NAPOLEON (_continued_).
I must pass over the attempt to resettle the boundaries, at Vienna, of
a changed Continent; nor can I dwell on the pretensions of the Czar
to sit in the seat of Napoleon without his genius, on the rapacity
of Prussia and the craft of Talleyrand, and on the league between
Austria, England, and France, to restrain the ambition of the Northern
Powers. Nor can I notice Napoleon’s brief rule in Elba, though the
administrative powers of the fallen Lord of the Continent were
exhibited in this narrow sphere, and have left honourable traditions
not yet forgotten. I must also avoid even a short account of the
failure of the Restoration in France; how Louis XVIII., well-meaning
but feeble, spite of the memories of the old _régime_, fell into
the hands of Royalist zealots, and marred the grace of the freedom
he claimed to concede; how impossible it became to reconcile the
pretensions of returned _émigrés_ and a ruined _noblesse_
with the interests grown out of the Revolution; how the army,
transformed and made the appanage of a Court, chafed in silence, and
regretted its unrivalled chief; how the nation after a brief hour
of repose, felt humiliated that it had been reduced to the position
of a lesser Power of Europe. The discords of the Coalition, and the
unsettled state of France, were not lost on the extraordinary man who
watched events from his speck in the sea, and who had not forgotten
his vanished Empire. Napoleon quitted Elba in February 1815, on the
most wonderful enterprise of his whole career. A flotilla bore the
few hundred men imprudently left him by the Allies; Fortune smiled
treacherously on her audacious favourite, and he had soon landed on
the shores of Provence, in order, in the face of embattled Europe, to
subvert a Government founded on an European triumph. The very thought
seemed akin to folly, and yet it became an accomplished fact in a
fortnight. With that insight which was one of his greatest gifts,
Napoleon avoided the cities of the coast and the great military
stations of his old marshals; he flung himself into the valleys of
Dauphiné, a district hostile to the restored Monarchy, and his march
seemed like the spread of some mighty influence, which power and
authority were unable to withstand. Grasse, Sisteron, and Gap were
rapidly passed; a regiment near Grenoble welcomed the sight of its old
commander, and fell at his knees; the garrison of the town greeted him
with exulting shouts, and wherever a part of the army beheld Napoleon,
it followed him, swayed as by an enchanter’s spell. Macdonald, with his
staff, was expelled from Lyons; Ney, meaning to be loyal, was carried
away in the universal military revolt; other chiefs found it impossible
to resist; and the discrowned exile was soon on his way to the capital
at the head of a great and hourly increasing force.
Napoleon was at the Tuileries once more on the 20th of March; “his
eagles,” in his expressive language, “had flown from steeple to steeple
to the towers of Nôtre Dame,” and France, dazzled, surprised, and
disliking the Bourbons, accepted a revolution which seemed a kind of
portent. The King fled into Belgium with his Court, his nobles, and
a few officers of the Empire, who would not break their oaths; the
army easily put down two or three risings of Royalists in the Southern
Provinces; and Napoleon boasted, with truth, that he regained his
throne at the cost of scarcely a drop of blood. After this astonishing
return to Empire, Napoleon offered peace, and to remain satisfied with
the France of the Treaties of 1814; and probably he was sincere in
these overtures. Yet it is not surprising that he was not believed;
he had broken faith with Europe in leaving Elba, and, partly through
terror and partly from hate, the Allies proscribed him as an enemy
of mankind. He addressed himself to the defence of France, but the
movement which had set him on the throne was essentially a military
revolt; the fierce animosities of French factions embarrassed his
Government and weakened the State; the restored Empire was viewed
with distrust by Royalists, Liberals, and the old Republicans; the
nation treated with indifferent contempt free institutions offered
by Imperial hands; and the Chambers, which Napoleon convened to give
popular support to his imperilled power, were full of secret or avowed
conspirators. Nevertheless, let detractors say what they please, his
exertions were mighty and worthy of him; his genius as an administrator
shone with fresh brightness, though his health was evidently on the
decline, and in a few weeks he had made preparations to resist the
Coalition which must be deemed wonderful. One circumstance gave him
precious resources; more than 100,000 prisoners of war, trained and
excellent soldiers, had been restored to France; and by making use of
these and additional veterans, and by employing conscripts and National
Guards, he raised the army, which had been reduced to impotence, to a
state of formidable strength and efficiency. Meanwhile, he gave its
old organization and structure to the instrument of war he had so long
wielded; the Guard reappeared, and the loved eagles; corps, divisions,
and reserves were again formed; great exertions were made to provide
arms, horses, and _impedimenta_ of all kinds; and Paris, which
had fallen at once in 1814, was to a considerable extent, fortified.
By June 1815, half-a-million of men were on foot to take part in the
impending conflict; about 250,000 of these were ready; and paper money
supplied the Treasury with the means of seconding a great effort which,
in existing circumstances, was, I repeat, astonishing.
