I don’t have much to say on this chapter beyond what I said about the last. We haver a detailing of the losses and challenges during the period of time that day that were dominated by “the fog of” war - roughly from 11:30 AM or so to 4:00 PM.
Hugo gives the reasoning that Napoleon, being a big picture strategist with a view toward the end, wasn’t too concerned with the way things unfolded earlier, and around 4 he saw his opening and took it - it seemed like now was the time to charge the field.
There are situations where thinking longterm and not being deterred by short term losses surely makes sense. I don’t think that’s the lesson here. Rather, if we build on flawed information, we can’t end up with a sound result. In this case we know that Napoleon was missing vital information, and an “unknown unknown” was about to destroy his plans.