Every June we fight Waterloo, and every year someone says we ought to fight the battle two days before it, which decided so much of what happened on the 18th. This year we finally did. Throughout this report, the boxes marked IN 1815 tell what really happened at the same hour, so that you can see where we followed history and where we wandered from it.

The sides, drawn from a hat as always:
French: Dennis as Marshal Ney, commanding; Maurice with Reille's infantry; Robert with all the French cavalry, which pleased him more than I can say.
Allies: Gordon as Wellington, commanding; Alton with the Netherlanders and then Picton's division; Karl with the Brunswickers, Alten's division and the Guards. Karl drew his own Brunswickers, which happens about once in a lifetime.

Victory: The French win by holding the crossroads at nightfall. The allies win by holding the crossroads and keeping the Namur road open to the east, which was Wellington's line to the Prussians at Ligny. Anything else is a draw.

The crossroads that gave the place its name ("four arms") is where the road from Charleroi to Brussels crosses the road from Nivelles to Namur. The country around it is rolling farmland, and in June of 1815 the rye stood taller than a man, which hid whole battalions from each other until they were close enough to touch. We represented the rye with scattered tufts of lichen and the hidden-troops rule, and it worked better than I expected.

The d'Erlon die. Ney expected d'Erlon's I Corps all afternoon, nearly twenty thousand men, and it never came, for reasons that are still argued about. So from 5 p.m. on, I rolled one die every turn. On a six, d'Erlon's leading division would appear on the southern edge of the table. On anything else, it was still somewhere on the road between two battles.

2:00 p.m. I sent Bachelu and Foy straight up the Charleroi road, with Robert's lancers out on the right toward Piraumont. Alton's Netherlanders had only two brigades and a battery to hold a front of more than a mile, and he did the sensible thing, which was to give ground slowly and make us pay for it. Gemioncourt fell to Foy at about twenty minutes to three.

3:00 p.m. The reinforcement die brought Picton on exactly on time, which Gordon took as a sign from heaven. The Brunswickers rolled late, the better part of an hour behind. Prince Jérôme came up for us and went into the Bois de Bossu, where he discovered (this is the hidden-troops rule earning its keep) that Alton had left a battalion of Nassauers in the trees all along. It took Jérôme an hour to clear the southern half of the wood.

3:40 p.m. Robert's lancers found one of Best's Hanoverian battalions in line in the rye, out of sight of anything that could help it, and rode over it. Robert was pleased. He was less pleased twenty minutes later when Picton's Highlanders formed square and sent the same lancers back down the hill.

4:00 p.m. Karl's Brunswickers arrived and he took them straight into the fight beside the Charleroi road, with the hussars in front. They were repulsed. Then came the general's casualty roll, which we make whenever a general's own brigade is broken, and Karl rolled the Duke of Brunswick dead. We were quiet for a moment. Karl knew what had happened to the real Duke. So did all of us.

4:20 to 5:40 p.m. Kellermann's cuirassiers arrived early on the die, and at 4:40 I sent Robert the order to charge, by courier. The courier took two turns. In those two turns Alten's division came onto the table from the north, and so when the cuirassiers finally went up the road at twenty past five, the first thing in front of them was one of Halkett's battalions just deploying into line. They rode through it, then through a battery, and at 5:40 there were French cuirassiers at the crossroads of Quatre Bras, and Robert was standing up.

They lasted one turn. Every allied gun within reach fired on them, Karl formed squares on both sides of the road, and the cuirassiers broke and went back the way they came. Robert sat down.

5:00 to 7:00 p.m. The d'Erlon die. A one, a three, a four, a two, a five, a one, and Gordon, a gentleman, offering to roll for me. At 7:00 I rolled a six. D'Erlon's first division came onto the southern edge at 7:20 and marched for Piraumont.

7:00 p.m. The Guards arrived, half an hour late on the die, and went into the Bois de Bossu. By 8:20 they had cleared all but the southern edge of it. On the other flank, d'Erlon's division took Piraumont and pushed a brigade up to the Namur road.

9:00 p.m. Nightfall. The allies held the crossroads and nearly all of the wood. The French held Gemioncourt, Piraumont, and a stretch of the Namur road east of the crossroads, which meant Wellington's road to the Prussians was cut.

By our conditions, a draw: Wellington held the crossroads, but not the Namur road. The French lost 19 stands and the allies 24, which is about the proportion of the real thing.

What we learned. Gordon says the battle was lost, or rather not won, by the Brunswickers coming on late. Karl says it was saved by the Brunswickers coming on at all. Robert has asked that the record show his cuirassiers reached the crossroads, and it does. My own view is that Ney's real problem on June 16 was the same as mine on September 11: the troops he was counting on were never where he needed them, and every order he sent took longer to arrive than the situation could afford. Our courier rule taught me more about that afternoon in one Saturday than thirty years of reading about it.

We will fight it again some year with d'Erlon arriving at 4:00. Someone has to find out.