THE FRENCH ARMY.
The French army, it is hardly necessary to state, had been seriously
affected by the sudden and complete change in government through which
France had passed in April, 1814. Without going into particulars, it
is sufficient to say that Napoleon found on his return from Elba much
which needed to be undone and more which it was necessary to do. But
the details of this partial reorganization do not greatly concern us.
Napoleon unquestionably did his utmost to bring the troops into a state
of efficiency. And he certainly was in great measure successful. The
larger part of the Marshals and high officers remained in France and
took command with cheerfulness, and the younger officers and the men
were unanimous in their devotion to the cause of their country against
the coalition. But some of the Marshals and generals high in rank
had retired into Belgium with Louis XVIII.; others declined active
service; and where there were so many defections, there was inevitably
not a little suspicion and disquietude. In the reorganization, which
was beyond a question necessary, great changes had to be made in the
higher commands, and the regiments, even, were to a greater or less
extent recast. The Guard was also reconstituted, a measure obviously
wise, taking account of the prestige which this famous corps had always
possessed, but a measure which, carried out as it had to be, in a very
brief period of time, could not but injure to a considerable extent
the value of the regiments of the line. It is true that France at this
time was full of veteran soldiers; some 200,000 men had returned into
the country from foreign prisons. There was an abundance of excellent
material. But the circumstances under which the existing military
force was reorganized and increased in numbers were unfavorable to the
_moral_ of the soldiers and of the army generally, and there was not
sufficient time before the outbreak of hostilities to overcome the
disturbing influences inseparable from such a state of things. The
men were full of enthusiasm for and confidence in Napoleon; but they
mistrusted many of their commanders. They were old soldiers, nearly
or quite all of them, and understood their work perfectly; but the
changes of the last eighteen months had been so utterly perplexing,—so
thorough,—the new organization had been so recent and attended by
so many disquieting circumstances and disturbing rumors, that the
absolute confidence, which ought to exist between the officers and men
of an army as strongly as between the members of a family, did not
prevail.[23]
Coming now to the _personnel_ of the army: Napoleon’s old
chief-of-staff, Berthier, who had served him in this capacity for
twenty years, who had grown accustomed to his ways, and was able by
reason of his long experience to supplement his defects, had retired
into Belgium with the King. To supply his place the Emperor selected
Marshal Soult, certainly a very singular choice.[24] Soult was a man
of Napoleon’s own age,—he had for several years commanded an army in
Spain, and had had, of course, a chief-of-staff of his own. To place
such a man at such a time of his life on staff duty when he should be
commanding troops, must strike any one as strange. Such an officer is
not fitted by his experience in an independent command for the duties
of a chief-of-staff. Those duties he has been for years accustomed to
turn over to a subordinate. The personal attention which they need he
has for years expected to be given by a junior officer. It is out of
the question that he can, all at once, assume the extremely laborious
duties which belong to the chief-of-staff. We shall, before we get
through, have more than one opportunity to see how Soult performed his
new tasks. It is safe to say that there was many a younger officer in
the French army who would have served with much more efficiency in this
all-important place, for which the utmost vigor and alertness of mind
and body are wellnigh indispensable.
For the invasion of Belgium, Napoleon destined the 1st, 2d, 3d,
4th, and 6th Corps, and the Imperial Guard, besides a large force
of cavalry. The five corps-commanders, d’Erlon, Reille, Vandamme,
Gérard and the Comte de Lobau were all men of experience and admitted
capacity. Vandamme was known specially as a hard fighter. Gérard was a
comparatively young officer of great promise. The Comte de Lobau, under
his original name of Mouton, had distinguished himself in the Austrian
campaign of 1809. But no one of them equalled in military talent the
leading generals in the Italian or Austerlitz campaigns,—Masséna,
Lannes, Davout, Desaix, and their fellows. The commander of the
cavalry, Grouchy, was a veteran of twenty years’ hard fighting, but
was not credited with possessing any great capacity. The fact is that
Napoleon himself could not do for his own army what the turmoil and
chaos of the Revolution had done for the army of the republic, and
that was to override seniority and all ordinary claims to promotion,
and to open the door wide to youthful vigor and ambition. It was to
the confusion created by the Revolution that the formidable list of
warriors who served France so brilliantly for twenty years owed in
great measure their rapid advancement. Napoleon himself constitutes no
exception to this remark.
