numbers less than half his own; he had failed to pierce their line when
reinforcements had brought up their numbers to a superiority over his own.
He must now set about a far more serious business, for there was every
prospect, as the afternoon advanced, that Wellington would be still
further reinforced, while Ney had nothing but his original 20,000--half
his command; of Erlon's coming there was not a sign! Yet another hour had
been consumed in the general French advance and its repulse, which I have
just described. It was five o'clock.
I beg the reader to concentrate his attention upon this point of the
action--the few minutes before and after the hour of five. A number of
critical things occurred in that short space of time, all of which must be
kept in mind.
The first was this: A couple of brigades came in at that moment to
reinforce Wellington. They gave him a 25 per cent. superiority in men, and
an appreciable superiority in guns as well.
In the second place, Ney was keeping the action at a standstill, waiting
until his own forces should be doubled by the arrival of Erlon's force.
Ney had been fighting all this while, as I have said, with only half his
command--the Second Army Corps of Reille. Erlon's First Army Corps formed
the second half, and when it came up--as Ney confidently expected it to do
immediately--it would double his numbers, and raise them from 20,000 to
40,000 men. With this superiority he could be sure of success, even if, as
was probable, further reinforcements should reach the enemy's line. It is
to be noted that it was due to Ney's own tardiness in giving orders that
Erlon was coming up so late, but by now, five o'clock, the head of his
columns might at any moment be seen debouching from Frasnes.
In the third place, while Ney was thus anxiously waiting for Erlon, and
seeing the forces in front of him swelling to be more and more superior to
his own, there came yet another message from Napoleon telling Ney how
matters stood in the great action that was proceeding five miles away,
urging him again with the utmost energy to have done at Quatre Bras, to
come back over eastward upon the flank of the Prussians at Ligny, and so
to destroy their army utterly and "to save France."
To have done with the action of Quatre Bras! But there were already
superior forces before Ney! And they were increasing! If he dreamt of
turning, it would be annihilation for his troops, or at the least the
catching of his army's and Napoleon's between two fires. He _might_ just
manage when Erlon came up--and surely Erlon must appear from one moment to
another--he _might_ just manage to overthrow the enemy in front of him so
rapidly as to have time to turn and appear at Ligny before darkness should
fall, from three to four hours later.
It all hung on Erlon:--He _might_! and at that precise moment, with his
impatience strained to breaking-point, and all his expectation turned on
Frasnes, whence the head of Erlon's column should appear, there rode up to
Ney a general officer, Delcambre by name. He came with a message. It was
from Erlon.... Erlon had abandoned the road to Quatre Bras; had understood
that he was not to join Ney after all, but to go east and help Napoleon!
He had turned off eastward to the right two and a half miles back, and was
by this time far off in the direction which would lead him to take part in
the battle of Ligny!
Under the staggering blow of this news Ney broke into a fury. It meant
possibly the annihilation of his body, certainly its defeat. He did two
things, both unwise from the point of view of his own battle, and one
fatal from the point of view of the whole campaign.
First, he launched his reserve cavalry, grossly insufficient in numbers
for such a mad attempt, right at the English line, in a despairing effort
to pierce such superior numbers by one desperate charge. Secondly, he sent
Delcambre back--not calculating distance or time--with peremptory orders
to Erlon, as his subordinate, to come back at once to the battlefield of
Quatre Bras.
There was, as commander to lead that cavalry charge, Kellerman. He had but
one brigade of cuirassiers: two regiments of horse against 25,000 men! It
was an amazing ride, but it could accomplish nothing of purport. It
thundered down the slope, breaking through the advancing English troops
(confused by a mistaken order, and not yet formed in square), cut to
pieces the gunners of a battery, broke a regiment of Brunswickers near the
top of the hill, and reached at last the cross-roads of Quatre Bras. Five
hundred men still sat their horses as the summit of the slope was reached.
The brigade had cut a lane right through the mass of the defence; it had
not pierced it altogether.
