Waterloo
Page 5
When Bonaparte landed in France, the government in London had its hands full. ‘No Corn Bill is chalk’d upon half the Walls in London,’ noted Lady Lucas in her journal that day, and from 6 March there were violent riots in which the windows of government ministers were smashed and their houses broken into. The 16th Light Dragoons, quartered at Hounslow and Hampton Court, were ‘called up to the neighbourhood of Westminster Bridge for the purpose of being in readiness for the riots occasioned by the passing of the Corn Laws’, and several more regiments were also deployed. However, the return of Bonaparte to France, confirmed on 11 March, so focused minds that the rioting ceased and in early April the Dragoons embarked for Ostend.9
Britain accepted the need to fight. ‘Mr. Whitbread has already said in the H: of C: that we ought not to interfere in the Affairs of France. – But Alas! If we do not Buonaparte will interfere with us,’ wrote Lady Lucas. Lord Byron was sickened by the ‘barking of the wardogs’ but the Whig leaders in Parliament who spoke against war carried very few with them. Assistant surgeon William Gibney recalled:
The call to arms was universal, and well responded to; but to judge by what was written in the papers and by general conversation, there was little enthusiasm. None cared to begin war again, or have increased taxation for the relief of a nation or nations proving themselves somewhat unthankful for former assistance … However, all felt that war was inevitable, and that this disturber of Europe must be crushed; for so long as he was free or lived, thus long would there be war. It was necessary therefore to put him down, and with him destroy the power of the French nation to do harm and create revolutions.10
The problem for Britain was what to fight with, for Wellington’s demands for more and better troops could not easily be met. Many of his experienced Peninsular veterans were still in America, where the war declared against Britain by the United States in 1812 had only recently reached a conclusion, and many troops that were in Britain were needed to discourage insurrections and riots, especially but not exclusively in Ireland.
The most reliable body at Wellington’s disposal when he arrived in the Netherlands was the King’s German Legion, and even that was seriously under-strength. The Legion had been formed from volunteer refugees from the Electorate of Hanover after the French invasion of 1803. Its core consisted of excellent former Hanoverian regular soldiers, such as Christian von Ompteda who had commanded a battalion of Hanoverian Guards before taking ship for England in 1803. Volunteers from the Guards were incorporated into the 1st line battalion of the Legion, of which Major Ompteda became the second-in-command. The Legion fought throughout the Peninsular campaign, with its light battalions especially often taking the most dangerous assignments. Over time, it accepted all sorts of foreign volunteers, but non-Hanoverian recruits had been discharged in 1814.
Friedrich Lindau had joined in 1809 when he was twenty, having been apprenticed to a shoemaker in Hamelin and run away from home to escape to England. This was an extraordinary adventure that involved going up the river Weser and making contact with Englishmen clandestinely based at the island of Heligoland, from where the British smuggled goods into Germany and picked up recruits. He was marched from Harwich to the depot of the King’s German Legion at Bexhill in Sussex where he joined the 2nd Light infantry, then commanded by the Scot Colin Halkett, before being sent to Portugal in 1811. He fought the Peninsular campaign in what was a spearhead unit, his memoir demonstrating greater interest in theft of food than fighting, though his prowess at both became notorious. The Legion had a number of British officers, of whom Edmund Wheatley was one. He had joined the 5th line battalion of the Legion as an ensign in the Pyrenees in 1813 and had fought the last, difficult stages of the campaign in Spain and southern France with a unit that was usually in the vanguard under Christian von Ompteda, who had been promoted to command it. In 1815 the Legion comprised eight small battalions of infantry, five large regiments of fine cavalry and three batteries of artillery.
Wellington considered much of the British army of occupation in the Netherlands fit only for garrison duty, and four regiments that he accepted for the field army were entirely raw, though the 73rd Foot had gained confidence from a campaign with the Hanoverians in north Germany: to the regret of Sergeant Tom Morris, they had narrowly missed taking part in the battle of Leipzig. Only one of the four battalions of Foot Guards had any experience in Spain, and only the 30th Cambridgeshires and 44th East Essex were hardened Peninsular veterans.
