themselves. He caused them to be attacked in flank by his cavalry,
and compelled them to retire in the greatest disorder. At the
same moment the Prussians carried the village of La Haye; and our
cavalry, our infantry, already staggered by the defeat of the
Guard, were afraid of being cut off, and precipitately retreated.
The other troops of the right, seeing some of our squadrons
pell-mell, and some of the Guards running away, thought all
was lost, and quitted their position. This contagious movement
was communicated in an instant to the left, and the whole army
abandoned its strongest posts as eagerly as they had previously
assailed them. Soon the whole army was nothing but a confused
crowd, which the English and Prussians routed without effort, and
massacred without pity.”[38]
“Napoleon,” says Lamartine, “saw that army which a few hours
before was his only hope, now returning in broken fragments,
and exclaimed, ‘All is lost!’ For a moment he contemplated the
disastrous scene, turned pale, stammered, and shed some tears, the
first he had ever shed upon a field of battle.”
On marched the English, seized at every step the artillery which
had so long poured its iron hail upon them, and driving before them
the crowds of dismayed and disordered French. Up the heights on
which Napoleon and his army had stood, they now exultingly pressed,
and here the two Generals met, with mutual congratulations.
Marshal Blucher had well performed his part, though the state of
the roads had hindered his arrival until the very close of the
battle. In less than an hour he had driven in the whole right wing
of the French army, and now reached the very centre of Napoleon’s
position, at the same moment when the Duke had penetrated to the
same point with his attack in front. After a few moments of hearty
rejoicing, the English commander gladly resigned to the Prussian,
the remaining duty of a vigorous pursuit. The British troops, after
a long day’s work, were physically unable to chase their enemies
far. The Prussian General, therefore, to quote their own accounts,
assembled his officers, and gave orders to send the last horse and
the last man in pursuit of the enemy.”
Well and earnestly was this duty performed. All night long were the
wretched French pursued. Nine times did they attempt to halt for
rest, and nine times was the Prussian drum heard, and the flight
was again to be resumed. A French officer[39] thus describes the
scene:--
“Near one of the hedges of Hougoumont, without even a drummer to
beat the rappel, we succeeded in rallying 300 men; these were
nearly all that remained of our splendid division. Thither came
also a band of Generals. Here was Reille,[40] D’Erlon, Bachelor,
Foy, and others. All were gloomy and sorrowful. They said,
one to another, ‘Here is all that is left of my corps,--of my
division,--of my brigade!--I myself!’
“The enemy’s horse approached, and we were obliged to retreat. The
movements of the English cavalry had demoralized our soldiers,
who, seeing all regular retreat cut off, strove each man to save
himself. Infantry, cavalry, artillery, all jammed together, were
pressing along pell-mell. Figure to yourself 40,000 men all
struggling along a single causeway. We could not take that way, so
we struck across the fields. We were humiliated, we were hopeless;
we walked like a troop of mourners.
“We passed through Thuin, and finding a little copse, we gladly
sought its shelter. While our horses grazed, we lay down and slept.
We rested in the little copse till noon, and sat watching the
wrecks of our army defile along the road. It was a soul-harrowing
sight!
“We drew near to Beaumont, when suddenly a regiment of horse
was seen debouching from a wood on our left. The column that we
followed cried out, ‘The Prussians! the Prussians!’ and hurried off
in utter disorder.
“I was trying to return to General Foy, when another horde of
fugitives burst into Beaumont, swept me into the current of their
flight, and hurried me out of the town with them. I reached
Landrecy, though I know not how or when.”
Such is the description given by one of the fugitives, and it
exactly corresponds with the official report of the Prussian
General, Gneisenau, who says, “The French army, pursued without
intermission, was absolutely disorganized. The highway presented
the appearance of an immense shipwreck; it was covered with an
innumerable quantity of cannon, caissons, baggage, arms, and goods
of every kind. As soon as the enemy heard the sound of our drums,
they fled, while the moonlight favoured the pursuit, for the whole
march was a continued chase, whether in the corn-fields or in the
houses.”