Some have imagined that if at that moment the cavalry of the Guard, which
was still in reserve, had followed this first charge by a second, Ney
might have effected his object and broken Wellington's line. It is
extremely doubtful, the numbers were so wholly out of proportion to such a
task. At any rate, the order for the second charge, when it came, came
somewhat late. The five hundred as they reined up on the summit of the
hill were met and broken by a furious cross-fire from the Namur road upon
the right, from the head of Bossu Wood upon the left, while yet another
unit, come up in this long succession to reinforce the defence--a battery
of the King's German Legion--opened upon them with grape. The poor remnant
of Kellerman's Horse turned and galloped back in confusion.
The second cavalry charge attempted by the French reserve, coming just too
late, necessarily failed, and at the same moment yet another
reinforcement--the first British division of the Guards, and a body of
Nassauers, with a number of guns--came up to increase the now overwhelming
superiority of Wellington's line.[10]
There was even an attempt at advance upon the part of Wellington.
As the evening turned to sunset, and the sunset to night, that advance was
made very slowly and with increasing difficulty--and all the while Ney's
embarrassed force, now confronted by something like double its own
numbers, and contesting the ground yard by yard as it yielded, received no
word of Erlon.
The clearing of the Wood of Bossu by the right wing of Wellington's army,
reinforced by the newly arrived Guards, took more than an hour. It took as
long to push the French centre back to Gemioncourt, and all through the
last of the sunlight the walls of the farm were desperately held. On the
left, Pierrepont was similarly held for close upon an hour. The sun had
already set when the Guards debouched from the Wood of Bossu, only to be
met and checked by a violent artillery fire from Pierrepont, while at the
same time the remnant of the cuirassiers charged again, and broke a
Belgian battalion at the edge of the wood.
By nine o'clock it was dark and the action ceased. Just as it ceased, and
while, in the last glimmerings of the light, the major objects of the
landscape, groups of wood and distant villages, could still be faintly
distinguished against the background of the gloom, one such object seemed
slowly to approach and move. It was first guessed and then perceived to be
a body of men: the head of a column began to debouch from Frasnes. It was
Erlon and his 20,000 returned an hour too late.
All that critical day had passed with the First Corps out of action. It
had _neither_ come up to Napoleon to wipe out the Prussians at Ligny,
_nor_ come back in its countermarch in time to save Ney and drive back
Wellington at Quatre Bras. It might as well not have existed so far as the
fortunes of the French were concerned, and its absence from either field
upon that day made defeat certain in the future, as the rest of these
pages will show.
* * * * *
Two things impress themselves upon us as we consider the total result of
that critical day, the 16th of June, which saw Ney fail to hold the
Brussels road at Quatre Bras, and there to push away from the advance on
Brussels Wellington's opposing force, and which also saw the successful
escape of the Prussians from Ligny, an escape which was to permit them to
join Wellington forty-eight hours later and to decide Waterloo.
The first is the capital importance, disastrous to the French fortunes, of
Erlon's having been kept out of both fights by his useless march and
countermarch.
[Illustration: THE ELEMENTS OF QUATRE BRAS.]
The second is the extraordinary way in which Wellington's command came up
haphazard, dribbling in by units all day long, and how that command owed
to Ney's caution and tardiness, much more than to its own General's
arrangements, the superiority in numbers which it began to enjoy from an
early phase in the battle.
I will deal with these two points in their order.
* * * * *
As to the first:--
The whole of the four days of 1815, and the issue of Waterloo itself,
turned upon Erlon's disastrous counter-marching between Quatre Bras and
Ligny upon this Friday, the 16th of June, which was the decisive day of
the war.
What actually _happened_ has been sufficiently described. The useless
advance of Erlon's corps d'armee towards Napoleon and the right--useless
because it was not completed; the useless turning back of that corps
d'armee towards Ney and the left--useless because it could not reach Ney
in time,--these were the determining factors of that critical moment in
the campaign.
In other words, Erlon's zigzag kept the 20,000 of the First Corps out of
action all day. Had they been with Ney, the Allies under Wellington at
Quatre Bras would have suffered a disaster. Had they been with Napoleon,
the Prussians at Ligny would have been destroyed. As it was, the First
Army Corps managed to appear on _neither_ field. Wellington more than held
his own; the Prussians at Ligny escaped, to fight two days later at
Waterloo.