Two plans of operations presented themselves. Had France been united
and loyal as a whole, Napoleon would have, no doubt, followed the grand
precedent of the year before, under conditions much more favourable
to success; he would have encountered the Coalition in Champagne
with forces far more powerful than in 1814, and with Paris a strong
entrenched camp in his rear, and recollecting what he achieved on
the Marne and the Seine, his triumph would have been not at all
improbable. The second plan was much more hazardous; but it was in
harmony with Napoleon’s genius, and it followed methods which had often
secured him victory. The Coalition had a million of men in arms; but
these masses were spread from the Scheldt to the Po, and easterly,
from the Rhine to the Oder; and the extreme right of the immense line
of invasion, the two armies of Blücher and Wellington was isolated
and thrown forward in Belgium. It might be practicable then, as it
had been at Ulm, to cut off and destroy this detached force; and many
circumstances concurred to give a well-directed attack a real chance
of success. The armies of Blücher and Wellington were widely apart;
they rested upon divergent bases; they were commanded by chiefs of
opposite natures; their centre was weak and greatly exposed; their line
of communication was a single road, at a short distance only from the
French frontier, and behind this line lay a difficult country which
would make their subsequent concentration no easy matter.
Seizing the situation with the eye of a master, Napoleon saw in this
position of affairs an admirable opportunity to strike with effect; and
he resolved to assail and break through the allied centre, and to try
to defeat Blücher and Wellington in detail, as he had defeated Beaulieu
and Colli in the campaign of Italy. The means he adopted to carry out
his project rank among the finest operations of his life, and form a
conspicuous instance of his gift of stratagem. Concealing the movement
with consummate skill, he drew together four corps from the vast
space between Lille and Metz to the edge of the frontier; the Guard,
another corps, and the cavalry marched from the interior; and the
collected masses, perfectly arranged, converged gradually along this
immense front, under the eye of the enemy, yet without his knowledge!
No more splendid effort has been made in war; and had the Emperor had
the complete force--150,000 men--which he reckoned on to begin the
campaign, in all probability he would have triumphed. A rising in La
Vendée deprived him, however, at the last moment, of 20,000 soldiers;
but the die was cast, and he did not hesitate; and he set off from
Paris on the 12th of June to challenge Fortune in a supreme trial. His
admirable directions had been admirably fulfilled. On the evening of
the 14th June 1815, 128,000 Frenchmen, comprising 22,000 horse and 350
guns, were assembled from near Maubeuge to near Philippeville, where
the French frontier then entered Belgium; and screened by the Sambre,
they were a few miles from Charleroi, where the great road to Brussels
gave an easy approach to the comparatively feeble centre of the Allies.
The army was in motion at daybreak on the 15th, the Emperor’s object
being to cross the Sambre, to occupy Charleroi, and by a forced march
to seize the points of Quatre Bras and Sombreffe, on the great cross
road between Nivelles and Namur, the only line on which his foes
could unite without obstacles of no small difficulty. The operation
was not quite successful; delays and different accidents occurred.
Ziethen, too, one of Blücher’s lieutenants, had checked the advance,
not without skill, but Napoleon’s project was nearly realised; the
great mass of the French was beyond Charleroi, and within easy reach
of Quatre Bras and Sombreffe before night closed on the 15th; and the
allied centre was threatened if not severed, and could only close up
in effective force, under, so to speak, the guns of the enemy. The
conduct, meanwhile, of the hostile chiefs had perfectly fulfilled
Napoleon’s previsions, and had given him already an immense advantage.
Blücher had, characteristically, placed three of his corps in positions
around, or not far from, Sombreffe, even now almost in Napoleon’s
grasp; but his fourth corps was many leagues distant, and could not
reach Sombreffe for a battle next day. On the other hand, Wellington,
circumspect and cautious, and without experience of Napoleon’s
strategy, had hesitated and delayed at Brussels; he had not taken a
step to join his colleague until late in the night of the 15th; and
even then, fearing for his communications and his right, he had not
advanced in force towards Quatre Bras, where his junction with Blücher
would be accomplished. The allied line of communication, therefore, on
the lateral road of Nivelles-Namur was not held by the Allies in force;
it was all but in the hands of the enemy. The allied centre was
completely exposed, and Napoleon might reasonably expect either to
beat in detail the allied chiefs, should they venture to offer battle,
or to seize the points of Quatre Bras and Sombreffe, and to interpose
between Blücher and Wellington.
[Illustration:
Theatre of the
CAMPAIGN
of 1815.]
This was the situation on the morning of the 16th, and it was full
of great, nay, of splendid, promise. Napoleon was now at Charleroi,
about to start for Fleurus, and to take the command of his corps near
Sombreffe. He has been charged with delay, I think unjustly, and he
was not fully aware of the enemy’s movements; but his general position
was so good, and his general directions were so well planned, that
accidents only robbed him of a decisive victory. He ordered Ney on his
left to seize Quatre Bras, driving back any forces of the Duke at hand.
The Marshal was then to descend on the rear of Blücher, who was to be
attacked near Sombreffer, in front, by the Emperor; and had this grand
manœuvre been properly carried out, Blücher must have been routed and
forced away to the Meuse, and Wellington would have been in the extreme
of peril, for both generals were now trying to join hands at Quatre
Bras and Sombreffe, and were laying themselves open to the whole force
of Napoleon. Ney could have easily fulfilled his mission; but he had
lost the confidence of better days; he waited many hours before he even
tried to move; and he failed to accomplish his main task, falling from
Quatre Bras on the rear of Blücher.