“At three o’clock Napoleon had despatched a courier to Paris with
the news that victory was certain: a few hours afterwards he had no
longer an army.”
The French accounts, Gourgaud’s, Napoleon’s, &c., written long
after, endeavour to diminish the defeat by representing that within
a week as many us 60 or 65,000 men were re-assembled at Laon. Some
one attempted to make a representation of this sort in the French
Chamber of Peers, on the 24th of June; when Marshal Ney rose in his
place, and declared all such accounts to be deceptive. “It is a
mere illusion to suppose that 60,000 men can be collected. Marshal
Grouchy,” said he, “cannot have more than 20,000, or 25,000 at the
most.”
Fortunately, however, the question is set at rest by Fleury de
Chaboulon, Napoleon’s secretary, who describes very vividly what
followed immediately after the battle. He tells us, how, in his
flight, on meeting Maret, “the Emperor could not repress his
emotion; a large tear, escaping from his eyes, betrayed the efforts
of his soul.” Again he says, “The Emperor stopped beyond Rocroi to
take some refreshment. We were all in a pitiable state: our eyes
swelled with tears, our countenances haggard, our clothes covered
with dust or blood.” And, on arriving at Paris, when one of his
ministers spoke of the army, Napoleon exclaimed, “_I have no longer
an army!_ I have nothing but fugitives!”[41]
It was this absolute destruction of the French army which made
Waterloo one of the greatest and most important of all victories.
Thus, Jules Maurel, a French historian, says:--
“From a comparison of all the documents, it appears, that Bonaparte
was already beaten when the mass of the Prussian army appeared on
the field; but the arrival of Bulow had powerfully assisted the
British, and the arrival of Blucher changed the defeat into _an
unparalleled disaster_.”
Lamartine, another Frenchman, adds:--
“This defeat left nothing undecided,--nothing for the future to do.
Victory had given judgment: the war began and ended in a single
battle.”
But let us return for a moment to the great victor of the day.
At a road-side house, near Rossomme, he left Blucher, who gladly
undertook the pursuit, and after twelve hours of constant exertion,
he turned his charger’s head once more towards Mont St. Jean and
Waterloo. Darkness now shrouded a thousand scenes of horror, over
which it had been useless to pause. At his quarters the Duke found
assembled the survivors of his staff, the representatives of the
allied powers, and a few other friends. All sorely needed rest
and food, and the meal was ready. On leaving his quarters in the
morning, he had desired his domestics to have dinner ready to place
on the table “whenever it might be wanted” and his cook excited
amusement by the confidence with which he asserted, that “his
master had ordered dinner, and would certainly return to eat it.”
But the thoughts which would throng into the conqueror’s mind, at
that moment, must have been such as few men have ever experienced.
The foremost considerations with the Duke of Wellington always
were, _his country, and his duty_. But besides these there was a
personal question, little spoken of by him, but which could not be
excluded from his thoughts.
“I go to measure myself with Wellington,” exclaimed Napoleon,
when he flung himself into his carriage, only a few days before,
to join his army on the Belgian frontier. The Duke spoke not of
such matters, but he could not possibly forget that the muse of
history was waiting all that day, to know _which_ of the two great
names was to take the highest place among the many able commanders
of the nineteenth century. The one had defeated, in turn, nearly
every general in Europe, except Wellington. The other had triumphed
over almost all the Marshals of France, but had not yet confronted
Napoleon.
Captain Moyle Sherer thus writes:--
“Upon the night of that memorable battle, the words and emotions of
the conqueror will long be remembered by those who sat with him at
supper, after the anxious and awful day had closed. The fountain
of a great heart lies deep, and the self-government of a calm mind
permits no tears. But, this night, Wellington repeatedly leaned
back in his chair, and rubbing his hands convulsively, exclaimed,
“Thank God! I have met him: Thank God! I have met him.”[42] And,
ever as he spoke, the smile that lighted up his eye was dimmed by
those few tears that gush warm from a grateful heart.