Such are the facts, and they explain all that followed (see Map, next
page).
But it has rightly proved of considerable interest to historians to
attempt to discover the human motives and the personal accidents of
temperament and misunderstanding which led to so extraordinary a blunder
as the utter waste of a whole army corps during a whole day, within an
area not five miles by four.
It is for the purpose of considering these human motives and personal
accidents that I offer these pages; for if we can comprehend Erlon's
error, we shall fill the only remaining historical gap in the story of
Waterloo, and determine the true causes of that action's result.
[Illustration]
There are two ways of appreciating historical evidence. The first is the
lawyer's way: to establish the pieces of evidence as a series of
disconnected units, to docket them, and then to see that they are
mechanically pieced together; admitting, the while, only such evidence as
would pass the strict and fossil rules of our particular procedure in the
courts. This way, as might be inferred from its forensic origin, is
particularly adapted to arriving at a foregone conclusion. It is useless
or worse in an attempt to establish a doubtful truth.
The second way is that by which we continually judge all real evidence
upon matters that are of importance to us in our ordinary lives: the way
in which we invest money, defend our reputation, and judge of personal
risk or personal advantage in every grave case.
This fashion consists in admitting every kind of evidence, first hand,
second hand, third hand, documentary, verbal, traditional, and judging the
general effect of the whole, not according to set legal categories, but
according to our general experience of life, and in particular of human
psychology. We chiefly depend upon the way in which we know that men
conduct themselves under the influence of such and such emotions, of the
kind of truth and untruth which we know they will tell; and to this we add
a consideration of physical circumstance, of the laws of nature, and hence
of the degrees of probability attaching to the events which all this mass
of evidence relates.
It is only by this second method, which is the method of common-sense,
that anything can be made of a doubtful historical point. The legal method
would make of history what it makes of justice. Which God forbid!
Historical points are doubtful precisely because there is conflict of
evidence; and conflict of evidence is only properly resolved by a
consideration of the psychology of witnesses, coupled with a consideration
of the physical circumstances which limited the matter of their testimony.
Judged by these standards, the fatal march and countermarch of Erlon
become plain enough.
His failure to help either Ney or Napoleon was not treason, simply because
the man was not a traitor. It proceeded solely from obedience to orders;
but these orders were fatal because Ney made an error of judgment both as
to the real state of the double struggle--Quatre Bras, Ligny--and as to
the time required for the countermarch. This I shall now show.
Briefly, then:--
Erlon, as he was leading his army corps up to help Ney, his immediate
superior, turned it off the road before he reached Ney and led it away
towards Napoleon.
Why did he do this?
It was because he had received, not indeed from his immediate superior,
Ney himself, _but through a command of Napoleon's, which he knew to be
addressed to Ney_, the order to do so.
When Erlon had almost reached Napoleon he turned his army corps right
about face and led it off back again towards Ney.
Why did he do that?
It was because he had received at that moment _a further peremptory order
from Ney, his direct superior, to act in this fashion_.
Such is the simple and common-sense explanation of the motives under which
this fatal move and countermove, with its futile going and coming, with
its apparent indecision, with its real strictness of military discipline,
was conducted. As far as Erlon is concerned, it was no more than the
continual obedience of orders, or supposed orders, to which a soldier is
bound. With Ney's responsibility I shall deal in a moment.
Let me first make the matter plainer, if I can, by an illustration.
Fire breaks out in a rick near a farmer's house and at the same time in a
barn half a mile away. The farmer sends ten men with water-buckets and an
engine to put out the fire at the barn, while he himself, with another ten
men, but without an engine, attends to the rick. He gives to his foreman,
who is looking after the barn fire, the task of giving orders to the
engine, and the man at the engine is told to look to the foreman and no
one else for his orders. The foreman is known to be of the greatest
authority with his master. Hardly has the farmer given all these
instructions when he finds that the fire in the rick has spread to his
house. He lets the barn go hang, and sends a messenger to the foreman with
an urgent note to send back the engine at once to the house and rick. The
messenger finds the man with the engine on his way to the barn, intercepts
him, and tells him that the farmer has sent orders to the foreman that the
engine is to go back at once to the house. The fellow turns round with his
engine and is making his way towards the house when another messenger
comes posthaste _from the foreman direct_, telling him at all costs to
bring the engine back to the barn. The man with the engine turns once
more, abandons the house, but cannot reach the barn in time to save it.
