by Tim Clayton
At this point Napoleon was exploring. He had no idea that the whole Prussian army was attempting to gather close by and no knowledge of what Wellington was doing. His scouts told him that the Prussians had at most 40,000 men opposed to him, hence his plan to thrust north-east and seize first Sombreffe and then Gembloux, thus blocking the two main routes to Brussels from Namur and Prussian bases further east. With the Prussians prevented from interfering, he would strike suddenly at Brussels with the rest of his men.
At the same time as Soult sent movement orders Napoleon sent out his own instructions. His Maison Militaire of aides and orderlies had always duplicated the État Major-Général, the headquarters staff, and he liked to amplify important orders sent by the Major-Général, partly as a safeguard, but also because his own aides, having better horses and more initiative, were likely to reach their destination faster and to be capable of interpreting the Emperor’s wishes in the face of the unexpected. Napoleon’s senior aides were far more than just messengers: as personal emissaries of the Emperor their word carried extra weight. They all had the rank of général-de-brigade, thus outranking mere colonels, and they were often used to conduct reconnaissances, lead attacks or command detached forces. Napoleon’s own orders naturally reveal a great deal more of his thinking than do those sent by Soult, and if any doubt remained in the mind of the recipient or if there were any conflict between the orders those sent by the Emperor took precedence. With duplicate orders being dispatched, however, there was always potential for confusion.
To Ney Napoleon sent Charles de Flahaut, supposed love-child of Talleyrand, lover of Josephine’s daughter Hortense, and one of the most gifted of his loyal followers. Napoleon’s letter told Ney that he was dividing his army into two wings and a reserve. He instructed Ney to take up position at Quatre Bras. Just what Napoleon would do depended on what happened after Grouchy’s attempted advance on Sombreffe, but Ney was to be prepared to march on Brussels later in the day, since Napoleon hoped to be there next morning following a forced march through the night. Napoleon’s staff expected the enemy to have evacuated not only Quatre Bras but also Nivelles and assumed Wellington’s outposts would fall back as Napoleon advanced.
The Emperor’s letter to Ney acknowledged that there might be some flare-up with the English but he expected Ney to have a quiet day gathering his troops in readiness for a march in the evening. He instructed Ney to place a division at Marbais, to cover the open space between the two wings and in order to reinforce either wing if necessary, and he wanted Kellermann’s cuirassiers stationed at the intersection of the Brussels high road with the Roman road so that they might also be in a position to support either wing. Ney could order Kellermann to join him if the Emperor did not need him. He told Ney to keep Lefèbvre-Desnouëttes’ Guard light cavalry with him because they would probably have to ride to Brussels later, but if there was fighting to be done to use line cavalry instead.
Napoleon sent a similar letter to Marshal Grouchy, placing it in the hands of General de la Bédoyère. Intended to reinforce his authority over Vandamme, this confirmed that Grouchy was now in charge of the right wing, that Vandamme and Gérard were to take his orders, and that they knew that Napoleon himself would only give them orders when he was present in person. Until now Grouchy had commanded the cavalry and had no authority over Vandamme beyond that of a marshal over a lieutenant-general: despite the accounts of some historians, he was only now placed in charge of the right wing. Grouchy was to advance on Sombreffe with 9000 cavalry supported by Vandamme’s 17,500 men and Gérard’s 15,400, seize the village and then drive on through to Gembloux. Jean-Baptiste Girard’s infantry division was close behind but was not to be used unless necessary, because he would later be required to march to Brussels. Napoleon himself would be at Fleurus by 11 a.m. with the Guard, but he did not expect them to have to fight either, since all intelligence indicated that Grouchy already had sufficient strength to beat what was estimated to be at most 40,000 retreating Prussians.4
There can be no doubt that at this point in the morning Napoleon was still full of optimism, confident that his original plan was working. He intended to smash Ziethen’s corps and possibly a few Prussian reinforcements and then, leaving a blocking rearguard behind him, march on Brussels along a road that was likely to be relatively free of troops. He expected that if the Prussians retreated, the British would retreat too.
Meanwhile, the troops still south of the Sambre spent the early morning eating, reorganising and crossing the river, although Gérard complained that he had been ready to march at 2 a.m. but that movement orders did not reach him until 9.30.5 Gérard’s men would not reach Fleurus until the early afternoon, but it seems that Napoleon had decided that before pressing forward again they needed rest and food, having been marching day and night.
