Such a point of the field of battle devours more combatants than such another, just as more or less spongy soils soak up more or less quickly the water which is poured on them. It becomes necessary to pour out more soldiers than one would like; a series of expenditures which are the unforeseen.
The line of battle waves and undulates like a thread, the trails of blood gush illogically, the fronts of the armies waver, the regiments form capes and gulfs as they enter and withdraw; all these reefs are continually moving in front of each other.
Where the infantry stood the artillery arrives, the cavalry rushes in where the artillery was, the battalions are like smoke.
There was something there; seek it.
It has disappeared; the open spots change place, the sombre folds advance and retreat, a sort of wind from the sepulchre pushes forward, hurls back, distends, and disperses these tragic multitudes.
What is a fray? an oscillation?
The immobility of a mathematical plan expresses a minute, not a day.
In order to depict a battle, there is required one of those powerful painters who have chaos in their brushes. Rembrandt is better than Vandermeulen; Vandermeulen, exact at noon, lies at three o'clock. Geometry is deceptive; the hurricane alone is trustworthy.
That is what confers on Folard the right to contradict Polybius.
Let us add, that there is a certain instant when the battle degenerates into a combat, becomes specialized, and disperses into innumerable detailed feats, which, to borrow the expression of Napoleon himself, "belong rather to the biography of the regiments than to the history of the army."
The historian has, in this case, the evident right to sum up the whole.
He cannot do more than seize the principal outlines of the struggle, and it is not given to any one narrator, however conscientious he may be, to fix, absolutely, the form of that horrible cloud which is called a battle.
This, which is true of all great armed encounters, is particularly applicable to Waterloo.
Nevertheless, at a certain moment in the afternoon the battle came to a point.
BOOK FIRST.-WATERLOO
CHAPTER VI
FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON
Towards four o'clock the condition of the English army was serious. The Prince of Orange was in command of the centre, Hill of the right wing, Picton of the left wing.