On the morning of June 15th, at half-past three, the French army
crossed the Belgian frontier.
Disobeying orders, D’Erlon did not set his troops in motion until
half-past four. Receiving no orders, Vandamme did not move at all--not
until the approach of Lobau’s corps warned him that some mistake had
been made. Gérard was ordered to start at three; he did not appear at
the rendezvous until seven.
To increase the ill effect which these delays were making upon the
mind of the suspicious troops, General Bourmont, commander of the head
division of the 4th Corps, went over to the enemy, accompanied by his
staff, some other officers, and an escort of five lancers.
This act of treachery threw the whole of the 4th Corps into confusion,
and it became necessary for Gérard and General Hulot to harangue the
troops to restore their confidence. Two hours were thus lost. Napoleon
had not wished to give Bourmont a command, but had yielded at the
urgent entreaties of Gérard and Labedoyére.
To the credit of Blücher, it must be said that he gave the traitor a
contemptuous reception, and spoke to his staff scornfully of the “cur.”
Between nine and ten o’clock on the morning of the 15th of June the
French reached the Sambre. At Thuin, at Ham, in the woods of Montigny,
at the farm of La Tombe they had struck the Prussian outposts and
driven them, killing, wounding and capturing some 500 of them. Then
there was a fight for the bridge over the Sambre at Marchienne.
Too much time was lost both here and at the bridge of Charleroi. The
cavalry awaited the infantry, and Vandamme, commander of the infantry,
was four hours late. It was not until the Emperor himself appeared on
the scene that the bridge was stormed.
At the bridge of Marchienne there was a fight of two hours, and even
after the bridge had been carried it required several hours for so many
troops to pass so narrow a bridge.
To a civilian it seems strange that no preparation had been made,
beforehand, to throw other bridges over this stream; equally so that
the retreating Prussians left any bridges standing.
Amid the cheers of the inhabitants Napoleon entered Charleroi, a little
after noon, and dismounted, and sat down by the side of the road. At
this point he commanded a full view of the valley of the Sambre.
The troops were on the march. As they passed they recognized the
Emperor, and the wildly enthusiastic cheering of the men drowned the
roll of the drums. Soldiers broke ranks to run and hug the neck of
Desirée, the Emperor’s horse.
And so tired was Napoleon that he fell asleep in the chair, even as he
had slept on the battlefield of Jena.
* * * * *
From Brussels the English would come by the Charleroi road; from
Namur the Prussians would come by the Nivelles road. These highways
cross each other at Quatre Bras, hence the supreme importance of that
position. To seize it was Napoleon’s purpose, and he entrusted the task
to Ney, giving him the order verbally and personally:
“Drive the enemy on the Brussels road and take up your position at
Quatre Bras.”
Having ordered the left wing of his army to Quatre Bras, the Emperor
meant to post his right wing at Sombreff, while he, himself, with his
reserve, should take position at Fluerus, to be ready to act with the
right wing or the left, as circumstances might dictate.
About 10,000 Prussians were behind Gilly, protected in front by the
little stream, Le Grand-Rieux. Grouchy, deceived by the length of the
enemy’s line, estimated their strength at 20,000, and hesitated to
advance. “At most they are 10,000,” said the Emperor, and he ordered
Grouchy to ford the stream and take the Prussians in flank; Vandamme’s
division and Pajol’s cavalry would attack in front.
Then the Emperor left the field to hurry the coming of Vandamme’s
corps. The moment Napoleon was gone, Grouchy and Vandamme began to
waste time, and for two hours they were arranging the details of the
movement. While they were doing so, the Prussians quietly walked off
from the trap.
Enraged at the conduct of his lieutenants, the Emperor, just returned,
ordered Letort to charge with four squadrons of cavalry. Two
battalions of Prussians were overtaken and cut to pieces; the others
escaped into the woods of Solielmont.
It was now the close of the day, and Grouchy wished to drive out of
Fluerus the two battalions of Prussians which occupied it. These were
the positive orders of the Emperor, but Marshal Vandamme refused to
advance any farther, saying that his troops were too tired and that,
at any rate, he would take no orders from a commandant of the cavalry.
As Grouchy could not take Fluerus without the support of infantry, the
village remained untaken, and Napoleon’s plan incomplete.
On the left wing the same failure to obey orders was even more marked.
Instead of advancing upon Quatre Bras, as the Emperor distinctly told
him to do, Ney posted three of his divisions at Gosselies, and tolled
off nothing but the lancers and the chasseurs of the Guard to Quatre
Bras.