Napoleon, meanwhile, marching from Fleurus, had attacked Blücher
between Sombreffe and Ligny. The battle raged furiously for a
considerable time, to the disadvantage of the Prussians on the whole,
but no decisive success had been won; and the Emperor, perceiving that
no force was closing on Blücher from the direction of Ney, tried to
attain his object by another method. One of Ney’s corps had advanced
slowly; the Emperor directed this towards Blücher’s flank, while
Blücher was to be assailed, as before, in front; and had this stroke
been pressed home, the result would have been the same as that of
the first projected attack. D’Erlon, however, the unlucky chief of
this corps, was, when on the path of victory, called up by Ney, hard
pressed by Wellington at this moment; and Napoleon, I think, must have
concurred in this, for the defeat of Ney would have been disastrous,
though this extreme caution was, perhaps, an error. Blücher escaped
destruction through these mishaps; but Napoleon’s attack in front had
partial success, and the Prussian army was driven, in defeat, from
the field. On the other side of the scenes of manœuvre, Ney, we have
seen, had not reached Blücher, and had missed his mark; he had most
unfortunately recalled D’Erlon, and he had suffered a repulse from
the hands of Wellington, who had kept Quatre Bras though with much
difficulty. Ney, however, had gained a strategic advantage; he had
prevented Wellington from joining Blücher, and as Blücher had been
forced away from Sombreffe, the Duke would be compelled to retreat;
the line of communication of the allied armies was practically already
in Napoleon’s hands; and his operations had been largely successful,
if they had not led to a second Jena, as he had reason to expect a few
hours before. Such had been the result of his fine strategy, although
that result had not been complete; and it should be borne in mind that
the allied armies were not far from double his own in numbers.
The allied generals, obliged, through the defeat of Ligny, to abandon
their proper line of junction--the great road between Nivelles
and Namur--were now thrown back into the country behind it, the
thick-wooded and marshy valley of the Dyle, very difficult for the
passage of armies. The real student of war will not doubt as to what
their movements ought to have been; they should either have united
their forces at once, a few miles behind Quatre Bras and Sombreffe,
or they should have retreated two marches away to Brussels, where,
having an overwhelming superiority of strength, they might have derided
Napoleon’s efforts. They took, however, an intermediate course--a half
measure often disastrous in war; Blücher fell back some twenty miles
to Wavre, the Duke fell back from Quatre Bras to Waterloo, and holding
these positions they meant to join hands and accept, if offered, a
great battle.
The idolaters of success, supposed to cover everything, have praised
this as scientific strategy, but it was bad strategy, and dangerous
in the extreme. Wavre is considerably farther from Waterloo than
Sombreffe is from Quatre Bras; what is more important, a most intricate
country divides Wavre from Waterloo, and in this operation Blücher and
Wellington were playing into the hands of their renowned adversary.
Napoleon was given three alternatives, each big with the promise
of immense success. He might call on his victorious army to make a
forced march, might fall either on Blücher or Wellington, and defeat
either within a few hours, before Wavre or Waterloo were reached; or
collecting together all his forces, he might attack Blücher at Wavre,
or the Duke at Waterloo, before either could join the other; or, in
truer accordance with the principles of the art, he might restrain
Blücher, with a retarding force, sent quickly from Ligny to hold him
in check, and might attack Wellington with the mass of his army--the
favourite manœuvre, in which he has had no rival--and in any of these
cases he must have triumphed, over-matched as he was by his foes in
numbers. The double retreat on Wavre and Waterloo was therefore a
thoroughly false movement; and the General of Rivoli would have made it
fatal. But the General of Rivoli, full of genius as ever, had lost the
iron strength of twenty years before. Napoleon returned after Ligny,
to Fleurus, ill; he went to sleep and could not see his staff, and
this illness, at a crisis in the campaign, saved the Allies, and had
momentous results.
During the night of the 16th and the morning of the 17th, the French
army remained motionless. Soult and Ney literally did nothing, no
preparations for marching were made; the Emperor sent no orders from
Fleurus; and, worst of all, Grouchy given the command of the right on
the 16th, made no real effort to reconnoitre the Prussians, and to find
out where they had gone. Disease, in fact, had weakened the energy of
the chief; his lieutenants, fashioned to servitude, let things drift,
and the opportunity of the 16th, given on the 17th once more, was lost
never again to return. Napoleon was back at Ligny in the forenoon of
the 17th; a letter of Soult, the Chief of the Staff, proves that his
first intention was to halt for the day, for he believed that the
Prussians, completely routed, were falling back on their base, towards
the Meuse, and there would be time, he thought, to turn against and
defeat Wellington. On learning, however, from Ney, on the left, that
parts of the Duke’s forces were still at Quatre Bras, he resolved to
advance, and try to destroy them; and he made preparations, now very
late, for a combined movement against the Allies. He divided his army
into two groups; at the head of the first, about 72,000 men, he meant
to attack Wellington and bring him to bay; he gave Grouchy the second,
about 34,000 strong, and he informed the Marshal that his mission was
to pursue Blücher and to keep him in sight, and to interpose between
Blücher and Wellington who, the Emperor added, was to be assailed
should he stand near the neighbouring forest of Soignies.
Napoleon broke up from Ligny early in the afternoon; he was soon joined
by Ney at Quatre Bras, and he endeavoured to harass the rearguard of
the Duke, who by this time had his main force at Waterloo. The pursuit,
however, had no results--it was too late, in fact, to be of use--and
an extraordinary tempest of rain had broken over the country, and all
but stopped marching. Before night fell, the heads of the French army
had reached the low hills that overlook Waterloo, and a large army was
evidently in position before them. Napoleon halted, hopeful of a great
coming battle; but some hours before he sent directions to Grouchy, on
his right, which require attention. Before leaving Ligny the Emperor,
we have seen, believed that Blücher was making for his base, and had
spoken to Grouchy in that sense; but on his way from Ligny to Quatre
Bras he was made aware that a large Prussian force had been seen on
the Orneau, near Gembloux. He immediately sent new orders to Grouchy,
and directed him to advance on Gembloux, and, of course, generally to
comply with his first orders. Grouchy, who had broken up from Ligny
late, set off for Gembloux in the afternoon; and though Blücher had
had a long start, and Gembloux was by no means the best position to
be taken for an advance on Wavre, still the Emperor’s directions
were correct enough to have enabled a bold and capable chief to have
fulfilled his all-important mission, to have attained Blücher and
kept him off from Wellington. Grouchy reached Gembloux rather late at
night--the state of the roads and the weather excuse him--and he can
hardly be blamed, though the fact is strange, that even at this time he
was not informed with perfect accuracy about the Prussian movements.
