All had been done that could be done--all that it was in his nature to
do. He had equipped two hundred thousand men in arms, and had filled
them with martial fire. He had called back to the service every officer
who would come, saving Augereau, who had betrayed Lyons in 1814,
and Murat, who had joined the Allies. He had courted the liberals,
temporized with the Jacobins, tolerated the royalists, and shut his
eyes to incipient treason. To the Constants and La Fayettes he had
said, “Gentlemen, don’t waste time in debates on constitutional law
while the nation is in danger; unite with me to save her”; but he knew
that his appeal was wasted. To the dangerous traitor Fouché he had
said, “I ought to have you shot”; but he left him minister, and knew
that if battles were lost, Fouché would be the first to plot for the
return of the Bourbons.
He listened to Jacobin songs, appreciated Jacobin strength, and
believed that he could win the fight if he would put on the red bonnet.
But he would not. In Brumaire, 1799, he had said, “If I conquer with
the Jacobins, I would then have to conquer against them.” His opinions
had not changed. If he put on the red cap of the Jacobins, and put guns
into their hands, he might save his own crown; but how about his son?
Democracy once unchained, who would ever bind it again? Thus he would
not nationalize the war--his one chance of success.
With two hundred thousand men, the Emperor, who might have enrolled
a million, turned to face all Europe. The allied kings already had a
million men in arms, and England was supplying $55,000,000 a month to
pay them. In quality, Napoleon had led few better armies than that of
his last campaign; but while the troops were passionately devoted to
the Emperor, they had lost confidence in many of the higher officers,
and went to the front dreading treachery in their leaders.
The Russians and Austrians could not reach the Rhine before July;
but the armies of Blücher and Wellington, about one hundred thousand
each, were already in Belgium. Napoleon could strike at these with
only about one hundred and twenty-five thousand. But as the enemy was
widely scattered, and was not expecting immediate attack, he believed
that he might best open the war by throwing himself between Wellington
and Blücher, preventing their junction, crushing them in detail, and
thus discourage the coalition to such an extent that he might detach at
least some of its members.
Had he waited two weeks longer, he could have taken with him the twelve
thousand troops who were putting down the royalists in La Vendée; but
he could not foresee that the revolt would be quelled so soon. Other
errors, however, were committed, for which he alone was responsible.
He left his best officer, Davoust, in Paris, instead of employing him
in the field. Had Davoust been put in Grouchy’s place, the result of
the campaign would almost certainly have been different. Again, he had
given no confidence to Ney, had not even notified the marshal whether
he was to be employed. It was so late when Ney got his orders that the
campaign had already opened, and the fighting begun before he could
arrive from Paris, without his horses, and accompanied by a single
aide-de-camp.
Another thing: the Emperor gave the command of his right wing,
which was to act independently, to an officer untried in that
capacity,--Grouchy; and he did it over the protest of Soult and other
general officers, who warned him that Grouchy was not the man for such
a place.
A gross blunder was made as to Bourmont. This man had been one of the
Chouan chiefs of 1800, to whom Napoleon extended clemency. Pardoned,
then, by the First Consul, he had afterwards been implicated in
the Georges conspiracy, and had fled to Portugal. Junot picked him
up there, took a fancy to him, got him employed; and the man being
a good officer, won rapid promotion. In 1814 he had been one of
the traitors, and had gone over to the Bourbons. In 1815 he fell
in with the Napoleonic tide, and professed the zeal of a sincere
imperialist. Seeking employment in the army, he was contemptuously
refused by Davoust, who told him that he must perform quarantine. Most
unfortunately, Labédoyère and Gérard had faith in Bourmont, and the
matter was carried to the Emperor. To Labédoyère, Napoleon could refuse
nothing, and Bourmont was appointed to the command of one of the finest
divisions.
Concentrating his army swiftly, Napoleon was near Charleroi, on the
evening of June 14, 1815, and next day crossed the Sambre.
At daybreak, on the morning of the 15th, General Bourmont, two officers
of his staff, and eight soldiers deserted. As Bourmont had been
present at the Council of War, he knew the secrets of the French, and
these he carried with him to the Allies. This treason, on the eve
of battle, demoralized, for a time, the entire division, and had a
depressing effect throughout the army.
Another “deplorable mischance” happened on this morning. An order to
Vandamme to advance was sent by a single courier, whose leg was broken
by a fall of his horse. The order was not delivered, Vandamme did not
make the movement, and Napoleon’s manœuvre, by which he had expected to
cut off and capture the Prussian corps of Ziethen, failed.
