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WATERLOO
[Illustration]
WATERLOO
By HILAIRE BELLOC
LONDON
STEPHEN SWIFT AND CO., LTD.
16 KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN
WEST CENTRAL
MCMXII
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE POLITICAL OBJECT AND EFFECT OF THE
WATERLOO CAMPAIGN 9
II. THE PRELIMINARIES: NAPOLEON'S ADVANCE
ACROSS THE SAMBRE 24
III. THE DECISIVE DAY: FRIDAY, THE 16TH OF JUNE--
LIGNY 63
QUATRE-BRAS 84
IV. THE ALLIED RETREAT AND FRENCH ADVANCE UPON
WATERLOO AND WAVRE 129
V. THE ACTION 158
WATERLOO
I
THE POLITICAL OBJECT AND EFFECT OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN
It must continually be insisted upon in military history, that general
actions, however decisive, are but the functions of campaigns; and that
campaigns, in their turn, are but the functions of the political energies
of the governments whose armies are engaged.
The object of a campaign is invariably a political object, and all its
military effort is, or should be, subsidiary to that political object.
One human community desires to impose upon the future a political
condition which another human community rejects; or each is attempting to
impose upon the future, conditions irreconcilable one with the other.
Until we know what those conditions are, or what is the political
objective of each opponent, we cannot decide upon the success of a
campaign, nor give it its true position in history.
Thus, to take the simplest and crudest case, a nation or its government
determines to annex the territory of a neighbour; that is, to subject a
neighbouring community to the laws of the conqueror. That neighbouring
community and its government, if they are so old-fashioned as to prefer
freedom, will resist by force of arms, and there will follow what is
called a "campaign" (a term derived from the French, and signifying a
countryside: for countrysides are the theatres of wars). In this campaign
the political object of the attempted conquest on the one hand, and of
resistance to it on the other, are the issue. The military aspect of the
campaign is subsidiary to its political objects, and we judge of its
success or failure not in military but in political terms.
The prime military object of a general is to "annihilate" the armed force
of his opponents. He may do this by breaking up their organisation and
dispersing them, or by compelling the surrender of their arms. He may
achieve success in this purely military object in any degree. But if, as
an end and consequence of his military success, the political object be
not achieved--if, for instance, in the particular case we are considering,
the neighbouring community does not in the future obey laws dictated to it
by the conqueror, but remains autonomous--then the campaign has failed.
Such considerations are, I repeat, the very foundation of military
history; and throughout this Series they will be insisted upon as the
light in which alone military history can be understood.
It is further true that not only may a campaign be successful in the
military sense, and yet in the largest historical sense be a failure, but,
quite evidently, the actions in a campaign may each be successful and yet
the campaign a failure; or each action may, on the whole, fail, and yet
that campaign be a success. As the old formulae go, "You can win every
battle and lose your campaign." And, again, "A great general does not aim
at winning battles, but at winning his campaign." An action results from
the contact of the opposing forces, and from the necessity in which they
find themselves, after such contact, of attempting the one to disorganise
or to capture the other. And in the greater part actions are only
"accepted," as the phrase goes, by either party, because each party
regards the action as presenting opportunities for his own success.
A campaign can perfectly well be conceived in which an opponent,
consciously inferior in the field, will avoid action throughout, and by
such a plan can actually win the campaign in the end. Historical instances
of this, though rare, exist. And there have even been campaigns where,
after a great action disastrous to one side, that side has yet been able
to keep up a broken resistance sufficiently lengthy and exhausting to
baulk the conqueror of his political object in the end.
In a word, it is the business of the serious student in military history
to reverse the popular and dramatic conception of war, to neglect the
brilliance and local interest of a battle for the larger view of the whole
operations; and, again, to remember that these operations are not an end
in themselves, but are only designed to serve the political plan of the
government which has commanded them.
* * * * *
Judged in this true light, we may establish the following conclusions
with regard to the battle of Waterloo.
First, the battle of Waterloo was a decisive action, the result of which
was a complete military success for the Allies in the campaign they had
undertaken, and a complete military defeat for Napoleon, who had opposed
them.
This complete military success of the Allies' campaign was, again,
equivalent to a success in their immediate political object, which was the
overthrow of Napoleon's personal power, the re-establishment of the
Bourbons upon the French throne, and the restoration of those traditions
and ideals of government which had been common to Europe before the
outbreak of the French Revolution twenty-four years before.
Had the effect of this battle and that campaign been permanent, one could
speak of their success as complete; but when we discuss that largest issue
of all, to wit, whether the short campaign which Waterloo so decisively
concluded really effected its object, considering that that object was the
permanent destruction of the revolutionary effort and the permanent
re-establishment of the old state of affairs in Europe, we are compelled
to arrive at a very different conclusion: a conclusion which will vary
with the varying judgment of men, and one which cannot be final, because
the drama is not yet played out; but a conclusion which, in the eyes of
all, singularly modifies the effect of the campaign of Waterloo.
