of beating the English and Germans in front of him, and beating the Prussians towards the east. For nearly four hours Napoleon fought this desperate game, hurling his troops on the English and Germans in front and sending battallion after battallion eastwards to keep the Prussians from advancing. The attempt was futile because it was impossible. At 7 p. m. Napoleon hurled his imperial guard, commanded by the indomitable Ney against the English and the Germans, while another wing of his army under Laban was still desperately fighting against the Prussians who had advanced as far as Plancenoit. The double game could not succeed and did not succeed. The English and the Germans gallantly received and drove back the Imperial Guards, while the Prussians pressed harder and harder on Plancenoit and captured it soon after 8 p. m. All was lost then, and Napoleon and the French fled from the field.
Such was the battle of "Waterloo" which popular English writers of the day described as exclusively their victory, which the Prussians mainly attribute to their desperate and heroic fighting, which the Germans claim as their victory as well as that of the English and the Prussians, and which the Netherlanders have celebrated by building a huge mound or hill on the battle-field with the Belgian lion on the top of it, looking towards France!
There was a fearful loss of life on that eventful day, and the number of the killed and wounded shews pretty clearly the share that each nation had in securing the victory. The English head the list with the frightful
