Note 378 — Chapter I

Take, for example, the case of Baring of the K. G. L. at Waterloo. In a dispatch, not written immediately after the battle (when accurate information might have been difficult to procure), but two months later, Wellesley says that La Haye Sainte was taken at two o’clock, ‘through the negligence of the officer who commanded the post.’ Yet if anything is certain, it is that Baring held out till six o’clock, that his nine companies of the K. G. L. kept back two whole French divisions, and that when he was driven out, the sole cause was that his ammunition was exhausted, and that no more could be sent him because the enemy had completely surrounded the post. If Wellington had taken any trouble about the ascertaining of the facts, he could not have failed to learn the truth.