Within a short time, however, he had ascertained that a great part
of Blücher’s army had made for Wavre; another part, he was told, was
marching on Perwez, towards the Meuse. He communicated this important
news to the Emperor, and he expressly added, “that he would advance
on Wavre, should the mass of the Prussians go that way, in order to
separate Blücher from Wellington,” proving that he perfectly understood
his mission.
This intelligence--received during the night of the 17th--was
calculated to make Napoleon certain, especially as it was his own idea,
that he had nothing to fear from the Prussian army; he thought only of
fighting Wellington, and he made preparations to attack on the morrow.
The Prussian veteran, however, who more than once had baffled the
Emperor by his audacious movements, had resolved, whatever the risk, to
advance on Waterloo. He had rallied his whole army around Wavre, his
first corps, that of Bülow, had come into line, and he had given his
word to the Duke, who on the faith of the pledge was in position to
fight at Waterloo, that “the whole Prussian army would be on the field
by the early forenoon of the 18th of June.” Blücher nobly endeavoured
to fulfil his promise. Bülow broke up from Wavre at daybreak on the
18th, but the obstacles he met were formidable in the extreme; he was
still far from Wellington’s lines at noon, and his three colleagues,
Ziethen, Pirch and Thielmann, were still close to Wavre, nearly a march
distant, and were on a perilous flank march, in long straggling
columns.
Meanwhile Grouchy had left Gembloux for Wavre, to follow up the
enemy--he had now ascertained that all Blücher’s army had gathered
round the place the night before--but his operations were simply
wretched. He knew that Napoleon meant to fight Wellington, should
Wellington make a stand at Soignies; he knew that he was detached
to hold Blücher in check, and to keep him completely apart from
Wellington; he knew that the Prussians had been round Wavre, and had
informed his master, in part, of the fact; he knew that Wavre was a
march from Soignies and Waterloo, and he knew that at Gembloux he
was some fourteen miles from Wavre. Knowing all this, he should have
left Gembloux at the first peep of dawn on the 18th of June, and have
advanced as quickly as possible; and common sense should have taught
him so to make for Wavre as to get across the Dyle, in order to draw
near Napoleon and to cut off Blücher on his way to Wellington, for
probably Blücher was making the attempt. He took exactly the opposite
course; he left Gembloux many hours too late; his movement on Wavre was
pitiably slow, and he made for Wavre, not over the Dyle, which would
have soon placed him on the flank of Blücher, but along the stream,
striking Blücher, if reached, in the rear, and pushing him, so to
speak, on Wellington. This miserable generalship led to what followed;
and Grouchy was so obstinate, and so blind to fact, that when he heard
the far-distant thunder of Waterloo, he refused to follow the sagacious
advice of Gérard and to march, at the eleventh hour, towards the flank
of the enemy!
While these operations, big with a great future, had been taking place
on Napoleon’s right, the Emperor had attacked Wellington, who, with
faith in his colleague, awaited his foe in a long-studied position.
Napoleon had intended to attack early, but the state of the roads
and the weather made an attack hazardous, and he delayed some hours,
greatly to the Duke’s advantage. The Emperor’s general plan--the last
exhibition of his genius in the sphere of higher tactics--was to turn
Wellington’s left and to force his centre, making a demonstration to
engage his right; his adversary’s was to hold his ground until the
arrival of Blücher would make success certain. The grand attack on
the British left and centre failed, partly owing to the excellence
of the British troops, and partly to the density and cumbrousness of
the French columns; and the feint on Wellington’s right had no more
success, and led to terrible waste of blood.
By this time Napoleon had learned that Bülow was gathering on his flank
with 30,000 men, but he hoped this was a stray column which Grouchy
might arrest and perhaps destroy, and he turned fiercely against the
centre of his foe, abandoning the effort against the British left,
which, with Bülow at hand, would have been too hazardous. This attack
was successful to some extent; La Haye Sainte, a fortified post, was
captured. This made a gap in Wellington’s defence, and Napoleon,
confident that victory was at hand, launched a great mass of cavalry
against the Duke’s centre, intending to support the movement with the
Imperial Guard. But at this crisis of the battle Blücher was near.
Despising wounds, defeat, and days of fatigue, he ordered Bülow to fall
on the Emperor’s flank. This prevented the attack the Guard was to
make, and though the French horsemen made heroic exertions, the British
and German infantry “stood rooted in the earth”; and the cavalry,
recklessly squandered by Ney but not supported by foot, were at last
beaten.