“His many and deep anxieties; his noble desire to defeat his
country’s implacable enemy; his rational doubts of success against
so great a general;--these and many other fears and hopes,
undisclosed to any one, all were now resolved and dissipated by
a result more sudden, full, and glorious than any expectation he
could have formed, or any hope he could have admitted. England was
placed on the very pinnacle of glory; her foe was prostrate, his
legions fugitives, and her general might joyfully look around and
say, ‘This work was mine!’”
But after necessary food, and the writing of despatches and
letters, came such rest as the excited mind and body could take.
The Duke threw himself, unwashed but exhausted, on his bed long
after midnight. He had desired Dr. Hume to bring him the report of
the surgeons at seven in the morning. The doctor was punctual,
but the claims of nature were not satisfied, the Duke’s sleep was
still sound. Knowing that, with him, duty was paramount to all
other considerations, the doctor at once awakened him. The list was
produced, and the doctor began to read; but as name after name came
forth--this one as dying, that as dead--the voice failed, and Hume,
looking up, perceived the tears rapidly chasing each other down the
victor’s blackened cheeks;--he laid down the list and instantly
left the apartment.
The British loss was indeed great. Of the Duke’s staff twelve were
killed and forty-six wounded. The number of British officers killed
and wounded in these three days exceeded 700, and of privates it
was more than 10,000, so that about every third man in the British
ranks had been struck down in this terrible battle. The loss of
Dutch, Hanoverians, &c., had been 7,000; and that of the Prussians
exceeded 6,000. As to the French, their loss in killed and wounded
never could be ascertained; but it is certain that of 150,000 men
who crossed the frontiers, not 50,000 were ever re-assembled under
their colours.
The utter loss of his army sent Napoleon back to Paris. But the
news of his total defeat arrived along with him. His fame, his
“glory,” and his power perished together. The Chambers rose in
rebellion against him; and his abdication was demanded. The English
and Prussian armies, meanwhile, rapidly advanced; and on their
arrival before Paris the city capitulated; the King returned to his
palace; and Napoleon gave himself up to the Captain of an English
ship of war. On the 15th of June one of the finest armies that he
had ever led into the field entered Belgium to take advantage of
the Duke of Wellington’s unprepared state;--on the 3rd of July,
just fifteen days after, _Paris itself capitulated_! Such were the
vast results of Waterloo.
Napoleon, indeed, had been in some peril, for the Prussian general
showed a particular anxiety to get hold of him, in order that
he might hang him! The Duke had no fondness for him,--always
designating him in his despatches, merely as “Bonaparte;” but the
old Prussian field-marshal, remembering the cruel treatment of his
country by the French in 1807, felt, and constantly expressed,
sentiments of positive hatred. The Duke, however, with that
loftiness of aim and of feeling which had forbidden his officers
to fire upon Napoleon during the action, firmly resisted Blucher’s
desires on this point. General Muffling, the Prussian commissioner,
tells us, that the Duke said to him, “I wish my friend and
colleague to see this matter in the light I do: such an act would
give our names to history stained with a crime; and posterity would
say of us, “They were not worthy to be his conquerors; the more so,
as such a deed would be useless, and can have no object.”
In the same tone the Duke wrote to Sir Charles Stuart, telling him,
“I said, that as a private friend, I advised him to have nothing
to do with so foul a transaction; that he and I had acted too
distinguished parts in these transactions to become executioners;
and that I was determined that if the Sovereign put him to death,
they should appoint an executioner, _which should not be me_.”
In a similar spirit, the Duke succeeded in preventing the Prussians
from executing other plans of vengeance, such us the blowing
up the bridge of Jena, pulling down the column of Austerlitz,
and the like. In fact, had the old marshal been alone in these
transactions, he would gladly have indulged his troops with the
plunder of Paris.
Indeed, such an utter overthrow as France had received, and
that in the course of a few days, was hardly to be paralleled
in history. Sufficient stress has seldom been laid upon that
wonderful working of the Divine Providence by which this great
contest, expected by all men to be so long, so desperate, and so
sanguinary, was suddenly brought to a close on the fourth day after
its commencement. All the great powers of Europe had agreed upon a
united effort. They had pledged their faith to one another to place
600,000 men on the soil of France in July, 1815.
