But it was only at half-past eleven that the cannon began to roar, and the undulating plain carried the echo like a thunder-roll from heaving billow to heaving billow till it broke against the silent majesty of the forest of Soigne.
Here with the forest as a background is the highest point of Mont Saint Jean: and here beneath an overhanging elm--all day on horseback--anxious, frigid and heroic, is Wellington--with a rain of bullets all round him, watching, ceaselessly watching that horizon far away, wrapped now in fog, anon in smoke and soon in gathering darkness: watching for the promised Prussian army that was to ease the terrible burden of that desperate stand which the British troops were bearing and had borne all day with such unflinching courage and dogged tenacity.
It is in vain that his aides-de-camp beg him to move away from that perilous position.
"My lord," cries Lord Hill at last in desperation, "if you are killed, what are we to do?"
"The same as I do now," replies Wellington unmoved, "hold this place to the last man."
Then with a sudden outburst of vehemence, that seems to pierce almost involuntarily the rigid armour of British phlegm and British self-control, he calls to his old comrades of Salamanca and Vittoria:
"Boys, which of us now can think of retreating? What would England think of us, if we do?"
Heroic, unflinching and cool the British army has held its ground against the overwhelming power of Napoleon's magnificent cavalry. Raw recruits some of them, against the veterans of Jena and of Wagram! But they have been ordered to hold the place to the last man, and in close and serried squares they have held their ground ever since half-past eleven this morning, while one after another the flower of Napoleon's world-famed cavalry had been hurled against them.
Cuirassiers, chasseurs, lancers, up they come to the charge, like whirlwinds up the declivities of the plateau. Like a whirlwind they rush upon those stolid, immovable, impenetrable squares, attacking from every side, making violent, obstinate, desperate onsets upon the stubborn angles, the straight, unshakable walls of red coats; slashing at the bayonets with their swords, at crimson breasts with their lances, firing their pistols right between those glowing eyes, right into those firm jaws and set teeth.