The Hanoverians had fought alongside Britain since the Elector of Hanover became King George I in 1714. The Electorate had been overrun by France in 1803, annexed by Prussia in 1805 and ceded to France in 1807, after which it ceased to exist, its territory providing the largest part of Napoleon’s new kingdom of Westphalia. But on 12 October 1814 the Congress of Vienna decided that Hanover should be reinstated as a kingdom with George III as king. Field battalions of volunteers had been raised to fight in 1813 and these were being supplemented by freshly conscripted militias or ‘Landwehr’ with experienced corporals, sergeants and officers from the King’s German Legion or the former army of Westphalia. Hanover eventually provided a field force of two light, five line and fifteen Landwehr battalions, 37,576 men, together with a reserve force 9000 strong which was assigned to garrison duty. It also raised 1682 cavalry and two good foot batteries. Wellington trusted the loyalty if not the military readiness of the rapidly forming Hanoverian levies.
The Dutch and Belgian regular units contained soldiers with considerable experience of fighting for Napoleon, chiefly against the British in Spain. Wellington did not want officers who had fought with Bonaparte in charge of important garrisons, while Orange’s secretary Colborne reported ‘I would not trust the Belgian Troops an inch.’11 A Dutch officer found the spirit of the 8th Hussars especially worrying: in March at Antwerp a fight had broken out between some 8th Hussar officers and Hanoverians in which sabre blows were exchanged, before the Belgians, whose colonel had formerly commanded the French 16th Chasseurs, disappeared into a crowd from which shouts of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ were heard. Two hundred and sixteen of the 8th Hussars deserted between January and 17 June 1815.12 The Duke of Wellington shrewdly suspected that the Belgians might change sides given half a chance and a report for the Prussians reached similar conclusions, while the mood of the civilians in the French-speaking Walloon regions of Liège and Hainault ranged between sullen resentment and open hostility to the foreign, monarchist forces billeted upon them.
The Netherlands militia, a combination of volunteers and conscripts raised for the 1814 campaign, armed with British muskets and stiffened by regular NCOs and officers, were considered more reliable in terms of loyalty. Many were young soldiers with a year’s experience or less; others had served longer, but usually in the French army. Eventually, including its battalions from Nassau in Germany, the army fielded a total of twelve line, eleven light and fifteen militia battalions, together with seven regiments of cavalry, making 3405 cavalry, 24,305 infantry and 72 guns.
Wellington was anxious to reinforce his army with Germans but there were bitter disputes between Prussia and Britain at Vienna over which force the smaller German states should join. The Prussians wanted all the north German states to fight with them, but Wellington argued that this would leave him impossibly short, so the Prussians conceded Brunswick, Oldenburg, the Hanseatic cities of Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck and, most unwillingly, Nassau and the 7000 or so Saxons who remained Saxon after the projected partition agreed in Vienna.13 The wrangling went on so long that most states did not mobilise in time to fight for either army. Although the newly recruited Brunswickers set out from Braunschweig on 15 April, the Hanseatic contingent only turned up to fight for Wellington in July.
In organising this army, Wellington sought to combine good British troops with weaker and less experienced foreign units, as he had done to good effect in the Peninsula. The king of the Netherlands refused, insisting that his men fought in national divisions, but the Hanover
ians were split up, much to their disappointment, for they felt that British officers looked down on them and made no attempt to understand their traditions or to socialise with them.14 Meanwhile, the British government was still dragging its heels. Three weeks after he had demanded 150 guns, Wellington was being offered 72, for which he would have to buy horses. The problem was not horses, he explained, but drivers, of which there were none to be had anywhere. If they couldn’t find proper artillerymen he wanted them to send dragoons to do the driving.15 None of the best of his seasoned troops and trusted assistants had yet arrived and in early May Wellington thought he had ‘an infamous army, very weak and ill-equipped, and very inexperienced staff’.16 His vehemence reflected a deep anxiety: that Napoleon might yet attack him before he was ready.
5
The Prussians
‘Boys, clean your rifles’, said my old and venerable father, entering my room where I was studying Loder’s Anatomical Tables; ‘he is loose again’. – ‘Napoleon?’ – ‘He has returned from Elba.’
My heart beat high; it was glorious news for a boy of fifteen, who had often heard with silent envy the account of the campaigns of 1813–14 from the lips of his two brothers, both of whom had marched in 1813, in common with most young men of good families, as volunteer riflemen, and returned as wounded officers.
Following his brothers’ example, Franz Lieber volunteered immediately to be a rifleman, choosing the Pomeranian Colberg Regiment, named after the fortress that they had defended with glory in 1807 when the rest of Prussia had fallen to the French. There was such a huge throng at the recruiting table in Berlin that he had to queue for three hours to enlist.1 In Germany it was common for middle-class boys to volunteer to be riflemen. They had the means to provide their own rifle – thus saving the state money – as well as the intelligence to survive a form of infantry combat that demanded initiative.