The lancers of the Guard had got in sight of Fresnes about half-past
five in the afternoon. This village was occupied by a Nassau battalion
and a battery of horse artillery. They were under the command of Major
Normann, who had been left without any instructions, but on hearing the
sound of cannon toward Gosselies, he had at once divined the supreme
importance of Quatre Bras, and determined to defend it desperately.
Had Ney continued his advance with any considerable portion of his
infantry, the Nassau battalion would have been crushed. As it was, the
small force of the French which had been sent forward was able to drive
Major Normann out of Fresnes and along the Brussels road. In fact a
squadron of the French cavalry entered Quatre Bras where there were
then no English; but fearing to be cut off, did not attempt to hold the
place. Prince Bernard, of Saxe-Weimar, had also acted without orders;
and with the instinct of a soldier had taken the responsibility of
moving his own troops to occupy this important strategical position.
Under him were four Nassau battalions; therefore there were now 4,500
men with artillery to defend Quatre Bras against the 1,700 lancers and
chasseurs which Ney had thrown forward.
The sound of cannon in front caused Marshal Ney to join his vanguard.
Instead of realizing the necessity of ordering up infantry supports and
storming the position of the enemy as he could easily have done, he
made only a few feeble charges against the Nassau infantry, and then
went back to Gosselies for the night. Had he continued to advance with
even one-fourth of the troops which the Emperor had given, he might
have destroyed the entire force of Prince Bernard and of Major Normann
before a single Englishman came within miles of the place.
Nevertheless, the Emperor had substantially gained his point. Almost
without any real fighting, and in spite of the clumsy working of his
great military machine, he now had 124,000 men encamped near the point
of junction between the allied armies, ready to strike either. On the
night of the 15th, when, at Charleroi, Napoleon examined the reports
sent in by Grouchy and Ney, he reached a conclusion that was wrong,
but which, fastening itself on his mind, could never be shaken, and
contributed vastly to his ruin. He believed, judging from the direction
in which the Prussians had retreated, that they were retreating upon
Liege, their natural base of operations, instead of adhering to the
design of so conducting their retreat as to be at all times in reach of
the English.
The various delays of the French, and their failure to advance as
far as the Emperor’s orders had directed, made it possible for the
indefatigable Blücher to bring up a large part of his army, and
instead of retreating on his base,--as Napoleon thought he would
do,--Blücher advanced to Sombreffe to give battle.
Toward morning, in the night of the 15th, the Prussians had evacuated
Fluerus. Grouchy took possession of it, and the Emperor reached it
shortly before noon. Going to the tower of a brick mill, which stood at
the end of Fluerus, Napoleon had the roof breached and a platform made,
upon which he could stand and view the various positions of the enemy.
The willingness of the Prussian commander to fight was partly the
result of Wellington’s diplomacy. The Englishman had been caught
napping, and to secure time to concentrate his badly scattered forces
he had given Blücher a written promise to support him. It was extremely
necessary to Wellington that Blücher should stand between the English
army and the French, and fight them off, until the English could get
themselves together. Besides, if Blücher retreated upon Liege, the
English army would be left alone before Napoleon. In that event it
would have to fight with inferior forces, or fall back on its base of
operations, leaving Brussels to be occupied by the Emperor.
In 1876 there was found in the Prussian archives the letter in which
Wellington encouraged his ally to make a stand. This letter was sent
from the heights north of Fresnes, about two miles south of Quatre
Bras, at half-past ten o’clock in the morning of the 16th. In this
much-debated letter the wily Englishman misrepresents the positions of
his own troops, puts them some hours nearer to the scene of action than
they really were, and assures Blücher of their support if he will stand
and fight. Wellington tells Blücher that he will at least be able to
effect such a powerful diversion in his behalf that Napoleon will not
be able to use against the Prussian more than a moiety of his army.
Lord Wolseley, in his book, “The Decline and Fall of Napoleon,” admits
that Wellington’s statements to Blücher were false, but naively
remarks, “Wellington, an English gentleman of the highest type, was
wholly and absolutely incapable of anything bordering on untruth or
deceit in dealing with his allies.”
Lord Wolseley’s ingenious explanation is that Wellington must have been
deceived “by his inefficient staff.”
Yet the undisputed record is that Wellington himself had issued all
the orders to his scattered troops, a few hours before, and he knew
precisely the distance of each division from the field.
To the “English gentleman of the highest type” it was supremely
necessary that his ally should break the force of the French onset,
delay its advance, and thus give himself time to concentrate his
too-widely scattered troops. To influence Blücher he stated to him what
he _knew_ to be untrue, and made his ally a promise which he _knew_ he
could not keep.