Napoleon[25] says of his officers at this period:—
“The character of several of the generals had been weakened by the
events of 1814; they had lost something of that audacity, of that
resolution, of that confidence, which had * * * contributed so much
to the successes of former campaigns.”[26]
Charras has a passage to the same effect:[27]—
“Enriched, systematically corrupted, by the prodigality of the
Empire; enervated by luxury and pleasure; fatigued by twenty
years of war, several among the generals would have preferred the
tranquil life of their own homes to the labors of the march and the
discomforts of the bivouac. They had tasted of peace for a whole
year; they looked back on that period with regret. Some among them
had met with rude defeats while in independent commands, and they
remembered them well. Others, shaken by the cruel recollections of
1813 and 1814, despaired of the issue of the war in view of the
enormous armies of the coalition and of the feebleness of our means
of defence. All remained brave, intrepid; but all had not preserved
the activity, the resolution, the audacity of their early days. Their
_moral_ was no longer equal to sustaining a reverse.”
These statements may very possibly be somewhat too highly colored, but
there is little doubt that there was a good deal of truth in them. It
is significant that they are made by writers who wrote of the campaign
from opposite points of view. Napoleon in his narrative of the campaign
sought to show that he was not the sole or even the chief cause of its
failure, and claimed that his orders were not carried out with the
spirit and energy which his lieutenants had once possessed. Charras
on the other hand, throughout his history, is uniformly harsh in his
comments on the Emperor’s conduct, and insists that he was greatly
lacking both in physical strength and in energy of character. That both
Charras and Napoleon, therefore, state that the higher officers of the
army were not up to the mark of their earlier campaigns renders it very
probable that such was the actual fact.
The importance of this fact is to be seen in its true light only when
we bear in mind to how great an extent Napoleon’s campaigns required
for their successful conduct qualities in his lieutenants by no means
universally found even in respectable corps-commanders,—qualities far
in excess of those commonly demanded. Napoleon was not content with
mere obedience; he expected from his chief officers an intelligent
comprehension of his views, and a vigorous and daring execution of the
parts assigned to them,—a sort of coöperation, in fact. The movements
with which the campaign of 1809 opened will best illustrate, perhaps,
what is here referred to. It is not too much to say that without this
hearty and intelligent work on the part of his lieutenants many of
Napoleon’s most brilliant and successful campaigns could never have
been carried out. We shall see in the course of this narrative how much
he expected from Ney and Grouchy. Hence any inability or unwillingness
on the part of the leading officers to render this assistance must
be fully taken into account when we are seeking to understand this
campaign of Waterloo.
We have not spoken of the commander of the Guard, Marshal Mortier,
because he was taken ill just before the opening of the campaign, and
no one replaced him. General Drouot, an artillery officer of great
merit, was the adjutant-general of the Guard, and orders were given
through him.
At the last moment, on the eve of the opening of hostilities, the
Emperor sent for Marshal Ney. Why the orders to this distinguished
officer were not given earlier, we are not informed; it seems like
an unpardonable oversight, to say the least. As such Ney certainly
regarded it.[28] Ney was given no time for preparation; it was only
by the exercise of great diligence that he reached the front when he
did, and that was at five o’clock in the afternoon of the 15th, after
the Sambre had been crossed. He was assigned to the command of the 1st
and 2d Corps, commanded by the Counts d’Erlon and Reille respectively;
but he was ignorant of their organization, and had even to learn the
names of the division commanders. It is difficult, if not impossible,
to understand this strange neglect of Napoleon. No one knew better than
he how important it is that the commander of an army or of a wing of
an army should have ample time to know his troops and to be known by
them, and that this was especially necessary where a reorganization had
recently taken place.
In the army, thus constituted, there were, then, three Marshals. Of
these, one, Soult, was serving in a new capacity for him, that of
chief-of-staff; another, Ney, had not been given a fair chance to get
a good hold on the troops assigned to him; the third, Grouchy, was
not a man of superior capacity, had never commanded an army-corps in
his life, and had only just been made a Marshal. Grouchy was at first
assigned to the command of the reserve cavalry, consisting of the four
cavalry corps of Pajol, Exelmans, Kellermann and Milhaud, numbering
in all 13,784 men. But the campaign had scarcely opened when he was
relieved from this duty, and placed in command of the right wing of the
army, consisting of the 3d and 4th Corps, those of Generals Vandamme
and Gérard, together with a considerable force of cavalry. Here again
was a singular neglect on Napoleon’s part of the importance of allowing
the new Marshal time to get used to his new duties; and, as we shall
ultimately have occasion to see, this circumstance operated most
unfavorably when Grouchy found himself in an independent command. It
looks very much as if Napoleon only decided to send for Ney at the last
minute, and as if the assignment of Grouchy to the command of the two
corps of Vandamme and Gérard was not determined on until the campaign
had opened.