The result of the shilly-shally is that the barn is burnt down, and the
fire at the farmer's house only put out after it has done grave damage.
The farmer is Napoleon. His rick and house are Ligny. The foreman is Ney,
and the barn is Quatre Bras. The man with the engine is Erlon, and the
engine is Erlon's command--the First Corps d'Armee.
There was no question of _contradictory_ orders in Erlon's mind, as many
historians seem to imagine; there was simply, from Erlon's standpoint, a
_countermanded_ order.
He had received, indeed, an order coming from the Emperor, but he had
received it only as the subordinate of Ney, and only, as he presumed, with
Ney's knowledge and consent, either given or about to be given. In the
midst of executing this order, he got another order countermanding it, and
proceeding directly from his direct superior. He obeyed this second order
as exactly as he had obeyed the first.
Such is, undoubtedly, the explanation of the thing, and Ney's is the mind,
the person, historically responsible for the whole business.
Let us consider the difficulties in the way of accepting this conclusion.
The first difficulty is that Ney would not have taken it upon himself to
countermand an order of Napoleon's. Those who argue thus neither know the
character of Ney nor the nature of the struggle at Quatre Bras; and they
certainly underestimate both the confusion and the elasticity of warfare.
Ney, a man of violent temperament (as, indeed, one might expect with such
courage), was in the heat of the desperate struggle at Quatre Bras when he
received Napoleon's order to abandon his own business (a course which was,
so late in the action, physically impossible). Almost at the same moment
Ney heard most tardily from a messenger whom Erlon had sent (a Colonel
Delcambre) that Erlon, with his 20,000 men--Erlon, who had distinctly been
placed under his orders--was gone off at a tangent, and was leaving him
with a grossly insufficient force to meet the rapidly swelling numbers of
Wellington. We have ample evidence of the rage into which he flew, and of
the fact that he sent back Delcambre with the absolutely positive order to
Erlon that he should turn round and come back to Quatre Bras.
Of course, if war were clockwork, if there were no human character in a
commander, if no latitude of judgment were understood in the very nature
of a great independent command such as Ney's was upon that day, if there
were always present before every independent commander's mental vision an
exact map of the operations, and, _at the same time_, a plan of the exact
position of all the troops upon it at any given moment--if all these
armchair conceptions of war were true, then Ney's order would have been
as undisciplined in character and as foolish in intention as it was
disastrous in effect.
But such conceptions are not true. Great generals entrusted with separate
forces, and told off to engage in a great action at a distance from the
supreme command, have, by the very nature of their mission, the widest
latitude of judgment left to them. They are perfectly free to decide, in
some desperate circumstance, that if their superior knew of that
circumstance, he would understand why an afterorder of his was not obeyed,
or was even directly countermanded. That Ney should have sent this furious
counterorder, therefore, to Erlon, telling him to come back instantly, in
spite of Napoleon's first note, though it was a grievous error, is one
perfectly explicable, and parallel to many other similar incidents that
diversify the history of war. In effect, Ney said to himself: "The Emperor
has no idea of the grave crisis at _my_ end of the struggle or he wouldn't
have sent that order. He is winning, anyhow; I am actually in danger of
defeat; and if I am defeated, Wellington's troops will pour through and
come up on the Emperor's army from the rear and destroy it. I have a
right, therefore, to summon Erlon back." Such was the rationale of Ney's
decision. His passionate mood did the rest.
A second and graver difficulty is this: By the time Erlon got the message
to come back, it was so late that he could not possibly bring his 20,000
up in time to be of any use to Ney at Quatre Bras. They could only arrive
on the field, as they did in fact arrive, when darkness had already set
in. It is argued that a general in Ney's position would have rapidly
calculated the distance involved, and would have seen that it was useless
to send for his subordinate at such an hour.
