Many flags had been lost, one from Alten''s division, and one from the battalion of Lunenburg, carried by a prince of the house of Deux-Ponts. The Scotch Grays no longer existed; Ponsonby''s great dragoons had been hacked to pieces. That valiant cavalry had bent beneath the lancers of Bro and beneath the cuirassiers of Travers; out of twelve hundred horses, six hundred remained; out of three lieutenant-colonels, two lay on the earth,--Hamilton wounded, Mater slain.
Ponsonby had fallen, riddled by seven lance-thrusts. Gordon was dead.
Marsh was dead. Two divisions, the fifth and the sixth, had been annihilated.
Hougomont injured, La Haie-Sainte taken, there now existed but one rallying-point, the centre.
That point still held firm. Wellington reinforced it.
He summoned thither Hill, who was at Merle-Braine; he summoned Chasse, who was at Braine-l''Alleud.◇思◇兔◇網◇
The centre of the English army, rather concave, very dense, and very compact, was strongly posted.
It occupied the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean, having behind it the village, and in front of it the slope, which was tolerably steep then.
It rested on that stout stone dwelling which at that time belonged to the domain of Nivelles, and which marks the intersection of the roads--a pile of the sixteenth century, and so robust that the cannon-balls rebounded from it without injuring it.