But not only was the organization of the army not as perfect as it
might have been by reason of the course which Napoleon pursued in
regard to Ney and Grouchy; there was an officer whom he ordered to
stay behind when he might have had him with himself as well as not, a
man of the highest reputation, the Duke of Auërstadt, the Prince of
Eckmühl, Marshal Davout. The Emperor had made him Minister of War, but
Davout begged to have a command in the field. He represented to the
Emperor,—[29]
“That the defence of Paris, notwithstanding its incontestable
importance, was, like all questions of interior defence, only
secondary, and essentially subordinate to the result of military
operations; that when it was a question of playing a decisive part
on the field of battle, it was not the time to make experiments with
new men; that it was necessary, on the contrary, for the Emperor to
surround himself with men who had given good account of themselves
and who had had long experience in high command. The Marshal did
not succeed in convincing the Emperor, who contented himself with
replying: ‘I cannot entrust Paris to any one else.’ ‘But, sire,’
replied Davout, ‘if you are the victor, Paris will be yours; and if
you are beaten, neither I nor any one else can do anything for you.’”
There can be no question that the Marshal’s reasoning was sound; but
Napoleon persisted in his course. What he lost by not having Davout
with him in this campaign, it is not easy to estimate; it is perhaps
foolish to conjecture. But it would probably not be going too far
to say that Davout in the place of either Ney or Grouchy would have
prevented the catastrophe of Waterloo.
This sketch of the _personnel_ of the French army naturally leads up to
an estimate of its chief, that is, of his comparative fitness at this
period of his life to undertake the tasks of such a daring, laborious
and perilous campaign as this attack on Blücher and Wellington was sure
to prove.
Most historians have agreed that in point of bodily activity the
Emperor did not show himself in this campaign the equal of his former
self; in fact, most writers have gone farther than this; they have
attributed to him a lassitude of mind as well as of body, they have
found a want of the mental activity and a lack of the resolute will,
which had been so characteristic of him in his earlier days. The
portrait of Napoleon by General Foy is one of the best we have, and is
of especial value as having been drawn by a contemporary, who served
throughout his wars and commanded a division at Waterloo.
“With his passions, and in spite of his errors, Napoleon is, taking
him all in all, the greatest warrior of modern times. He carried
into battle a stoical courage, a profoundly calculated tenacity, a
mind fertile in sudden inspirations, which by unhoped-for resources
disconcerted the plans of the enemy. * * * Napoleon possessed in an
eminent degree the faculties requisite for the profession of arms;
temperate and robust, watching and sleeping at pleasure, appearing
unawares where he was least suspected, he did not disregard the
details to which important results are sometimes attached. * * * He
carried with him into battle a cool and impassible courage; never
was a mind so deeply meditative more fertile in rapid and sudden
illuminations. On becoming Emperor he ceased not to be the soldier.
If his activity decreased with the progress of age, this was owing to
the decrease of his physical powers.” And in a note he adds: “In the
latter years the Emperor had grown fat; he ate more, slept longer,
and rode less; but he retained all the vigor of his mind, and his
passions had lost little of their strength.”[30]
There is in fact no reason to doubt that Napoleon’s habitual activity
and even his capacity for physical exertion had in 1815 sensibly
diminished. Like most men of forty-five, he was not so full of energy
as he had been at five and twenty. He had also grown stout, and he was
furthermore a sufferer from some painful maladies which rendered it
difficult for him to keep on horseback for any great length of time.[31]
All these circumstances would naturally tend to diminish, more or less,
the once ceaseless activity of his mind; we may, therefore, expect to
find him less thoughtful, less vigilant, less careful, than he had been
in his earlier campaigns. But it is plain that the standard by which
the Napoleon of 1815 is tested is no ordinary standard,[32] and it may
well be that although he may have failed to come up to the high mark
which he formerly attained, we shall nevertheless find in this campaign
of Waterloo no conspicuous lack of ordinary activity and energy.
In conclusion, we may fairly say that while we recognize that the
army with which Napoleon was preparing to take the field in June,
1815, was not as well-organized a body of troops as some of the armies
which he had led to victory, that its corps-commanders were not as
brilliant soldiers as were many of the distinguished generals of that
period, that peculiar circumstances rendered Soult, Ney and Grouchy
less serviceable than they probably would have been had things been
otherwise ordered, and that the Emperor himself was more or less
deficient in the never-resting activity of mind and body which he
had once possessed, we must not forget that the soldiers and their
officers were all veterans, that their generals had won their rank by
distinguished service on many a bloody field, and that no man living
surpassed their leader in military talent. It is not correct to say[33]
that the army which Napoleon led into Belgium was the finest he had
ever commanded, but it is quite certain that it was by far the best of
the three armies then in the field.