During all this time, Bülow had been striking Napoleon’s right; but at
about 7 this attack seemed spent. The French still occupied the thin
red line of Wellington, the artillery of Grouchy was heard at Wavre--a
pledge that he was keeping the Prussians back--and victory for France
seemed yet possible. Napoleon formed the Guard into two great columns,
but Wellington had admirably strengthened his centre; the first column
was fairly beaten, and the second, kept in reserve, could give it no
aid. A sudden change now came over the battle; parts of the corps
of Ziethen and Pirch appeared on the field; the attack of Bülow was
fiercely renewed; British squadrons, let loose, swept over the plain;
and the Duke, seeing the day was won, ordered a general advance of his
worn-out army. The French, routed and surrounded, had soon no army, and
night closed on a scene of carnage and ruin, the presage of Napoleon’s
second fall.
Napoleon’s plan of attack on his last field was perfect, but his
tactics at Waterloo show many errors. He was certainly in difficulties
after the flank attack of Bülow, but he allowed his troops to be wasted
in the feint on our right; he made a premature use of his noble
cavalry, and he perhaps missed an opportunity to strike with the Guard
before Bülow’s diversion had become serious. For these mistakes he must
be held responsible, though he was badly seconded by his lieutenants,
especially by Ney--desperate, and stung by conscience--but all this was
because, as is now well known,[23] he was ill and worn out on the 18th
of June. The Duke, on the other hand, was the soul of the defence. He
made, indeed, a grave strategic mistake in leaving a large detachment
far off on his right, but his conduct of the battle was above praise;
and though he must have lost Waterloo had not the Prussians come up,
still the defeat would not have been the rout to which Napoleon had
looked with confidence.
Nevertheless, the result of Waterloo flowed from combinations outside
the field. It was caused by the junction of part of Blücher’s army with
Wellington; and the question for the student of war is, ought this
junction to have been prevented by Grouchy, detached by the Emperor to
make it impossible? The answer must largely depend on conjecture; but
I, for one, can have few doubts. Had Grouchy left Gembloux at daybreak
on the 18th, and, crossing the Dyle, made for Blücher’s flank, he would
have surprised the Prussian army in divided columns on a flank march of
extreme peril; and, giving Blücher credit for his splendid energy, I
am convinced he would have paused to confront his enemy, and this must
have prevented him reaching Wellington. The same result would have,
perhaps, followed, and this is Napoleon’s deliberate view[24]--not
impartial, perhaps, but not to be dismissed--had Grouchy simply marched
on Wavre in time, and fastened upon the rear of Blücher. The Emperor
insists that, even in this case, not a Prussian division would have
attained Waterloo. The arguments urged against these conclusions
disregard the peril of the march from Wavre, and the very events of
the day confute them. Grouchy, who should have been near Wavre at 11
A.M., did not reach it until 4 P.M., and yet his apparition stopped
the Prussian army; Ziethen and Pirch were delayed, Thielmann was left
at Wavre, and Blücher brought only 45,000 men, out of 90,000, to the
field of Waterloo, and that too only between 4 A.M. and 8 P.M. In view
of this fact, I can draw but one inference, and in this controversy all
that has been written by Charras, and authors of his school, seems to
me worthless.
[Illustration: NEY AT WATERLOO.]
A word on this memorable campaign, as a whole, and as to the lessons
it really teaches. Napoleon’s first operations were a masterpiece of
war; and these, and the grave strategic faults of the Allies--Blücher
ran into the lion’s mouth, the Duke did not know how sudden was his
spring--exposed both to alarming danger, and ought to have secured the
Emperor a decisive victory. The errors, however, of Ney and D’Erlon
saved Blücher at Ligny from utter ruin, and Napoleon’s over caution as
regards D’Erlon--though this is theory after the event--was certainly
unfortunate to the interests of France. The double retreat at Wavre
and Waterloo--another palpable strategic fault--gave Napoleon a second
great opportunity. No doubt can exist for those who understand his
career, that he would have seized it early on the 17th had he been
the chief of a few years before,[25] but he was no longer equal to
prolonged fatigue, and the negligence of his lieutenants and his
slumber at Fleurus lost him a chance not again afforded by fortune.
His prospects were not equally good on the 18th; he calculated on
destroying Wellington, but this, I believe, was beyond his powers, and
his delays, and the direction given to Grouchy and his wing, made it
possible for Blücher to join Wellington, a possibility that might have
been wholly excluded. Nevertheless, he ought to have gained Waterloo.
The arrangement of Grouchy’s force was sufficiently correct to have
enabled Grouchy to stop Blücher, and though the Emperor made more than
one mistake--and supreme genius is not omniscience--we still see in
this campaign the matchless strategist, great as ever in intellect,
but no longer equal, through physical weakness, to work out his
conceptions. Yet when this has been said, justice should be done to the
allied chiefs; and they deserved their triumph. Both, no doubt, made
serious strategic errors; from first to last they proved themselves
to be, strategically, unfit to cope with Napoleon, but both exhibited
as soldiers the finest qualities. Blücher’s conduct in rallying his
defeated army, and in attempting the march on Waterloo, shows energy
of the highest order. Wellington’s constancy and tactical skill at
Waterloo are admirable specimens of his genius in defence. The test of
the merits of the two commanders is to compare their conduct with what
would have been the conduct of any other chief of the Coalition opposed
to Napoleon; Schwartzenburg would not have risked the march from Wavre,
the Archduke Charles would have fallen back from Waterloo when he found
that the promised support was late, and in either event the Emperor
would have won the battle. Two subordinate causes of the issue of the
campaign cannot, in addition, be passed over. Napoleon’s army was too
small; 128,000 men could, with difficulty, be opposed to 224,000, and
this led to a distribution of his force--his wings not being well
connected with a weak centre--which partly explains his lieutenants’
faults, if it does not afford an excuse for them. The Prussian army,
besides, was a different army from that which had succumbed at Jena.