It is obvious, at the first glance we take of European history during,
say, the lifetime of a man who should have been a boy in Waterloo year,
that the general political object of the revolutionary and Napoleonic
armies was not reversed at Waterloo. It was ultimately established. The
war had been successfully maintained during too long a period for the
uprooting of the political conditions which the French had attempted to
impose upon Europe. Again, those conditions were sufficiently sympathetic
to the European mind at the time to develop generously, and to grow in
spite of all attempted restriction. And we discover, as a fact, democratic
institutions, democratic machinery at least, spreading rapidly again after
their defeat at Waterloo, and partially victorious, first in France and
later elsewhere, within a very few years of that action.
The same is true of certain secondary results of the prolonged
revolutionary and Napoleonic campaigns. Nationality predominated over the
old idea of a monarch governing his various "peoples," and the whole
history of the nineteenth century was a gradual vindication of the
principle of nationality. A similar fate awaited institutions bound up
with the French revolutionary effort: a wide and continually expressed
suffrage, the arming of whole nations in defence of their independence,
the ordering of political life upon the new plan, down even to the details
of the revolutionary weights and measures (the metre, the gramme,
etc.)--these succeeded and in effect triumphed over the arrangements which
that older society had fought to restore.
On the other hand, the advance of all this was much slower, much more
disturbed, much less complete, than it would have been had Napoleon not
failed in Russia, suffered his decisive defeat at Leipzig, and fallen for
ever upon that famous field of Waterloo; and one particular
characteristic, namely, the imposition of all these things upon Europe by
the will of a government at Paris, wholly disappeared.
We may sum up, then, and say that the political effect of the battle of
Waterloo and its campaign was an immediate success for the Allies: that
their ultimate success the history of the nineteenth century has reversed;
but that the victory of Waterloo modified, retarded, and perhaps distorted
in a permanent fashion the establishment of those conceptions of society
and government which the Revolution, and Napoleon as its soldier, had set
out to establish.
* * * * *
There is a side question attached to all this, with which I shall
conclude, because it forms the best introduction to what is to follow:
that question is,--"Would Napoleon have ultimately succeeded even if he
had triumphed instead of fallen upon the 18th of June 1815?" In other
words, was Waterloo one of these battles the winning or losing of which by
_either_ side, meant a corresponding decisive result to that side? Had
Wellington's command broken at Waterloo before the arrival of Blucher,
would Napoleon's consequent victory have meant as much to _him_ as his
defeat actually meant to the allies?
The answer of history to this question is, No. Even had Napoleon won on
that day he would have lost in the long run.
The date to which we must affix the reverse of Napoleon's effort is not
the 18th of June 1815, but the 19th of October 1812, when the Grand Army
began its retreat from Moscow; and the political decision, his failure in
which was the origin of his fall, was not the decision taken in June 1815
to advance against the Allies in Belgium, but the decision taken in May
1812 to advance into the vast spaces of Russia. The decisive action which
the largest view of history will record in centuries to come as the defeat
which ruined Napoleon took place, not south of Brussels, but near the town
of Leipzig, two years before. From the last moment of that three days'
battle (again the 19th of October, precisely a twelvemonth after the
retreat from Moscow had begun), Napoleon and the French armies are
continually falling back. Upon the 4th of April in the following year
Napoleon abdicated; and exactly a month later, on the 4th of May, he was
imprisoned, under the show of local sovereignty, in the island of Elba.
It was upon the 1st of March 1815 that, having escaped from that island,
he landed upon the southern coast of France. There followed the doomed
attempt to save somewhat of the Revolution and the Napoleonic scheme,
which is known to history as the "hundred days." Even that attempt would
have been impossible had not the greater part of the commanders of units
in the French army, that is, of the colonels of regiments, abandoned the
Bourbon government, which had been restored at Paris, and decided to
support Napoleon.
But even so, the experiment was hazardous in the extreme. Had the
surrounding governments which had witnessed and triumphed over his fall
permitted him, as he desired, to govern France in peace, and France alone,
this small part of the revolutionary plan might have been saved from the
general wreck of its fortunes and of his. But such an hypothesis is
fantastic. There could be and there was no chance that these great
governments, now fully armed, and with all their organised hosts prepared
and filled with the memory of recent victory, would permit the restoration
of democratic government in that France which had been the centre and
outset of the vast movement they had determined to destroy. Further,
though Napoleon had behind him the majority, he had not the united mass of
the French people. An ordered peace following upon victory would have
given him such a support; after his recent crushing defeat it was lacking.
It was especially true that the great chiefs of the army were doubtful.
His own generals rejoined him, some with enthusiasm, more with doubt,
while a few betrayed him early in the process of his attempted
restoration.