The strength and composition of this army, was, according to
Charras,[34] whom we may safely follow, as follows:—
1st Corps: d’Erlon.
Four divisions of infantry,—
Allix, Donzelot, Marcognet, Durutte 16,885 Men
One division of cavalry,—Jaquinot 1,506 „
Artillery,—46 guns,—engineers, etc. 1,548 „
------
Total, 19,939 „
2d Corps: Reille.
Four divisions of infantry,—
Bachelu, Jerome Napoleon,[35] Girard, Foy 20,635 Men
One division of cavalry,—Piré 1,865 „
Artillery,—46 guns,—engineers, &c. 1,861 „
------
Total, 24,361 „
------
3d Corps: Vandamme.
Three divisions of infantry,--
Lefol, Habert, Berthezène 16,851 „
One division of cavalry,--Domon 1,017 „
Artillery,--38 guns,--engineers, &c. 1,292 „
------
Total, 19,160 „
4th Corps: Gérard.
Three divisions of infantry,--
Pécheux, Vichery, Bourmont[36] 12,800 „
One division of cavalry,--Maurin 1,628 „
Artillery,--38 guns,--engineers, &c., 1,567 „
------
Total, 15,995 „
6th Corps: Lobau.
Three divisions of infantry,--
Simmer, Jeannin, Teste 9,218 „
Artillery,--32 guns,--engineers, &c., 1,247 „
------
Total, 10,465 „
Imperial Guard:
Old Guard:
One division,--Friant,--grenadiers 4,140 „
Middle[37] Guard:
One division,--Morand,--chasseurs 4,603 „
Young Guard:
One division,--Duhesme,--voltigeurs, &c., 4,283 „
Two divisions of cavalry,--Guyot,
Lefebvre-Desnouettes 3,795 „
Artillery,--96 guns,--engineers, &c., 4,063 „
-----
Total, 20,884 „
Reserve Cavalry: Grouchy.
1st Cavalry Corps: Pajol.
Two divisions,--Soult, Subervie 2,717
Artillery,--12 guns, 329
-----
3,046
2d Cavalry Corps: Exelmans.
Two divisions: Stroltz, Chastel 3,220
Artillery,--12 guns, 295
-----
3,515
3d Cavalry Corps: Kellermann.
Two divisions,--L’Heritier, Roussel 3,360
Artillery,--12 guns, 319
-----
3,679
4th Cavalry Corps: Milhaud.
Two divisions,--Wathier, Delort 3,194
Artillery,--12 guns, 350
-----
3,544
Total, 13,784 „
Workmen, waggoners, &c., about 3,500 „
-------
Grand Total, 128,088 „
Leaving out the last item as consisting chiefly of non-combatants, we
have an army consisting of 124,588 men.
Of these, the infantry numbered, 89,415 Men
the cavalry, including the horse artillery of
the reserve cavalry, numbered, 23,595 „
the artillery (344 guns including the above)
numbered, 11,578 „
--------
Total,[38] as above, 124,588 „
FOOTNOTES:
[23] Charras, vol. 1, pp. 69, 70: Histoire de la Garde Imperiale: Saint
Hilaire, p. 654.
[24] Ib., pp. 653, 654.
[25] Corresp., vol. 31, p. 249.
[26] _Cf._ Gourgaud, pp. 67, 68.
[27] Charras, vol. 1, p. 70.
[28] Ney’s letter to the Duke of Otranto; Jones, p. 385.
[29] Davout, p. 540.
[30] Foy’s History of the War in the Peninsula; vol. 1, pp. 110-112:
Histoire de la Guerre de la Peninsule; pp. 161-164.
[31] Thiers, vol. xx, book lx, p. 37, n.: Grouchy Mém., vol. 4, p. 44,
n. 2; id. in Le Mal de G., p. 18, n. 2.
[32] Soult told Sir W. Napier: “The Emperor seemed at times to be
changed; there were moments when his genius and activity seemed as
powerful and fresh as ever; at other moments he seemed apathetic.
For example, he fought the battle of Waterloo without having himself
examined the enemy’s position. He trusted to General Haxo’s report. In
former days he would have examined and re-examined it in person.” Life
of Sir W. F. W. Napier, vol. 1, p. 505.
