Hello,
I have with all due respect to disagree wth Wellington. Wellington did indeed fight a good defensive battle as usual especially the use of farms as forward positions to break the french impetus worked very well. However there is so much you can do with what you have and I don't think his army would have hold should the prussians had decided not to help. I see two main reasons: By having to take care of the prussian threat, Napoleon diverted the whole VI Corps and during the fight most of the young guard got sucked in plancenoit, which means the only reserve left was the rest of the guard. We all know that good management of reserves is a key element in victory or defeat, by having half of its reserves committed, Napoleon had already exposed himself. We do not know what he would have done with VI Corps, but we can imagine Lobau would have supported the cavalry attacks, giving it a more combined arms outlook and therefore improving its chances of success. The second reason, is that he lost a great part of the initiative as soon as the prussians were spotted. If he wants to win he needs to avoid the 2 armies joining up, therefore he needs now to beat the allies quickly while delaying the prussians at the same time and then swing his whole army to beat the prussians, not an easy task compared to the original one of just crushing the allies, especially when the guy in front of you is good at defense... One can also imagine that with no prussian threat, the afternoon attacks would have been much better prepared, since the time constraints were gone.
Yes a lot of things have been said about this campaign, but there still seem to be many different opinions from Sibourne seeing the british being instrumental in the victory to Andrew Uffindell who sees Blücher as the one responsible to the strategic victory over Napoleon. I think as well, Napoleon in general and the Waterloo campaign in particular, have always been topics biased by the feelings you have torwards the man... But it is always nice to talk about it!