Blücher, acting much more promptly than Wellington, concentrated his
army at Fleurus, from which he retired on Ligny. Wellington and many
of his officers were at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball, in Brussels,
on the night of June 15, when Napoleon’s guns were heard. At eleven
o’clock a despatch arrived which told of the French capture of
Charleroi and advance upon Brussels. Although Wellington knew that
Napoleon’s army was in motion, he was taken by surprise at the nearness
of his approach. Withdrawing into a private room with the Duke of
Richmond, he called for a map, saying, “That damned rascal Bonaparte
has humbugged me!”
From midnight on to dawn, the English army was hurrying to the front,
to concentrate and fight. Without waiting for Wellington or his orders,
Prince Bernard, of Saxe-Wiemar, had already occupied Quatre-Bras. When
Wellington arrived there, June 16, he passed on at once to a conference
with Blücher, to whom he had written a letter which Blücher had
received at noon. In this letter, Wellington had seemed to promise aid
to Blücher if he would fight at Ligny,--mentioning the positions which
the troops of the Anglo-Belgian army then occupied.
The curious feature of the case is that Wellington’s troops were
not where his letter said they were, and that he remarked to one of
his staff as he was leaving Blücher, “If he fights here, he will be
damnably whipped.”
This letter in which Wellington promised to help Blücher only came to
light in 1876, and Lord Wolseley says that Wellington, “an English
gentleman of the highest type, wholly and absolutely incapable of
anything bordering on untruth or deceit, must have been misled by
his inefficient staff.” Perhaps so. But it looks marvellously like a
case where the English gentleman of the highest type had been caught
napping by “that damned rascal Bonaparte,” and wanted “old Blücher” to
fight, in order that the British army might have time to concentrate.
Blücher’s chief of staff, Gneisenau, held this view at the time, and
died in that belief. So little did the opening events of the campaign
depend upon any generalship of Wellington, that some of his officers
had to violate his orders before they could reach the positions which
it was absolutely necessary they should occupy.
It was near five o’clock on the evening of June 15 that Ney, who had
come from Paris to Beaumont in a post-chaise, and from Beaumont had
travelled to Avesnes in a peasant’s cart, bought horses from Marshal
Mortier. At that late hour he was given command of the left wing of
the French army, with verbal orders from Napoleon himself. Just what
these orders were is a matter of dispute. The partisans of Ney contend
that the Emperor said, “Go and drive back the enemy.” Napoleon and
his sympathizers allege that the orders were to seize Quatre-Bras,
and hold it. That the Emperor meant to give such orders, there can
hardly be a doubt. On his way to Quatre-Bras, Ney encountered some
Nassau troops at Frasnes, who fell back at once. Instead of advancing
upon Quatre-Bras, Ney halted some two or three miles short of it,
and reported to Napoleon for further orders. A small force of French
cavalry actually entered Quatre-Bras, and then retired.
The Emperor, worn out with fatigue, and suffering from urinary,
hemorrhoidal, and other ailments, had gone back to Charleroi to sleep
and rest.
For reasons not fully explained, it was nine o’clock on the morning
of the 16th before Ney was ordered positively to advance and capture
Quatre-Bras. Had he moved promptly, he could even then have taken the
place, for it was held by a few thousand Nassauers only. It was not
until 2 P.M. that Ney attacked. A still greater delay marked Napoleon’s
own movements. It was between two and three o’clock in the evening
before he struck the Prussians at Ligny.
Here, then, were two battles raging on the same day only a few miles
apart. Ney was making a desperate onset at Quatre-Bras, which he
could easily have taken on the 15th, or early on the 16th, but which
was now held by ever increasing numbers of the enemy. And Napoleon
was straining every nerve to defeat the Prussians, who had profited
enormously by his delays.
It was at this crisis of his fortunes that he was tantalized by one of
the most remarkable of military mishaps. A corps of twenty thousand
men under D’Erlon, intended to act with Ney, was on its march to
Quatre-Bras, when a staff-officer, Colonel de Forbin-Janson, delivered
a pencilled order from Napoleon to D’Erlon, which was totally
misconstrued, and which led D’Erlon to march to the French left, when
he should have struck the Prussians cross-wise, while the Emperor
pressed them in front. D’Erlon set out, came in sight of Ligny, and
created consternation among the French, who thought it a Prussian
reënforcement. Napoleon, not expecting troops on his left, was forced
to suspend his movements until he could ascertain the facts, thus
losing precious time. Strange to say, this French corps, now that it
was on the field, was not used at Ligny, but was countermanded by Ney,
whom Forbin-Janson should have informed of the Emperor’s order, and was
marched back to Quatre-Bras, where it arrived too late to help Ney. Had
it gone into action at either place, its aid must have been decisive.