It is impossible to believe that under such circumstances Napoleon could
have successfully met Europe in arms. The military resources of the French
people, though not exhausted, were reaching their term. New levies of men
yielded a material far inferior to the conscripts of earlier years; and
when the Emperor estimated 800,000 men as the force which he required for
his effort, it was but the calculation of despair. Eight hundred thousand
men: even had they been the harvest of a long peace, the whole armed
nation, vigorous in health and fresh for a prolonged contest, would not
have been sufficient. The combined Powers had actually under arms a number
as great as that, and inexhaustible reserves upon which to draw. A quarter
of a million stood ready in the Netherlands, another quarter of a million
could march from Austria to cross the Rhine. North Italy had actually
present against him 70,000 men; and Russia, which had a similarly active
and ready force of 170,000, could increase that host almost indefinitely
from her enormous body of population.
But, so far from 800,000 men, Napoleon found to his command not one
quarter of that number armed and ready for war. Though Napoleon fell back
upon that desperate resource of a starved army, the inclusion of militia;
though he swept into his net the whole youth of that year, and accepted
conscripts almost without regard to physical capacity; though he went so
far as to put the sailors upon shore to help him in his effort, and
counted in his effectives the police, the customs officials, and, as one
may say, every uniformed man, he was compelled, even after two and a half
months of effort, to consider his ready force as less than 300,000, indeed
only just over 290,000.
There was behind this, it is true, a reserve of irregulars such as I have
described, but the spirit furnishing those irregulars was uncertain, and
the yield of them patchy and heterogeneous. Perhaps a quarter of the
country responded readily to the appeal which was to call up a national
militia. But even upon the eve of the Waterloo campaign there were
departments, such as the Orne, which had not compelled five per cent. of
those called to join the colours, such as the Pas de Calais and the Gers,
which had not furnished eight per cent., and at the very last moment, of
every twenty-five men called, not fifteen had come.
Add to this that Napoleon must strike at once or not at all, and it will
readily be seen how desperate his situation was. His great chiefs of the
higher command were not united in his service, the issue was doubtful, and
to join Napoleon was to be a rebel should he fail,--was to be a rebel,
that is, in case of a very probable event. The marvel is that so many of
the leading men who had anything to lose undertook the chances at all.
Finally, even of the total force available to him at that early moment
when he was compelled to strike, Napoleon could strike with but a
fraction. Less than half of the men available could he gather to deliver
this decisive blow; and that blow, be it remembered, he could deliver at
but one of the various hosts which were preparing to advance against him.
He was thus handicapped by two things: first, the necessity under which he
believed himself to be of leaving considerable numbers to watch the
frontiers. Secondly, and most important, the limitations imposed upon him
by his lack of provision. With every effort, he could not fully arm and
equip and munition a larger force than that which he gathered in early
June for his last desperate throw; and the body upon the immediate and
decisive success of which everything depended numbered but 124,000 men.
With this force Napoleon proceeded to attack the Allies in the
Netherlands. _There_ was a belt of French-speaking population. _There_ was
that body of the Allies which lay nearest to his hand, and over which, if
he were but victorious, his victory would have its fullest effect. _There_
were the troops under Wellington, a defeat of which would mean the cutting
off of England, the financier of the Allies, from the Continent. _There_
was present a population many elements of which sympathised with him and
with the French revolutionary effort. Finally, the allied force in Belgium
was the least homogeneous of the forces with which he would have to deal
in the long succession of struggle from which even a success at this
moment would not spare him.
From all these causes combined, and for the further reason that Paris was
most immediately threatened from this neighbouring Belgian frontier, it
was upon that frontier that Napoleon determined to cast his spear. It was
upon the 5th of June that the first order was sent out for the
concentration of this army for the invasion of Belgium.
In ten days the 124,000 men, with their 370 guns, were massed upon the
line between Maubeuge and Philippeville, immediately upon the frontier,
and ready to cross it. The way in which the frontier was passed and the
river Sambre crossed before the first actions took place form between them
the preliminaries of the campaign, and must be the subject of my next
section.
II
THE PRELIMINARIES: NAPOLEON'S ADVANCE ACROSS THE SAMBRE
To understand the battle of Waterloo it is necessary, more perhaps than in
the case of any other great decisive action, to read it strategically:
that is, to regard the final struggle of Sunday the 18th of June as only
the climax of certain general movements, the first phase of which was the
concentration of the French Army of the North, and the second the passage
of the Sambre river and the attack. This second phase covered four days in
time, and in space an advance of nearly forty miles.
There is a sense, of course, in which it is true of every battle that its
result is closely connected with the strategy which led up to its tactical
features: how the opposing forces arrived upon the field, in what
condition, and in what disposition and at what time, with what advantage
or disadvantage, is always necessarily connected with the history of the
campaign rather than of the individual action; but, as we saw in the case
of Blenheim, and as might be exemplified from a hundred other cases, the
greater part of battles can be understood by following the tactical
dispositions upon the field. They are won or lost, in the main, according
to those dispositions.
With Waterloo it was not so. Waterloo was lost by Napoleon, won by the
Allies, _not_ mainly on account of tactical movements upon the field
itself, but mainly on account of what had happened in the course of the
advance of the French army to that field. In other words, the military
character of that great decisive action is always missed by those who have
read it isolated from the movements immediately preceding it.