As Lieber’s introduction to the army suggests, the Prussians were animated by fierce patriotism and a burning loathing for Bonaparte and for Frenchmen in general, cordially reciprocated by the French. During their long domination of Prussia the French had exacted heavy taxes and taken whatever they wanted. In 1813 Prussia had led the German rising against their French overlords. Patriotic young men joined Ludwig von Lützow’s Freikorps, a unit that attracted artists, students and academics from all over Germany as well as more ordinary folk. Ludwig Nagel, son of a joiner from Schwerin, now a highly educated polylingual theologian, was one such, soon elected a lieutenant by his fellow ‘Black Jägers’. They dyed their own clothes black for uniforms and some students swore they would not cut their hair or beards until the French had been driven from Germany.
Napoleon had destroyed the old Prussian army, considered the best in Europe under Frederick the Great, in 1806 in humiliating defeats at Jena and Auerstädt. In the following years Gerhard von Scharnhorst and August von Gneisenau had rebuilt it, imitating the French model, as a citizen army of conscripts and volunteers, organised in self-sufficient corps. Most Prussian men were subject to compulsory military service, but few conscripts ever served with such good will.
In 1815 the army was again in the process of reorganisation. Having contracted to save money in 1814, it was suddenly expanded on Napoleon’s return and this meant many regiments had to be brought up to strength with inexperienced troops. A third of the army was made up of Landwehr militia units, and although many of their men had battle experience, the regiments lacked training, cohesion and equipment. Throughout the Prussian army troops were making do with a mixture of British, Russian and French uniforms and weapons.
Large numbers of men in the Prussian army came from parts of old Prussia that had recently been recovered, having been ‘Westphalian’ since 1807, or from lands recently ceded to Prussia like Napoleon’s Duchy of Berg (the area around Düsseldorf). Eight thousand new recruits had been raised from newly Prussian territory between the Maas and the Rhine in spring 1815 and another 8000 bilingual Rhinelanders, mostly from Bonn, Cologne and Düsseldorf, were already serving, having recently fought for the Emperor. Their commitment and loyalty were suspect. As the Prussian chief of staff later explained, ‘in the course of a few days [men] found themselves belonging to a new country, owing a new allegiance, subject to a new organisation and fresh levies, [and they] had not joined the army above six or eight weeks before hostilities began.’2 Some joined one of the six Westphalian Landwehr regiments and some reinforced regular units. Of 523 Rhineland conscripts who joined the 24th Regiment on 11 May, 93 had deserted by early June.3
Prussian troops theoretically wore blue but there was insufficient stock to supply the troops with new uniforms, for the Prussian state was desperately short of money. Reserve units that had worn grey or black continued to do so, while the regiments from the Duchy of Berg still dressed in the shabby white uniforms they had worn when fighting for France. The British supplied some equipment, but this was a scruffy, under-equipped army of many hues. A British officer who saw them pass through Brussels in 1814 described ‘hardy rough-looking men’ in ragged clothes, with women who rode astride and ‘had as campaigning an aspect as their lords’ and pathetically undersized horses pulling their guns.4 Throughout continental Europe the long wars had caused a dearth of good horses, and cavalrymen as well as artillery drivers were poorly mounted. Prussian uhlans were nominally lancers (they had adopted the Polish name for their lancer units) but some were not – having no lances and no training in their use. Whereas the Dutch, knowing the quality of Belgian roads in bad weather, had issued their troops with three pairs of shoes, the Prussians got one pair and one spare shoe. That these shabby troops were to march and fight with such determination owed a great deal to the personality of their beloved general, Blücher.
