Almost simultaneously with the battle of Ligny was fought that of Quatre Bras. At eleven Ney received orders outlining a general plan for the day; about half an hour later came the specific command to unite the forces of d'Erlon, Reille, and Kellermann, and carry Quatre Bras; at five arrived in hot haste the messenger with the third order. At two o'clock there were not quite seven thousand Anglo-Belgians in Quatre Bras, but, successive bodies arriving in swift succession, by half-past six o'clock there were over thirty thousand. At two Ney had seventeen thousand men, and though he sought to recall d'Erlon, yet, owing to the withdrawal of Durutte, and to d'Erlon's indecision, he had at half-past six not more than twenty thousand. Not one of d'Erlon's men had reached him: Girard's division of Reille's corps was with Vandamme before St. Amand. Gérard's corps had been kept at Ligny. Had he advanced on the position the previous evening, or had he attacked between eleven and two on the sixteenth, the event of the campaign might have been different from what it was. But if he really believed, as Heymès afterward asseverated was the case, that his orders were merely to push and hold the enemy, then his conduct throughout was gallant and correct.[22] The weight of evidence favors the claim of Napoleon that the marshal was perverse in his refusal to take Quatre Bras according to verbal orders. Whatever the truth, the behavior of Ney's men was admirable when they did advance, but they were forced back to Frasnes before superior numbers.
[Footnote 22: Ropes: The Campaign of Waterloo, p. 191.]
Next morning Wellington was conversing with Colonel Bowles when a staff officer drew up, his horse flecked with foam, and whispered the news of Ligny. Without a change of countenance, the commander said to his companion: "Old Blücher has had a ---- good licking, and gone back to Wavre, eighteen miles. As he has gone back, we must go, too. I suppose in England they will say we have been licked. I can't help it; as they have gone back, we must go, too." Accordingly, he issued his orders, and his army began to march at ten. On the whole, therefore, the events of June sixteenth seemed favorable to Napoleon, since, fighting at two points with inferior numbers, he had been victorious at one, and had thereby secured the other also. We, of course, know that by Gneisenau's move this apparent success was rendered nugatory. It is useless to surmise what would have happened had Bülow been with Blücher, and d'Erlon and Lobau with Napoleon, or if either of these possibilities had happened without the other; as it was, Napoleon's strategy gained both Quatre Bras and Sombreffe.