Napoleon, determining to strike at Belgium under the political
circumstances we have already seen, was attacking forces about double his
own.
He was like one man coming up rapidly and almost unexpectedly to attack
two: but hoping if possible to deal successively and singly with either
opponent.
His doubtful chance of success in such a hazard obviously lay in his being
able to attack each enemy separately: that is, to engage first one before
the second came to his aid; then the second; and thus to defeat each in
turn. The chance of victory under such circumstances is slight. It
presupposes the surprise of the two allied adversaries by their single
opponent, and the defeat of one so quickly that the other cannot come to
his aid till all is over. But no other avenue of victory is open to a man
fighting enemies of double his numerical strength; at least under
conditions where armament, material, and racial type are much the same
upon either side.
The possibility of dealing thus with his enemy Napoleon thought possible,
and thought it possible from two factors in the situation before him.
The first factor was that the allied army, seeing its great numbers, the
comparatively small accumulation of supplies which it could yet command,
the great length of frontier which it had to watch, was spread out in a
great number of cantonments, the whole stretch of which was no less than
one hundred miles in length, from Liege upon the east or left to Tournay
upon the west or right.
The second factor which gave Napoleon his chance was that this long line
depended for its supply, its orders, its line of retreat upon two separate
and opposite bases.
The left or eastern half, formed mainly of Prussian subjects, and acting
under BLUCHER, had arrived from the east, looked for safety in case of
defeat to a retreat towards the Rhine, obtained its supplies from that
direction, and in general was fed from the _east_ along those
communications, continual activity along which are as necessary to the
life of an army as the uninterrupted working of the air-tube is necessary
to the life of a diver.
The western or right-hand part of the line, Dutch, German, Belgian, and
British, acting under WELLINGTON, depended, upon the contrary, upon the
North Sea, and upon communication across that sea with England. That is,
it drew its supplies and the necessaries of its existence from the _west_,
the opposite and contrary direction from that to which the Prussian half
of the Allies were looking for theirs. The effect of this upon the
campaign is at once simple to perceive and of capital importance in
Napoleon's plan.
Wellington and Blucher did not, under the circumstances, oppose to
Napoleon a single body drawing its life from one stream of communications.
They did not in combination command a force defending one goal; they
commanded two forces defending two goals. The thorough defeat of one
would throw it back away from the other if the attack were delivered at
the point where the two just joined hands; and the English[1] or western
half under Wellington was bound to movements actually contrary to the
Prussian or eastern half under Blucher in case either were defeated before
the other could come to its aid.
Napoleon, then, in his rapid advance upon Belgium, was a man conducting a
column against a line. He was conducting that column against one special
point, the point of junction between two disparate halves of an opposing
line. He advanced therefore upon a narrow front perpendicular to, and
aimed at the centre of, the long scattered cordon of his double enemy,
which cordon it was his business if possible to divide just where the
western end of one half touched the eastern end of the other. He designed
to fight in detail the first portion he could engage, then to turn upon
the other, and thus to defeat both singly and in turn.
I will put this strategical position before the reader in the shape of an
English parallel in order to make it the plainer, and I will then, by the
aid of sketch maps, show how the Allies actually lay upon the Belgian
frontier at the moment when Napoleon delivered his attack upon it.
Imagine near a quarter million of men spread out in a line of separate
cantonments from Windsor at one extremity to Bristol at the other; and
suppose that the eastern half of this line from Windsor to as far west as
Wallingford is depending for its supplies and its communications upon the
river Thames and its road system, and is prepared in case of defeat to
fall back, down the valley of that stream towards London.
On the other hand, imagine that the western half from Swindon to Bristol
is receiving its supplies from the Severn and the Bristol Channel, and
must in case of defeat fall back westward upon that line.
Now, suppose an invading column rather more than 120,000 strong to be
advancing from the south against this line, but prepared to strike up from
almost any point on the Channel. It strikes, as a fact, from Southampton,
and marches rapidly north by Winchester and Newbury. By the time it has
reached Newbury, the eastern half of the opposing line, that between
Wallingford and Windsor, has concentrated to meet it, but is defeated in
the neighbourhood of that town.
Such a battle at Newbury would correspond to the battle at Ligny (let it
be fought upon a Friday). Meanwhile, the western half, hurrying up in aid,
has failed to effect a junction before the eastern half was defeated,
comes up too late above Newbury, and finding it is too late, retires upon
Abingdon. The victorious invader pursues them, and at noon on the second
day engages them in a long line which they hold in front of Abingdon.