Prince Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher was seventy-two and a half years old. Born in Mecklenburg, like Queen Charlotte of Britain, he joined the Swedish army as a hussar at sixteen and, having been captured by the Prussians, switched to their service. His love of gambling, women and drinking was noted; after one drunken frolic Frederick the Great announced that ‘Captain von Blücher can go to the Devil’ and never employed him again. After Frederick’s death Blücher took part in the suppression of the Dutch revolution in 1787 and distinguished himself as a colonel of hussars in the campaigns of 1793 and 1794. He was promoted lieutenant-general in 1801, fought at Auerstädt and, after the main army surrendered, led a rearguard in a fighting retreat until he was trapped against the Danish frontier. The influential patriot and reformer Gerhard von Scharnhorst had served as Blücher’s chief of staff in this campaign and fought alongside him again during the war of liberation until he was fatally wounded. After Scharnhorst’s death Blücher took Gneisenau as his chief of staff, defeating two French marshals before meeting Napoleon at Leipzig. It was the fourth battle between them and the first that Blücher won, for it was Blücher’s army that took the town on the last day of the battle. He was defeated a further three times by Napoleon during the latter’s retreat towards France, but crushed the heavily outnumbered Emperor at Laon and then marched on Paris. Afterwards he visited England where the press trumpeted him as a hero.
Inseparable from his pipe, Blücher called his soldiers his children. Having limitless courage, energy and determination, after each setback he would dust himself down and drive onwards: ‘Alte Vorwärts’ (Old Forwards) was what his soldiers called him, along with ‘Papa Blücher’. They loved him, and he could get troops to do things that few others could. Diplomacy, subtlety and guile were not part of Blücher’s character, but he was not stupid and had abundant common sense. He was intensely patriotic and, in common with many other Germans, his enmity to Napoleon had the strength of a personal vendetta. To Blücher Napoleon’s return meant unfinished business: he told his soldiers that he was going back to look for the old pipe that he had left behind at Paris.
Politics, logistics and tactical detail were all handled by the field marshal’s quartermaster-general and right-hand man. ‘If I
am to be made a doctor,’ Blücher remarked in 1814 of an honour conferred by the University of Oxford, ‘they should at least make Gneisenau an apothecary, for we go together.’5 On another occasion he claimed that he was the only man who could kiss his own head, demonstrating it by kissing Gneisenau’s substantial cranium. Blücher freely recognised his own limitations, lacked vanity and welcomed help towards the common cause. This greatly lubricated relations with Wellington, for whom Gneisenau had no great liking.
Born in 1760, August von Gneisenau was nine years older than Napoleon and Wellington. The son of a Saxon artillery lieutenant, he was an outsider among the Prussian aristocrats who dominated the senior military ranks and he gravitated towards Blücher, who was also a foreigner. As a youth he went to fight rebel American colonists in a German unit in British pay, though the war ended soon after he reached America and he merely joined the garrison of Quebec. On his return he applied for Prussian service, fought at Jena in 1806 and defended the fortress of Colberg until the war ended. After that he had helped Scharnhorst remodel the Prussian army, but he resigned in 1809 when the king of Prussia refused to join his planned national rising. He visited Austria, Russia, Sweden and England before returning to Prussia as a leader of the patriotic party. Gneisenau was thought to be republican by inclination and the king of Prussia referred to him and Blücher as ‘mad Jacobins’, but still chose to put them in charge of his army.6
There was political tension between Britain and Prussia and much potential for misunderstanding between the two armies, despite their common cause against Napoleon. Nevertheless, when on 5 April Wellington requested Gneisenau to move Prussian troops closer to Brussels in order to ward off a sudden strike from Napoleon, Gneisenau responded by issuing orders for his two most complete corps to march to Charleroi and Namur. He was not happy, though, suspicious of Wellington’s pro-Bourbon politics and worried that the move might compromise his own responsibility to defend Germany. The loss of the Prussian army in a battle for Brussels was too catastrophic for Gneisenau to contemplate. He distrusted the arrogant Wellington, who outranked him both socially and militarily, and disliked being kept in the dark. He had the Prussian liaison officer in Belgium write to the Duke to ask what the plan was, where Wellington intended to give battle, how many Prussians would be involved and what would be the course of action were they to be defeated. Napoleon then further poisoned the suspicious atmosphere in Prussian headquarters by allowing an emissary carrying a copy of the Secret Treaty of Vienna to fall into Gneisenau’s hands. The discovery of the combination between Britain, Austria and France against Prussia did not go down well. Wellington responded sensibly and decisively to dispel suspicion and make his position clear. He sent a trusted and charming young staff officer, Henry Hardinge, to give Gneisenau a private explanation of the embarrassing revelation of the secret pact, and then to remain with the Prussian staff as liaison officer, to act as a channel of communication and explanation between the two camps.7 On 10 April Wellington wrote to Gneisenau with a candid exposition of his thoughts and plans, reassuring him that in the case of a setback the whole army could retreat eastwards to continue to protect Germany.8