The answer to this suggestion is twofold. In the first place, a man under
hot fire is capable of making mistakes; and Ney was, at the moment when he
gave that order, under the hottest fire of the whole action. In the second
place, he could not have any very exact idea of where in all those four
miles of open fields behind him the head of Erlon's column might be, still
less where exactly Delcambre would find it by the time he had ridden back.
A mile either way would have made all the difference; if Erlon was
anywhere fairly close; if Delcambre knew exactly where to find him, and
galloped by the shortest route--if this and if that, it might still be
that Erlon would turn up just before darkness and decide the field in
Ney's favour.[11]
Considerable discussion has turned on whether, as the best authorities
believe, Erlon did or did not receive a pencilled note written personally
to him by the Emperor, telling him to turn at once and come to his,
Napoleon's, aid, and by his unexpected advent upon its flank destroy the
Prussian army.
As an explanation of the false move of Erlon back and forth, the existence
of this note is immaterial. The weight of evidence is in its favour, and
men will believe or disbelieve it according to the way in which they judge
human character and motive. For the purposes of a dramatic story the
incident of a little pencilled note to Erlon is very valuable, but as an
elucidation of the historical problem it has no importance, for, even if
he got such a note, Erlon only got it in connection with general orders,
which, he knew, were on their way to _Ney_, his superior.
The point for military history is that--
(_a_) Erlon, with the First Corps, on his way up to Quatre Bras that
afternoon, was intercepted by a messenger, who told him that the Emperor
wanted him to turn off eastward and go to Ligny, and not to Quatre Bras;
while--
(_b_) He also knew that that message was intended also to be delivered,
and either had been or was about to be delivered, to his superior officer,
Ney. Therefore he went eastward as he had been told, believing that Ney
knew all about it; and therefore, also, on receiving a further direct
order from Ney to turn back again westward, he did turn back.
If we proceed to apportion the blame for that disastrous episode, which,
by permitting Blucher to escape, was the plain cause of Napoleon's
subsequent defeat at Waterloo, it is obvious that the blame must fall upon
Ney, who could not believe, in the heat of the violent action in which he
was involved, that Napoleon's contemporary action against Ligny could be
more decisive or more important than his own. It was a question of
exercising judgment, and of deciding whether Napoleon had justly judged
the proportion between his chances of a great victory and Ney's chances;
and further, whether a great victory at Ligny would have been of more
effect than a great victory or the prevention of a bad defeat at Quatre
Bras. Napoleon was right and Ney was wrong.
I have heard or read the further suggestion that Napoleon, on seeing
Erlon, or having him reported, not two miles away, should have sent him
further peremptory orders to continue his march and to come on to Ligny.
This is bad history. Erlon, as it was, was heading a trifle too much to
the south, so that Napoleon, who thought the whole of Ney's command to be
somewhat further up the Brussels road northward than it was, did not guess
at first what the new troops coming up might be, and even feared they
might be a detachment of Wellington's, who might have defeated Ney, and
now be coming in from the west to attack _him_.
He sent an orderly to find out what the newcomers were. The orderly
returned to report that the troops were Erlon's, but that they had turned
back. Had Napoleon sent again, after this, to find Erlon, and to make him
for a third time change his direction, it would have been altogether too
late to have used Erlon's corps d'armee at Ligny by the time it should
have come up. Napoleon had, therefore, no course before him but to do as
he did, namely, give up all hope of help from the west, and defeat the
Prussians at Ligny before him, if not decisively, at least to the best of
his ability, with the troops immediately to his hand.
* * * * *
So much for Erlon.
Now for the second point: the way in which the units of Wellington's
forces dribbled in all day haphazard upon the position of Quatre Bras.
Wellington, as we saw on an earlier page, was both misinformed and
confused as to the nature and rapidity of the French advance into Belgium.
He did not appreciate, until too late, the importance of the position of
Quatre Bras, nor the intention of the French to march along the great
northern road. Even upon the field of Waterloo itself he was haunted by
the odd misconception that Napoleon's army would try and get across his
communications with the sea, and he left, while Waterloo was actually
being fought, a considerable force useless, far off upon his right, on
that same account.