If he has only to deal in front of Abingdon with this second or western
half, which hurried up too late to help the defeated eastern half, he has
very fair chances of success. He is slightly superior numerically; he has,
upon the whole, better troops and he has more guns. But the eastern half
of the defending army, which has been beaten at Newbury, though beaten,
was neither destroyed nor dispersed, nor thrust very far back from the
line of operations. It has retreated to Wallingford, that is towards the
north, parallel to the retreat of the western half; and a few hours after
this western half is engaged in battle with the invader in front of
Abingdon, the eastern half appears upon that invader's right flank, joins
forces with the line of the defenders at Abingdon, and thus brings not
only a crushing superiority of numbers upon the field against the invader,
but also brings it up in such a manner that he is compelled to fight upon
two fronts at once. He is, of course, destroyed by such a combination, and
his army routed and dispersed. An action of this sort fought at Abingdon
would correspond to the action which was fought upon the field of
Waterloo, supposing, of course, for the purpose of this rough parallel, an
open countryside without the obstacle of the river.
The actual positions of the two combined commands, the command of Blucher
and the command of Wellington, which between them held the long line
between Tournay and Liege, will be grasped from the sketch map upon the
next page.
The reader who would grasp the campaign in the short compass of such an
essay as this had best consider the numbers and the positions in a form
not too detailed, and busy himself with a picture which, though accurate,
shall be general.
Let him, then, consider the whole line between Liege and Tournay to
consist of the two halves already presented: a western half, which we
will call the Duke of Wellington's, and an eastern half, which we will
call Blucher's: of these two the Duke of Wellington was
Commander-in-chief.
[Illustration]
Next, note the numbers of each and their disposition. The mixed force
under the Duke of Wellington was somewhat over 100,000 men, with just over
200 guns.[2] They consisted in two corps and a reserve. The first corps
was under the Prince of Orange, and was mainly composed of men from the
Netherlands. Its headquarters were at Braine le Comte. The second corps
was under Lord Hill, and contained the mass of the British troops present.
Its headquarters were at Ath. These two between them amounted to about
half of Wellington's command, and we find them scattered in cantonments at
Oudenarde, at Ath, at Enghien, at Soignies, at Nivelles, at Roeulx, at
Braine le Comte, at Hal. A reserve corps under the Duke's own command was
stationed at Brussels, and amounted to more than one-fifth, but less than
one-quarter, of the whole force. The remaining quarter and a little more
is accounted for by scattered cavalry (mainly in posts upon the river
Dender), by the learned arms, gunners and sappers, distributed throughout
the army, and by troops which were occupying garrisons--in numbers
amounting to rather more than ten per cent. of the force.
The eastern Prussian or left half of the line was, as is apparent in the
preceding map, somewhat larger. It had a quarter more men and half as many
guns again as that under the Duke of Wellington, and it was organised into
four army corps, whose headquarters were respectively Charleroi, Namur,
Ciney, and Liege.
The whole line, therefore, which was waiting the advance of Napoleon, was
not quite two and a third hundred thousand men, with rather more than 500
guns. Of this grand total of the two halves, Wellington's and Blucher's
combined, about eighteen per cent. came from the British Islands, and of
that eighteen per cent., again, a very large proportion--exactly how large
it is impossible to determine--were Irish.
Now let us turn to the army which Napoleon was leading against this line
of Wellington and Blucher. It was just under one hundred and a quarter
thousand men strong, that is, just over half the total number of its
opponents. It had, however, a heavier proportion of guns, which were
two-thirds as numerous as those it had to meet.
This "Army of the North" was organised in seven great bodies, unequal in
size, but each a unit averaging seventeen odd thousand men. These seven
great bodies were the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th Army Corps, the 6th Army Corps,
the Imperial Guard, and the reserve cavalry under Grouchy.
The concentration of this army began, as I said in a previous section,
upon the 5th of June, and was effected with a rapidity and order which are
rightly regarded as a model by all writers upon military science.
The French troops, when the order for concentration was given, stretched
westward as far as Lille, eastward as far as Metz, southward as far as
Paris, in the neighbourhood of which town was the Imperial Guard. The
actual marching of the various units occupied a week. Napoleon was at the
front on the night of the 13th of June; the whole army was upon the 14th
drawn up upon a line stretched from Maubeuge to Philippeville, and the
attack was ready to begin.
The concentration had been effected with singular secrecy, as well as
with the promptitude and accuracy we have noted; and though the common
opinion of Wellington and Blucher, that Napoleon had no intention of
attacking, reposed upon sound general judgment--for the hazard Napoleon
was playing in this game of one against two was extreme,--nevertheless it
is remarkable that both of these great commanders should have been so
singularly ignorant of the impending blow. Napoleon himself was actually
over the frontier at the moment when Wellington was writing at his ease
that he intended to take the offensive at the end of the month, and
Blucher, a few days earlier, had expressed the opinion that he might be
kept inactive for a whole year, since Bonaparte had no intention of
attacking.
By the evening of Wednesday, June the 14th, all was ready for the advance,
which was ordered for the next morning.