Napoleon refused to see the distinction; he would not believe--as, in
all instances, disregarding national and popular feeling--that it could
rally after Ligny, and draw near Wellington, and this had something
to do with his overthrow, though, I repeat, Blücher could not have
succeeded had Grouchy been a capable chief.
I shall not dwell on the closing scenes of a most strange and eventful
history. Napoleon at St. Helena realised the legend of the fabled
Prometheus; Genius, in conflict with Supreme Fact, was chained to a
rock, and held down by Force, and humanity turns away from the agony.
Yet impartial history will truly say that it was just to deprive
the great troubler of the world of liberty, and the animosities and
fears of the time account for, if they do not excuse, the indignities
suffered by the fallen Emperor. The student of war will turn with
gratitude to the rich fruits of Napoleon’s exile, his writings on
the art, in thought and style superior to all productions of the
kind, and those who imagine that German genius has created the latest
developments of war will be surprised to learn that if we omit what
belongs to purely material inventions, it has been anticipated at every
point by Napoleon.
My estimate of this extraordinary man can be easily gathered from what
I have written. Nature gave her prodigy an imagination such as she gave
to Dante and Milton; she added a power of calculation and thought, such
as she bestowed on Newton and Laplace; she contributed a superabundant
and practical energy, embracing alike what was great and small, such as
scarcely ever has been seen in man, and she conferred craft, dexterity,
readiness, and firmness of character in a most ample measure. Gifts
such as these would have made Napoleon one of the greatest of generals
in any age; but he fell on a time when the progress of husbandry and
facilities of locomotion, greatly increased, had created new conditions
for the military art; and when, too, Revolution in France had given a
powerful impulse to the human mind, and had made it singularly bold
and aspiring. Genius and circumstance thus concurred to place Napoleon
almost at once at the head of all warriors of modern times; and for
years it seemed, as if Fortune, whatever he did in the field, assured
him victory. He was unrivalled, from the first, as a strategist; the
plans of his early campaigns are marvels of genius as distinctive as
those of Shakspeare or Raphael; but though imagination is their most
striking feature, this as yet, as a rule, is controlled by judgment,
and astonishing as they are, they are thoroughly practical. The
peculiar excellence of these prodigies of art is the mastery of the
theatre of war, and Napoleon’s power in making it answer his ends;
the campaign on the Adige, that which led to Marengo, and that of
Austerlitz are perhaps the finest specimens of this supreme merit.
Conceptions, however, in war are useless unless skilful execution
follows; and Napoleon’s execution of his strategic projects was more
wonderful than the projects themselves. In these operations he, of
course, adhered to the methods of his great predecessors, for these
were in accord with the nature of things, and carried out principles
always true; for example, like every real strategist, his constant
object was to bring superior force to the decisive point, and so
to baffle and defeat the enemy; and, with these ends in view, like
Turenne, he struck repeatedly at the communications of his foe, and
endeavoured to gain his flank or rear; or, throwing himself between
divided enemies, attacked them in detail, and beat them down in
succession. But all this he did with an originality of design, with a
force of calculation, and, above all perhaps, with a power of stratagem
unequalled by Turenne or by any commander of modern times.
Nothing since the days of Hannibal can be compared to the descent
from the Alps, which conquered Italy, and to the march from the
Channel to the Danube, which destroyed a whole army by manœuvres,
and threw the gates of distant Vienna open. These marvels of war, it
must be borne in mind, however, were due not to Napoleon alone; they
were to be attributed, in a great degree, to circumstance and to his
perfect appreciation of it. From the new conditions made possible in
war, from the growth of agriculture and the multiplication of roads,
armies could subsist, in every fertile country, for the most part,
on resources on the spot, and could therefore dispense, to a certain
extent, with _impedimenta_ necessary before; they could also march
on a variety of lines with a rapidity never before possible; and the
art, so to speak, was given wings, and could take a flight into a new
sphere. First of the men of his time, Napoleon grasped these facts;
his armies living on the tracts they passed through, and making use
of every available road that was compatible with their safety on the
march, moved, not without magazines, indeed, nor without a solid base
and all kinds of supplies, but with a celerity never before known; and
the young chief out-manœuvred and terrified generals accustomed only
to the methods of the past. This was one of the secrets of Napoleon’s
early success; his genius fell in with and made the most of the new
conditions of the art of war, and for a long time he came, he saw, and
he conquered. Yet what had been a talisman might prove a peril, should
these conditions happen to fail; and history was to illustrate this by
most striking examples.
Napoleon was thus the first of strategists; he stands supreme, like
a Himalayan peak; there is nothing equal to him in this sphere of
the art. He has been surpassed in the lesser tactics; he never was a
regimental leader; he commanded in chief at too early an age to have
had practical experience of the three arms; he perhaps underrated the
strength of infantry, and rather exaggerated the force of cavalry,
and the only arm he thoroughly understood was artillery. But in the
province of the higher tactics, where strategy and tactics blend with
each other, his pre-eminence nearly, if not quite, reappears. He
detected the decisive point on a field of battle, and the true way to
cope with an enemy, almost as surely as on a great field of manœuvre;
but faults I shall notice were here sometimes seen, and I do not think
he excelled Marlborough, a tactician of the very first order. As a
military administrator he was, perhaps, unrivalled. His industry, his
grasp of facts in the mass, and his extraordinary mastery of details
were marvellous; and though the Grand Army had many defects, for it was
the hasty creation of an age of war, still it was the best army that
had been seen since the Legions; and, unlike the conscript armies of
our age, it was subjected to trials they have never endured. Napoleon’s
_Correspondence_ can alone give us a notion of his administrative
powers; and their results are most conspicuous in his immense
preparations for the campaign of 1807, for the passage of the Danube in
1809, for the invasion of Russia in 1812; and for the restoration of
the military strength of France in 1813 and 1815.
