the left, we who remained at Haie-Sainte, _all_ who were alive and did not wish to be massacred.