Note 63 — Chapter VII

From the circumstance of the columns of the Imperial guard making their attack at the point of our line which ran curving forward, they must have become, on crowning the allied position, exposed to a cross-fire of all arms, which may be thus described:

Halkett’s left and Vandersmissen’s batteries formed the left of the curve, whilst the immediate right of it consisted of Halkett’s right, our guards and Napier’s battery, whose right was brought rather forward; thus the fires were diagonal, that is, the two fires evidently crossed.

It is therefore not astonishing that the veterans of a hundred fights gave way under this, to use their own words, effroyable (dreadful) cross-fire upon both front and flank.