As it was, these twenty thousand troops were as completely lost to the
French “as though the earth had swallowed them up.”
Night found the Prussians beaten; and a vigorous pursuit, such
as Murat, or La Salle, or Bessières could have made, might have
disorganized them for the campaign. But there was no pursuit. They
rallied at their leisure, and the French did not even know next day
what route their retreat had taken.
After the battle Napoleon was again exhausted, and nothing was done
to improve the victory. The Emperor slept, and the army waited.
Next morning at seven his generals stood around, idle, grumbling,
discouraged. Vandamme was saying: “Gentlemen, the Napoleon of the
Italian campaign no longer lives. Our victory of yesterday will lead to
nothing. You will see.”
Mr. Houssaye contends that the Emperor was not in poor condition,
physically or mentally; and he enumerates facts to prove what he says.
It all depends upon what his standard of comparison is. Does he compare
the French general with the English chief,--the one launching a host of
men so swiftly and surely that they were upon the enemy before it was
known that they had moved; and the other idling in a ballroom, issuing
late and confused orders, naming the wrong place for concentration, and
saved only by the initiative of Prince Bernard, the disobedience of
his own officers, and the bad luck which dogged the movements of the
French? If you compare Napoleon to Wellington, one must say that the
former was _not_ in poor condition. But if we compare the Bonaparte of
1815 with Blücher, the admission must be made that in sustained energy
and unwavering tenacity of purpose, the German far exceeded his great
antagonist. And if we contrast the Bonaparte of 1815 with the Bonaparte
of 1796, we at once exclaim with Vandamme,--“The Napoleon we knew in
Italy no longer lives.”
Mr. Houssaye himself states that late in the morning of June 17 the
Emperor did not know what had taken place at Quatre-Bras the day
before; did not know the true situation there; did not know that
by swiftly moving to the aid of Ney he would envelop Wellington
with overwhelming numbers and crush him! Even the Napoleon of 1814
would have missed no such chance as that. When the facts at length
became known to him he realized what he had lost, dashed on with the
vanguard to Quatre-Bras, and led the headlong pursuit of the English
rear-guard--but it was too late. Wellington was well on his way to Mont
St. Jean, and Lord Uxbridge was desperately hurrying the last of the
British cavalry out of the danger, with his “Gallop! for God’s sake
gallop, or you will be captured!”
Furthermore, Mr. Houssaye relates an incident which corroborates
Carnot, Pasquier, and others who say that the Emperor was no longer
able to endure prolonged labor:--
“It was now (June 14) a little past noon. The Emperor, amid the cheers
of the inhabitants, passed through Charleroi, and halted at the foot of
the crumbling glacis, near the little public-house called La Belle-Vue.
He got off his horse, sent for a chair, and sat down by the side of
the road. The troops defiled past him, cheering him lustily as they
marched, their shouts deadening the roll of the drums and the shrill
calls of the bugles. The enthusiasm of the troops bordered on frenzy;
they broke ranks to embrace the horse of their Emperor.”
And what of Napoleon amid this splendid ovation--an ovation spontaneous
and thrilling like that of the eve of Austerlitz?
He sat there dozing, the cheers of the troops, which deadened churns
and bugles, being powerless to rouse him! It was only noon, he had
only been in the saddle half a day--was _this_ the man of Eckmühl, of
Friedland, of Wagram? Was _this_ the chief who used to ride and ride
till horse after horse fell in its tracks?
Turn from this dozing chief, exhausted by half a day’s work, and look
at old Blücher. At the age of seventy-three, he is full of pluck and
dash and persistence. He hurries up his divisions to fight as soon as
he knows that the French are moving. He is in the thick of the combat
at Ligny. He heads charges like a common hussar. His horse is shot and
he falls under the feet of rushing squadrons, is drawn out almost
dead and borne off the field unconscious. Bruised and battered, the
old man no sooner “comes to himself” than he is up again, beating down
the cautious counsels of his chief-of-staff, and determined to go to
the help of Wellington,--who had not come to _his_ help,--although the
chief-of-staff, Gneisenau, believing Wellington to be a “master knave,”
wished the Prussians to leave the English to take care of themselves at
Waterloo, as the Prussians had been left to take care of _themselves_
at Ligny. And on the ever memorable 18th, while Napoleon will be
waiting, hour by hour, for the ground to dry so that he can move his
artillery, old Blücher will be coming as fast as he can hurry his
troops through the mud, as fast as he can drag _his_ artillery; and the
net result will be that, while miry ground stops the great Napoleon, it
does not stop the impetuous and indomitable Blücher.