Les Miserables, Wilbour Translation

TOWARDS four o'clock the situation of the English army was serious. The Prince of Orange commanded the centre, Hill the right wing, Picton the left wing. The Prince of Orange, desperate and intrepid, cried to the Hollando-Belgians : Nassau I Brunswick! never retreat 1 Hill, exhausted, had fallen back upon Wellington. Picton was dead. At the very moment that the English had taken from the French the colours of the io5th of the line, the French had killed General Picton by a ball through the head. For Wellington the battle had two points of support, Hougomont and La Haie Sainte ; Hougomont still held out, but was burning ; La Haie Sainte had been taken. Of the German battalion which defended it, forty-two men only survived; all the officers, except five, were dead or prisoners. Three thousand combatants were massacred in that grange. A sergeant of the English Guards, the best boxer in England, reputed invulnerable by his comrades, had been killed by a little French drummer. Baring had been dislodged, Alten put to the sword. Several colours had been lost, one belonging to Alten's division, and one to the Luneburg battalion, borne by a prince of the family of Deux-Ponts. The Scotch Grays were no more; Ponsonby's heavy dragoons had been cut to pieces. That valiant cavalry had given way before the lancers of Bro and the cuirassiers of Travers; of their twelve hundred horses there remained six hundred; of three lieutenant-colonels, two lay on the ground, Hamilton wounded, Mather killed. Ponsonby had fallen, pierced with seven thrusts of a lance. Gordon was dead, Marsh was dead. Two divisions, the fifth and the sixth, were destroyed.

Hougomont yielding, La Haie Sainte taken, there was but one knot left, the centre. That still held; Wellington reinforced it. He called thither Hill who was at Merbe Braine, and Chasse who was at Braine l'Alleud.