Page:The Ifs of History (1907).pdf/145

 practiced, brave and splendidly commanded.

Napoleon had forced the Allies back at Quatre Bras. He captured their position at La Haye Sainte. He perceived that the strategic key to the whole field of battle was the hill crowned by the old stone château of Hugomont. If that could be taken, Napoleon would be able to attack and turn Wellington's right flank. That accomplished, a junction of Blücher and his Prussians with the English would be prevented; the forces of the Allies would be split in two, and Napoleon would in all probability defeat them in detail, according to his time-honored method. The emperor could easily have finished off the Austrians in their turn, as he planned to do; and the combined European attempt to oust him would have been frustrated. Thus the Corsican would have been, probably for so long as he lived, the master of France at the least, even if the checks