So the British army had arranged itself to one side of the best and broadest road to London, and had established barricades across all alternate roads. If these were not as advanced as one would have liked, Napoleon having moved too quickly, still they would nevertheless delay the progress of any great mass of men, and give the British time to fall upon the enemy from behind. But Napoleon did not mean to scorn the gauntlet that had been thrown down: he was coming to them along the main road.

The British had the advantage of higher ground, with several stout farmhouses and a few old stone walls and fences for barricades and fortifications, which should make them all the harder to dislodge. ‘We will hold here,’ Sir Hew Dalrymple said: he had the command, an older officer with a stout neck and fair hair creeping back from his temples. ‘It would be folly to yield so advantageous a position—’

‘And if we are forced to yield it?’ Wellesley said, dryly; there was marshy ground on their western flank, sodden with snow; but no one would discuss this difficulty.

‘He has moved quicker than we expected, but we must not let this throw us into disarray,’ General Dalrymple continued. ‘That is how the Prussians ran into trouble, letting him cast them into confusion, changing their minds and their ground ten times a day.’

‘Sir, I beg your pardon,’ Laurence said, unable to restrain himself. ‘That a lack of decision plagued the Prussian army, I cannot deny; but they were out-fought, sir, on open ground—’

‘With this trick of horse-blinders you have gone on about in your report,’ Dalrymple said. ‘You may set your mind at rest,’ he added, in an ironic tone, which said without a word how little he trusted Laurence's anxiety, ‘we have not discounted what could be confirmed of your intelligence; our horses have their own damned hoods now, and if Bonaparte thinks he will stampede us with a few dragon-charges, he will soon learn otherwise.’

‘And this time, Bonaparte has let his thirst for speed outpace his sense,’ another general said. ‘All the scouts agree, even the beasts,’ he added coldly in Jane's direction, ‘that he has not brought up all of his army yet. He has some thirty thousand men, not fifty; so we are not far short of him even without our levies and reinforcements.’

‘You will be a damn sight shorter by morning,’ she answered, ‘if you mean to lie here and be bombarded. And my scouts too have made thirty thousand, but that does not mean there are not more to come.’