It would but confuse the general reader to attempt to carry with him
through this short account the name and character of each commander, but
it is essential to remember one at least--the name of _Erlon_; and he
should also remember that the corps which Erlon commanded was the _First_
Corps; for, as we shall see, upon Erlon's wanderings with this First
Corps depended the unsatisfactory termination of Ligny, and the subsequent
intervention of the Prussians at Waterloo, which decided that action.
It is also of little moment for the purpose of this to retain the names of
the places which were the headquarters of each of these corps before the
advance began. It is alone important to the reader that he should have a
clear picture of the order in which this advance took place, for thus only
will he understand both where it struck, and why, with all its rapidity,
it suffered from certain shocks or jerks.
Napoleon's advance was upon three parallel lines and in three main bodies.
The left or westernmost consisted of the First and Second Corps d'Armee;
the centre, of the Imperial Guard, together with the Third and Sixth
Corps. The third or right consisted of the Fourth Corps alone, with a
division of cavalry. These three bodies, when the night of Wednesday the
14th of June fell, lay, the first at Sorle and Leer; the second at
Beaumont, and upon the road that runs through it to Charleroi; the third
at Philippeville.
It is at this stage advisable to consider why Napoleon had chosen the
crossing of the Sambre at Charleroi and the sites immediately to the north
on the left bank of that river as the point where he would strike at the
long line of the Allies.
Many considerations converged to impose this line of advance upon
Napoleon. In the first place, it was his task to cut the line of the
Allies in two at the point where the extremity of one army, the Prussian,
touched upon the extremity of the other, that of the Duke of Wellington.
This point lay due north of the river-crossing he had chosen.
Again, the main road to Brussels was barred by the fortress of Mons,
which, though not formidable, had been put in some sort of state of
defence.
Again, as a glance at the accompanying map will show, the Prussian half of
the allied line was drawn somewhat in front of the other half; and if
Napoleon were to attack the enemy in detail, he must strike at the
Prussians first. Finally, the line Maubeuge-Philippeville, upon which he
concentrated his front, was, upon the whole, the most central position in
the long line of his frontier troops, which stretched from Metz to the
neighbourhood of the Straits of Dover. Being the most central point, not
only with regard to these two extremities, but also with regard to
distant Paris, it was the point upon which his concentration could most
rapidly be effected.
[Illustration]
This, then, was the position upon the night of the 14th. The three great
bodies of French troops (much the largest of which was that in the centre)
to march at dawn, the light cavalry moving as early as half past two,
ahead of the centre, the whole body of which was to march on Charleroi.
The left, that is the First and Second Corps, to cross the Sambre at
Thuin, the Abbaye d'Aulne, and Marchiennes. (There were bridges at all
three places.) The right or Fourth Corps was also to march on
Charleroi.[3]
Napoleon intended to be over the river with all his men by the afternoon
of the 15th, but, as we shall see, this "bunching" of fully half the
advance upon one crossing place caused, not a fatal, but a prejudicial
delay. Among other elements in this false calculation was an apparent
error on the part of Soult, who blundered in some way which kept the
Third Corps with the centre instead of relieving the pressure by sending
it over with the Fourth to cross, under the revised instructions, by
Chatelet.
[Illustration: Disposition of the Four Prussian Corps on June 15th, 1815.]
At dawn, then, the whole front of the French army was moving. It was the
dawn of Thursday the 15th of June. By sunset of Sunday all was to be
decided.
* * * * *
At this point it is essential to grasp the general scheme of the
operations which are about to follow.
Put in its simplest elements and graphically, the whole business began in
some such form as is presented in the accompanying sketch map.
[Illustration]
Napoleon's advancing army X Y Z, marching on Thursday, June 15th, strikes
at O (which is Charleroi), the centre of the hundred-mile-long line of
cantonments A B C----D E F, which form the two armies of the Allies, twice
as numerous as his own, but thus dispersed. Just behind Charleroi (O) are
a hamlet and a village, called respectively Quatre Bras (Q) and Ligny (P).
Napoleon succeeds in bringing the eastern or Prussian half of this long
line D E F to battle and defeating it at Ligny (P) upon the next day,
Friday, June 16th, before the western half, or Wellington's A B C, can
come up in aid; and on the same day a portion of his forces, X, under his
lieutenant, Marshal Ney, holds up that western half, just as it is
attempting to effect its junction with the eastern half at Quatre Bras
(Q), a few miles off from Ligny (P). The situation on the night of Friday,
June 16th, at the end of this second step, is that represented in this
second sketch map.
[Illustration]
Believing the Prussians (D E F) to be retreating from Ligny towards their
base eastward, and not northwards, Napoleon more or less neglects them and
concentrates his main body in order to follow up Wellington's western half
(A B C), and in the hope of defeating _that_ in its turn, as he has
already defeated the eastern or Prussian half (D E F) at Ligny (P). With
this object Napoleon advances northward during all the third day,
Saturday, June 17th. Wellington (A B C) retreats north before him during
that same day, and then, on the morrow, the 18th, Sunday, turns to give
battle at Waterloo (W). Napoleon engages him with fair chances of success,
and the situation as the battle begins at midday on the 18th is that
sketched in this third map.