No wonder, then, that this prodigious genius, backed by favouring
circumstances, and the French Revolution, should have transformed the
art, to a great extent, and have given it an aspect of new grandeur.
Turenne did great things between the Scheldt and the Inn; Marlborough
did great things between the Meuse and the Danube; Frederick did great
things on the Elbe and the Oder; but what were these achievements,
splendid as they are, compared to Napoleon’s march of conquest? He
moves from the Var to the Po and the Adige, strikes down the power of
the House of Hapsburg, and dictates peace within sight of Vienna. He
issues from Switzerland across the Alps, envelops his enemy and gains
Italy; and had he had a lieutenant equal to himself, he would have
destroyed the Austrian armies in Swabia in 1800. He imprisons Mack in
1805, enters Vienna with an army encamped, a few weeks before, within
sight of our coasts, and annihilates for a time the military power of
Austria and Russia on the great day of Austerlitz, the most perfect
battle of the nineteenth century. The tale is the same the following
year; the operations are less striking, but Jena overwhelms the army
of Frederick, and a few days of well-planned manœuvres makes Napoleon
master of the Prussian monarchy.
His unbroken success comes here to an end; but even in his campaigns
of chequered fortunes, nay of disasters, we see the same grandeur,
marred as it often is, of conception and action. He defies Nature, and
receives her warnings in Poland; he narrowly escapes defeat at Eylau,
but his genius and will re-establish his power, and he strikes the
Czar down on the verge of old Europe. He defies national right and
feeling in Spain and Portugal, and meets reverses justly deserved;
but he hastens across the Somo Sierra to Madrid, and for the time he
subdues the Peninsula. When called back to France by the sound of war
on the Danube, he rectifies errors made in his absence by operations
of consummate skill; he once more reaches and conquers Vienna, and
having challenged Fortune at Aspern and Essling, he answers her rebuff
by a prodigious effort of energy and perseverance at Lobau, and he
ultimately triumphs on the field of Wagram.
The Nemesis of power attains him at last; his army is engulfed in the
snows of Russia, beyond the confines of the Western World, and yet
his movements are admirably designed, and his capacity was, perhaps,
never more conspicuous than at the Beresina. He reorganizes his forces
in 1813, with a rapidity and completeness that confound the Allies;
and though he loses at last his hold on Germany, he wins four great
battles, is able to make the issue of the contest doubtful for months,
and succumbs at Leipsic perhaps through defection only.
In the campaign of 1814 he aims at too much, yet his genius shines out
with such malignant splendour that his enemies shrink in terror from
it; he is victorious over and over again, and he is only overwhelmed
because France and Paris will not support his Empire. In 1815 he
sinks at last, through the effects of a crushing military reverse;
yet even in this campaign, spite of the faults of lieutenants and the
determination and energy of foes, the presence of the great master is
seen everywhere; and he only just misses splendid success.
Humanity, however, is never perfect, and there were many flaws in
this marvellous nature. The intensity of his imagination occasionally
mastered the prudence and calculating powers of Napoleon; we see this
even in his early years, in his project to march from the Nile to
the Indus, in his scheme of a descent on our coasts in the face of
immensely superior fleets; and we see it more clearly in his later
campaigns, in the advance from Smolensk into the depths of Muscovy, in
the attempt to reconquer the continent in 1813, in the resolution to
strike for the whole Empire, and not to recall all his forces to the
decisive point on the theatre in 1814. This dangerous quality sometimes
marred the strategy of Napoleon, and marked it with extravagance. He
was not so safe a strategist as Turenne, and his strategic reverses
were as great as his triumphs. Over confidence, too, and extreme
arrogance, combined with this excess of imaginative force, form
distinctive faults of Napoleon in war. We see them, even from the
first, in the campaigns of Italy; they appear plainly in his march on
Marengo, and nearly caused him to lose the battle; they are visible in
his advance on Austerlitz; they are conspicuous in his campaigns in
Poland; they largely contributed to the ruin of 1812; they prevented
him from saving his army at Leipsic; they lured him on to his fall in
1814; they are exhibited in 1815, in the false conviction that Blücher,
after Ligny, was utterly routed, and could not rally his shattered army.
To this fault must be added another, a kind of passionate desire to
crush an enemy, whatever the risk, on the field of battle. Napoleon
showed this at Caldiero in 1796; perhaps at Eylau in 1807, distinctly
in 1809 at Aspern and Essling; and most remarkably, and with the
worst results, at La Rothière, Craonne, Laon, and Arcis in 1814.
This even lessens his excellence as a tactician. With his marvellous
insight, in comprehending the ground and the weak points of a foe, he
sometimes attacked imprudently, and deserved defeat. He had not the
calm intelligence of Marlborough on the field, and here he is certainly
less great than Marlborough. Napoleon, too, had another defect, of a
moral kind, not to be overlooked; no one could hold a prouder or a
more daring attitude, no one knew better the power of the renown of
arms, but he did not confront misfortune, when hope seemed lost, with
the indomitable constancy of some warriors. He was unequal to himself
during the retreat from Russia--he ought not, I think, to have quitted
his army; he tried to kill himself in 1814; and in this respect he
falls below Frederick, who, in all others, is not to be compared to him.