[33] As do Chesney, p. 67, and Hooper, pp. 62, 161.
[34] Charras, vol. 1, pp. 65-68.
[35] Charras, vol. 1, p. 196, n., says that Jerome’s command was purely
nominal, and that Guilleminot, his chief-of-staff, really commanded
this division.
[36] Bourmont deserted to the enemy early on the 15th June, and was
succeeded by Hulot.
[37] We here follow many historians in calling Morand’s command the
Middle Guard, “la moyenne Garde.”
[38] Charras’ summing up of the cavalry and artillery varies from ours,
and would seem to be 500 less than the number before given by him.
_NOTE TO CHAPTER II._
The opinion expressed here in regard to the health of the Emperor is
substantially that entertained by Thiers and Chesney. The former says
that the Emperor’s brother Jerome, and also one of the surgeons on the
Emperor’s staff, both told him that Napoleon was a sufferer at this
time from an affection of the bladder. But this was, he says, denied by
Marchand, the Emperor’s valet. “Whatever may have been the health of
Napoleon at this epoch, his activity was not diminished.”[39]
To the same effect is Chesney’s opinion,[40] opposing that of
Charras.[41] Further evidence on the subject has been collected by
Mr. Dorsey Gardner.[42] His conclusion is entirely opposed to that of
Colonel Chesney, and in our judgment he places altogether too much
reliance on that delightful, but gossipy, writer, the Comte de Ségur.
Ségur’s History of the Russian Campaign is the best known work on
the subject, but it is essentially a romance. In it he advances with
great boldness his favorite theme of the breaking down of Napoleon’s
health.[43] But the Emperor’s health was able to endure without
injury that terrible strain; he certainly showed in 1813 and 1814
every evidence of physical vigor. No doubt the peculiar maladies from
which he suffered occasionally impaired the activity of both mind and
body; but the talk of Ségur verges at times on puerility. Gourgaud’s
_Examen Critique_ of Ségur’s work points out its defects cleverly and
unsparingly. As for the conversation, referred to by Gardner, which the
Earl of Albemarle[44] reports as having taken place in 1870 between
his son and General Gudin, who was, in 1815, a page in waiting on the
Emperor, to the effect that Napoleon secluded himself all the forenoon
of the day of the battle of Waterloo, and that “it was nearly noon when
the Emperor descended the ladder that led to the sleeping room and rode
away,” it is really impossible to accept the story. Charras, who for
his own reasons (and, by the way, not for the reasons which Chesney
very naturally supposes actuated him), endeavors to magnify Napoleon’s
inactivity throughout this campaign, represents him as, on this morning
of the 18th, reconnoitring the position after eight o’clock,[45] giving
his orders for the marshalling of the army, watching the deployment
of the troops between nine and half-past ten, riding along the lines,
and dictating the order of battle before eleven o’clock. On all such
points we are quite safe in following Charras, and we must consider
Gudin’s story as having (to say the least) suffered greatly in its
transmission. Besides, there was no “ladder that led to the sleeping
room,” in the house[46] in which Napoleon slept the night before
Waterloo.
To repeat, then, once more. Napoleon in this campaign was troubled by
and doubtless suffered considerably from some painful maladies; and,
even apart from this fact, we cannot look for the youthful vigor and
activity of 1796 or 1805 in the year 1815. He was not in these respects
equal to his former self; and it was further to be expected that the
deficiency of his physical energy would be accompanied by a diminished
mental alertness and vigilance. All the same, we think it will be
found that he showed in this campaign a very fair degree of strength
and activity. But we shall know more about this as we proceed with the
narrative.
FOOTNOTES:
[39] Thiers, vol. xx, book lx, p. 37, n.
[40] Chesney, p. 72, n.
[41] Charras, vol. 2, p. 203, n. H.
[42] Gardner; Quatre Bras, Ligny and Waterloo; pp. 31-37; p. 220, n.
138.
[43] Histoire de Napoleon et de la Grande Armée pendant l’année 1812.
Paris, 1825. Book 4, chaps. 2 and 6.
[44] Fifty Years of my Life: by the Earl of Albemarle, p. 98. _Cf._
Thiers, vol. XX, p. 37, note.
[45] Charras, vol. 1, pp. 270, 271. This, as will be seen later on, was
the third reconnoissance since midnight.
[46] _Cf._ Fraser, Words on Wellington, p. 250. The Caillou house was
set on fire by the Prussians, but the principal rooms were spared, and
the house was afterwards carefully restored.