All at once, in the middle of June, while the bulk of these armies
were moving up from Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, and other distant
lands, they hear that the war is begun. And in four days after,
they hear that it is _finished_! Such is not the ordinary course of
human history.
All, however, is easily accounted for. Napoleon saw in England the
most resolute, consistent, and indomitable of his foes, and in
England’s Great General, the only Captain whom he could hold in
no light esteem. He said, and not unwisely, “If the Anglo-Belgian
army had been destroyed at Waterloo, what service could the Allies
derive from the number of armies which were preparing to cross the
Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees?”[43]
And acting upon this sound view of the case, and knowing that one
or two more weeks would elapse before Wellington could have his
veteran battalions around him, he resolved to throw himself like
an avalanche upon the Duke’s army in its unreadiness; in the hope
that a campaign beginning with a defeat of this his chief opponent
would alarm England, terrify the other powers, and so make peace,
with his continued retention of the throne of France, attainable.
This plan was a sagacious as well as a bold one. It grappled at
once with the grand difficulty of the case. But the difficulty,
when grappled with, overmastered him. Still, the peculiar
characteristics of this momentous struggle deserves to be carefully
remarked. A judicious writer has well observed, that:--
“Waterloo seemed to bear the features of a grand, immediate
interposition of Providence. Had human judgments been consulted,
they would have drawn a different plan. The Prussians would have
joined the English and have swept the enemy before them; or, the
British would have been in force enough to have beaten the French
long before the set of sun, &c., &c. But if the French had suffered
a common defeat, with consummate generals at their head they would
have rallied; or, retiring in force, would have called in all
available aids, and have renewed the struggle. So the conflict
held on till the last moment, when they could neither escape nor
conquer. If they had retreated an hour before nightfall they might
have been saved; if they could have fought an hour after it,
darkness would have covered them. But the crash came on the very
edge of darkness. The Prussians came up unfatigued by battle and
fresh for pursuit. The night was to be a night of slaughter. ‘Thou,
moon, in the valley of Ajalon.’”
Such was one of the grand events of modern history,--the victory
which gave all Europe peace for forty years. Ascribing, as we most
unreservedly do, the whole ordering of this momentous struggle
to an overruling Providence, it still seems a duty to add a few
words on the respective merits, or demerits, connected with this
tremendous contest, of the two great commanders, who for the first
and last time met at Waterloo. Let us first glance at the great
deeds achieved, and the great mistakes committed, by Napoleon in
the course of these three eventful days.
He carried his magnificent army over the frontier, and threw it
upon the allied armies in a manner exhibiting the most consummate
skill. Twenty years spent in the practice of war had given him an
expertness in the handling of large bodies of troops which few
generals have ever possessed. He showed also on the 16th that he
was a better general than Blucher, and that his army was a better
army than that of the Prussians. But here our commendation must
close; for a variety of faults and errors have been pointed out
by military critics, of which we shall only mention a few of the
chief. Napoleon was guilty of two great miscalculations, and of
three important practical mistakes. These were:--
1. He rashly and erroneously assumed that his appearance in Belgium
at the head of a fine army would force his opponents, Wellington
and Blucher, out of mere awe and terror, to fall back, to evacuate
the country, and so to give him a triumph at the opening of the
campaign. In his ixth Book he seriously argues that they _ought_
to have done so: but this was a strange miscalculation. When had
either Wellington or Blucher showed any alacrity in running away?
And what right had he to assume that a force amounting, when
united, to nearly 200,000 men, would act as if terror-stricken,
on the mere appearance of a French army of only 150,000? Yet he
constantly tells us that they ought to have retreated, and that his
calculations always rested on the presumption that they certainly
would retreat.
2. In like manner was he disappointed when he sent Grouchy with
35,000 or 40,000 men, to occupy and keep employed the whole
Prussian army. Again did he absurdly overlook the real character
of Blucher, who was not one to be easily duped. Napoleon might
speculate, if he pleased, on the chance of keeping Blucher at Wavre
while he was overpowering and crushing Wellington at Waterloo;
but Blucher was equally at liberty to despise all such devices,
and to leave Napoleon’s lieutenant in order to seek for Napoleon
himself. This was what actually took place, and hence we see that
again Napoleon is exposed to the imputation of having fatally
miscalculated.