Yet the most marked of his failures and shortcomings as a leader in
war have yet to be noticed. He thoroughly understood the material
conditions which made his grand offensive strategy possible. Yet he
disregarded the fact when these largely failed; he endeavoured to make
the same daring movements in barren Poland as in fertile Italy, in the
swamps and forests of Russia as in the plains of Germany; and though
he laboured to avert the resulting dangers, he could do so only in a
slight degree, and he failed when nature began to fail him.
Napoleon, too, had this special fault; he had many of the instincts
of the old _régime_; he simply abhorred Jacobinism, and all
its doings; he believed in force only as the means of ruling; and
throughout his career he had a rooted dislike and contempt of all
popular movements and feelings. This tendency led him into capital
errors, even from a purely military point of view; he believed that
he could conquer England by a descent; he scorned the national rising
in Spain, though it destroyed the flower of his best armies; he would
not lift a hand to liberate Poland, though this must have disabled
the Czar; he would not even at Moscow set the serfs free; he laughed
at German and Russian patriotism, and found the results of his scoffs
at Leipsic; he called the liberal movement of France at the close
of his reign, “metaphysical nonsense and visionary stuff,” and this
contributed to his fall in 1814.
In politics in the highest sense, and even in the larger affairs
of State, Napoleon did not attain supreme greatness. In this noble
province of wisdom and conduct, his genius was not in its true sphere,
the force of his intellect was out of its place; he followed false
lights, and fell into the gravest errors. His ideas of politics were
derived from the ambitious traditions of the old Monarchy, and from
the frightful scenes of the French Revolution, and his conception of
ruling was to extend the domination of France over a subject Continent,
and to keep down anarchy at home by despotic power, magnificent,
even national, but sternly repressive. His capacity, his craft, his
untiring energy were tasked to the utmost to compass these ends. The
Empire bestrode three-fourths of Europe; it extinguished Jacobinism
for some years in France, it nursed her in dreams of warlike glory, it
established order, prosperity, and material grandeur. Yet this vast
fabric of conquest and force, which, like the Satanic temple of the
poet’s vision, “rose like an exhalation,” as quickly vanished. The
Empire, founded on international wrong, and depending for its existence
on the enforced submission of great races conquered, but spurning the
yoke, was a defiance to Law divine and human; it was a contradiction to
the nature of things; and the methods by which its author upheld it,
harsh tyranny, statecraft, and the Continental system, were assurances
of his speedy overthrow.
As for Napoleon’s system of domestic government, splendid as it
seemed, and as it was for a time, it had no stability and could not
endure; it rested on the mere rule of the sword; it had no solid
support in old institutions, in settled traditions, in powerful
orders of men; it was a despotism controlling a demoralised people,
in which revolution had destroyed faith and loyalty. The character,
too, of this rule was bad; the execution of the Duc D’Enghien, and
many similar deeds of blood, were crimes that shocked the conscience
of mankind. Napoleon’s Bodies of State, his spy system, his organized
informers, his repression of thought, remind us of the Rome of the
later Cæsars; and, curiously enough, he hated Tacitus, the immortal
censor of Imperial tyranny. Yet the Empire was not a mere scheme of
oppression. It had a grand and beneficent side; it bears the marks of
the administrative gifts and capacity of its great creator; it largely
civilized while it subdued; it saved France from the vile rule of
demagogues; it gave her all that is solid in her social fabric, and the
Codes will outlive Marengo and Jena.
A word on Napoleon in his tent and his camp, the natural home of this
mighty spirit. The great captain was, in the main, a kind master to
submissive lieutenants; he lavished wealth and honours on his generals
and marshals; he was usually good-natured to these docile servitors.
But his personality was so overpowering that he made his subordinates
mere pawns on the board; he deprived them of self-reliance and freedom,
and as his nature was not magnanimous, he repeatedly blamed them for
his own errors. The results were injurious to him as a chief. Few of
his marshals were fit for independent command; they had little power of
initiative or true capacity, and they indemnified themselves for his
rebukes and gibes by squabbling, and often thwarting each other, as was
notably seen in Spain and Portugal. It was otherwise with the mass of
the army; here Napoleon’s influence was immense for good. He obtained
efforts from French soldiers, which no other chief has ever obtained;
his presence among them it has been said, was equal to 40,000 men; he
was prodigal of their blood, and set at nought their sufferings, if any
object was to be attained; but he was careful of their wants, knew how
to win their hearts, and was adored with a truly idolatrous passion.
As has been seen in the case of other great men, the inner life of
Napoleon had repulsive features; the figure loses majesty, when
undraped of its trappings. He had been brought up in an age of
wickedness, and Napoleon could lie, cheat, and forge with complete
indifference, if anything was to be gained by it. His manner and
voice could charm and fascinate, but his imperious nature made him
rude and brusque; he could scold and fly into fits of temper; “his
very caresses,” it has been said, “were feline”; he could be coarsely
familiar and suddenly savage. In his general bearing there was a want
of repose, of true self-respect, of natural dignity. In all these
respects, as in the weightier matters which pertain to the master art
of Empire, Napoleon falls far behind Cæsar through unquestionably the
superior of Cæsar in war.
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