[Illustration]
But unexpectedly, and against what Napoleon had imagined possible, the
Prussians (D E F), when defeated at Ligny (P), did not retreat upon their
base, and have not so suffered from their defeat as to be incapable of
further action. They have marched northward parallel to the retreat of
Wellington; and while Napoleon (X Y Z) is at the hottest of his struggle
with Wellington (A B C) at Waterloo (W), this eastern or Prussian half (D
E F) comes down upon his flank at (R) in the middle of the afternoon, and
by the combined numbers and disposition of this double attack Napoleon's
army is crushed before darkness sets in.
[Illustration]
Such, in its briefest graphic elements, is the story of the four days.
It will be observed from what we have said that the whole thing turns upon
the incompleteness of Napoleon's success at Ligny, and the power of
_retreating northward_ left to the Prussians after that defeat.
When we come to study the details of the story, we shall see that this,
the Prussian defeat at Ligny, was thus incomplete because one of
Napoleon's subordinates, Erlon, with the First French Army Corps, received
contradictory orders and did not come up as he should have done to turn
the battle of Ligny into a decisive victory for Napoleon. A part of
Napoleon's forces being thus neutralised and held useless during the fight
at Ligny, the Prussian army escaped, still formed as a fighting force, and
still capable of reappearing, as it did reappear, at the critical moment,
two days later, upon the field of Waterloo.
THE ADVANCE
The rapidity of Napoleon's stroke was marred at its very outset by certain
misfortunes as well as certain miscalculations. His left, which was
composed of the First and Second Corps d'Armee, did indeed reach the river
Sambre in the morning, and had carried the bridge of Marchiennes by noon,
but the First Corps, under Erlon, were not across--that is, the whole left
had not negotiated the river--until nearly five o'clock in the afternoon.
Next, the general in command of the leading division of the right-hand
body--the Fourth Corps--gave the first example of that of which the whole
Napoleonic organisation was then in such terror, I mean the mistrust in
the fortunes of the Emperor, and the tendency to revert to the old social
conditions, which for a moment the Bourbons had brought back, and which so
soon they might bring back again--he deserted. The order was thereupon
given for the Fourth Corps or right wing to cross at Chatelet, but it came
late (as late as half-past three in the afternoon), and did but cause
delay. At this eastern end of Napoleon's front the last men were not over
the river until the next day.
As to the centre (the main body of the army), its cavalry reached
Charleroi before ten o'clock in the morning, but an unfortunate and
exasperating accident befallen a messenger left the infantry immediately
behind without instructions. The cavalry were impotent to force the bridge
crossing the river Sambre, which runs through the town, until the main
body should appear, and it was not until past noon that the main body
began crossing the Sambre by the Charleroi bridge. The Emperor had
probably intended to fight immediately after having crossed the river.
Gosselies, to the north, was strongly held; and had all his men been over
the Sambre in the early afternoon as he had intended, an action fought
suddenly, by surprise as it were, against the advance bodies of the First
Prussian Corps, would have given the first example of that destruction of
the enemy in detail which Napoleon intended. But the delays in the
advance, rapid as it had been, now forbade any such good fortune. The end
of the daylight was spent in pushing back the head of the First Prussian
Corps (with a loss of somewhat over 1000 men), and when night fell upon
that Thursday evening, the 15th of June, the French held Charleroi and all
the crossings of the Sambre, but were not yet in a position to attack in
force. Of the left, the First Corps were but just over the Sambre; on the
right, that is, of the Fourth Corps, some units were still upon the other
side of the river; while, of the centre, the _whole_ of the Sixth Corps,
and a certain proportion of cavalry as well, had still to cross!
Napoleon had failed to bring the enemy to action; that enemy had fallen
back upon Fleurus, pretty nearly intact.[4] All the real work had
evidently to be put off, not only until the morrow, but until a fairly
late hour upon the morrow, for it would take some time to get all the
French forces on to the Belgian side of the river.
When this should have been accomplished, however, the task of the next
day, the Friday, was clear.
It was Napoleon's business to fall upon whatever Prussian force might be
concentrated before him and upon his right and to destroy it, meanwhile
holding back, by a force sent up the Brussels road to Quatre Bras, any
attempt Wellington and his western army might make to join the Prussians
and save them.
That night the Duke of Wellington's army lay in its cantonments without
concentration and without alarm, guessing nothing. The head of
Wellington's First Corps, the young Prince of Orange, who commanded the
Netherlanders, had left his headquarters to go and dine with the Duke in
Brussels.
Wellington, we may believe if we choose (the point is by no means
certain), knew as early as three o'clock in the afternoon that the French
had moved. It may have been as late as five, it may even have been six.