3. But as in his plans there were these two errors, so in actual
execution we meet with three egregious faults. Having found
Wellington with his weak army apart from Blucher, why did he allow
several hours to elapse before he seized the opportunity for which
he had been hoping? He speaks of the softened state of the ground
after several hours’ rain. But, as we have seen, when Grouchy
advances the same excuse for inaction at Wavre, he styles it
“ridiculous!” and who can say that the movements which he actually
made at eleven o’clock, _could not_ have been made at ten, or even
at nine o’clock? Meanwhile, although Napoleon was _waiting_, the
Prussians were _marching_. They found the task _difficult_, while
he deemed it _impossible_. In earlier days he would have replied
that “there was no such word in his vocabulary.”
4. Again, to what strange hallucination was it owing, that, all
through the day, attacks which might have been made simultaneously
were only discharged in succession? Thus, at three or four
o’clock, he sorely tried the nerve and pluck of the English
infantry by pouring in upon them “twelve thousand select horse.”
It took them three hours to kill or drive away these formidable
intruders. And _then_, when the French cavalry had been destroyed,
Napoleon next attacked the English line with six or eight
thousand of his Imperial Guard. But what prevented his moving
this formidable column up the heights of Mont St. Jean, while the
cuirassiers were already in possession of the plateau? They had
seized or silenced the English artillery; they had compelled the
infantry to throw themselves into squares. If a mass of the finest
infantry in France had then been thrown upon the British centre,
how fearful would have been the trial? But Napoleon still delayed.
He sent on his cavalry, unsupported by any infantry; and then,
when the cavalry had been “massacred,” he sent on a column of
infantry, unsupported by any cavalry. Will the greatest admirer of
his genius hesitate to admit that his practical generalship, his
excellence as a leader in battle, was not conspicuous at Waterloo?
Yet, wherefore was he less vigorous, less audacious at Waterloo,
than at Austerlitz or Jena? He was still in the very prime of life.
Must we suppose that the toils and troubles and disappointments
of 1812-1814 had prematurely worn out his mind; and that he was
already, at only forty-six years of age, mentally decrepit?
5. The most singular exhibition of defect in generalship, however,
and of blindness to that defect, is seen in this,--that he could
not lose a battle without utterly losing his army also!
The general who can bear a defeat well, and can carry off his army
with only a moderate loss, is entitled to take a high rank amongst
commanders. He who cannot do this is only a fair-weather general.
The Prussian commander was attacked on the 16th before his army was
all assembled. He placed his men badly,--so badly that Wellington
predicted their certain defeat. Yet, when that defeat fell upon
him, he rallied his army at a distance of a quarter of a league,
and was ready and eager to fight another battle on the second day
after. It was this unconquerability which made Blucher one of the
most formidable antagonists of his time.
But let us turn to Napoleon. He invites us to do this, by the
pertinacity with which he assails Wellington on this very point.
Again and again he brings the charge vehemently against him, that
at Waterloo he had made no provision for a retreat. Thus, in Book
ix, p. 124, he says:--
“He had in his rear the defiles of the forest of Soignes, so that,
if beaten, retreat was impossible.”
And again, at p. 158--
“The enemy must have seen with affright how many difficulties the
field of battle he had chosen was about to throw in the way of his
retreat.”
And again, at p. 207--
“The position of Mont St. Jean was ill-chosen. The first requisite
of a field of battle, is, to have no defiles in its rear. The
injudicious choice of his field of battle, rendered all retreat
impossible.”
Thus Napoleon challenges our criticism on this very point. All
military authorities are agreed that he was wrong in his censure on
Wellington. It is conceded even by Frenchmen like Lamartine, that
the forest of Soignes, instead of being a source of peril, was an
element of safety. But he who assails his rival on this especial
point, of a provision for retreat, must expect to be asked,
himself, “How his own retreat was conducted?”