But whatever the hour in which he received his information, it is quite
certain that he had no conception of the gravity of the moment. As late as
ten o'clock at night the Duke issued certain after-orders. He had
previously given general orders (which presupposed no immediate attack),
commanding movements which would in the long-run have produced a
concentration, but though these orders were ordered to be executed "with
as little delay as possible," there was no hint of immediate duty
required, nor do the posts indicated betray in any way the urgent need
there was to push men south and east at the top of their speed, and
relieve the Prussians from the shock they were to receive on the morrow.
These general orders given--orders that betray no grasp of the nearness of
the issue--Wellington went off to the Duchess of Richmond's ball in what
the impartial historian cannot doubt to be ignorance of the great stroke
which Napoleon had so nearly brought off upon that very day, and would
certainly attempt to bring off upon the next.
In the midst of the ball, or rather during the supper, definite news came
in that the French army had crossed the river Sambre, and had even pushed
its cavalry as far up the Brussels road as Quatre Bras.
The Duke does not seem to have appreciated even then what that should mean
in the way of danger to the Prussians, and indeed of the breaking of the
whole line. He left the dance at about two in the morning and went to
bed.
He was not long left in repose. In the bright morning sunlight, four hours
afterwards, he was roused by a visitor from the frontier, and we have it
upon his evidence that the Duke at last understood what was before him,
and said that the concentration of his forces must be at Quatre Bras.
In other words, Wellington knew or appreciated extremely tardily on that
_Friday_ morning about six that the blow was about to fall upon his
Prussian allies to the south and east, and that it was the business of his
army upon the west to come up rapidly in succour.
As will be seen in a moment, he failed; but it would be a very puerile
judgment of this great man and superb defensive General to belittle his
place in the history of war upon the basis of even such errors as these.
True, the error and the delay were prodigious and, in a fashion, comic;
and had Napoleon delivered upon the _Thursday_ afternoon, as he had
intended, an attack which should have defeated the Prussians before him,
Wellington's error and delay would have paid a very heavy price.
As it was, Napoleon's own delay in crossing the Sambre made Wellington's
mistake and tardiness bear no disastrous fruit. The Duke failed to succour
the Prussians. His troops, scattered all over Western Belgium, did not
come up in time to prevent the defeat of his allies at Ligny. But he held
his own at Quatre Bras; and in the final battle, forty-eight hours later,
the genius with which he handled his raw troops upon the ridge of Mont St
Jean wiped out and negatived all his strategical misconceptions of the
previous days.
From this confusion, this partial delay and error upon Napoleon's part,
this ignorance upon Wellington's of what was toward, both of which marked
Thursday the 15th, we must turn to a detailed description of that morrow,
Friday the 16th, which, though it is less remembered in history than the
crowning day of Waterloo, was, in every military sense, the decisive day
of the campaign.
We shall see that it was Napoleon's failure upon that Friday completely to
defeat, or rather to destroy, the Prussian force at Ligny--a failure
largely due to Wellington's neighbouring resistance at Quatre Bras--which
determined the Emperor's final defeat upon the Sunday at Waterloo.
III
THE DECISIVE DAY
FRIDAY THE 16TH OF JUNE
QUATRE BRAS AND LIGNY
We have seen what the 15th of June was in those four short days of which
Waterloo was to be the climax. That Thursday was filled with an advance,
rapid and unexpected, against the centre of the allied line, and therefore
against that weak point where the two halves of the allied line joined, to
wit, Charleroi and the country immediately to the north of that town and
bridge.
We have further seen that while the unexpectedness of the blow was almost
as thorough as Napoleon could have wished, the rapidity of its delivery,
though considerable, had been less than he had anticipated. He had got by
the evening of the day not much more than three-quarters of his forces
across the river Sambre, and this passage, which was mapped out for
completion before nightfall, straggled on through the whole morning of the
morrow,--a tardiness the effects of which we shall clearly see in the next
few pages.
Napoleon's intention, once the Sambre was crossed, was to divide his army
into two bodies: one, on the left, was to be entrusted to Ney; one, on the
right, to Grouchy. A reserve, which the Emperor would command in person,
was to consist in the main of the Imperial Guard.
The left-hand body, under Ney, was to go straight north up the great
Brussels road.
Napoleon rightly estimated that he had surprised the foe, though he
exaggerated the extent of that surprise. He thought it possible that this
body to the left, under Ney, might push on to Brussels itself, and in any
case could easily deal with the small and unprepared forces which it might
meet upon the way. Its function in any case, whether resistance proved
slight or formidable, was to hold the forces of Wellington back from
effecting a junction with Blucher and the Prussians.
Meanwhile, the right-hand body, under Grouchy, was to fall upon the
extremity of the Prussian line and overwhelm it.
[Illustration]
Such an action against the head of the long Prussian cordon could lead, as
the Emperor thought, to but one of two results: either the great majority
of the Prussian force, coming up to retrieve this first disaster, would be
defeated in detail as it came; or, more probably, finding itself cut off
from all aid on the part of Wellington's forces to the west and its head
crushed, the long Prussian line would roll up backwards upon its
communications towards the east, whence it had come.