Ney’s first job was to bring all his forces to the front. Jean-Baptiste Drouet d’Erlon’s corps was on the move in the very early morning, but the cavalry rearguard had over twenty miles to ride and the hindmost infantry seventeen to march to join up with Reille’s men, each unit setting off when the one behind it caught up. Meanwhile, Lefèbvre-Desnouëttes had sent out patrols as soon as it was light and had discovered that instead of retreating from Quatre Bras, the enemy had reinforced the troops there. Having reported this to Soult and briefed Reille, Ney rode forward to Frasnes to study the situation at the front, where it appeared that he would have to fight in order to drive away the Netherlanders.
Netherlands troops were spread across about two miles of ground either side of the cobbled road to Brussels, and on the western flank was a large, deep wood, capable of concealing large numbers of men. Lefèbvre-Desnouëttes’ patrols had watched Netherlands infantry marching into Quatre Bras from Nivelles, but had ridden into Genappe to the north of Quatre Bras and found it empty. So far, there was nothing approaching from Brussels. About 7 a.m. Guard cavalry made several probing attacks to test the attitude and strength of the Netherlanders.6 Apart from a single troop of Prussian hussars, there was no allied cavalry to stop Ney learning that the force at Quatre Bras was isolated and locally unsupported. Unless large numbers were hidden in the woods there were not many of them, but they were strong enough to resist the few infantrymen that Ney yet had near Frasnes.
Around 10 a.m. Jean-Baptiste Girard reported to Reille at Gosselies that he could see a column of Prussian troops marching along the main road from Namur to reinforce the Prussians who were near Fleurus. Reille requested Ney’s confirmation that he should march to Frasnes, rather than towards this Prussian concentration. Ney received Napoleon’s instructions around 10.30 and ordered Reille to Quatre Bras, in accordance with Soult’s marching orders. One division of cavalry was ordered to Marbais with one of d’Erlon’s divisions, and the others were to march to Frasnes. The other cavalry division was to scout in front and on the flanks of the column. Ney then reported to Soult, telling him that there seemed to be about 3000 enemy infantry and practically no cavalry at Quatre Bras, and that he thought it should not be difficult to execute the Emperor’s order to march on Brussels.
Ney’s messages still betray muddled uncertainty over just which divisions were where and who they were commanded by. The previous evening he had only known the position of two of Reille’s divisions and had the impression that most of d’Erlon’s troops were with him at Jumet. Now he believed that Reille was controlling Girard’s corps when in fact it had been borrowed by Napoleon, meaning that Ney had 5000 fewer front-line troops than he thought. This was ominous; he was using lancers of the Guard as messengers to supplement his skeletal staff, and all through the day he was to borrow members of Soult’s staff on the grounds that he had none of his own.
In response to Ney’s early morning situation report Soult ordered him to concentrate his forces and destroy whatever enemy was at Quatre Bras.7 Kellermann’s cavalry corps started from south of the Sambre near Charleroi at a leisurely pace, knowing that it had a night march to Brussels to look forward to, and Kellerm
ann probably then obeyed Napoleon’s instruction to halt at the junction of the chaussée with the Roman road between Gosselies and Frasnes, from where he was only to move on to join Ney if the Emperor did not need his help at Fleurus. Similarly, Ney was only to employ Lefèbvre-Desnouëttes’ men if he had to, keeping their casualties to a minimum and saving them for the evening’s march on Brussels. These orders were never modified and were to have the effect of keeping three powerful divisions of cavalry largely inactive for the entire day.
Napoleon arrived at Fleurus about 11 a.m. and his engineers adapted the windmill of Naveau, overlooking the vast plain that stretched towards Sombreffe, as his observation post and headquarters. It was there that he received Girard’s report warning that there were Prussian regiments marching in from the east, and so he ordered Soult and Grouchy to inspect the front line and find out what they could about the strength and position of the Prussian troops.8
Napoleon later blamed himself for not spending the night on the front line, but he had no reason to sense impending danger. Had he been near Fleurus he would have seen what was happening sooner and might have acted more dynamically, but he would still have been short of troops. It may have been an oversight by the staff that the rearmost troops, such as Gérard’s, were not on the march in the small hours, but it may have been judged that they needed rest. Both Ney and Napoleon were proceeding at a methodical pace and Ney was aware that he had to conserve the energy of his men for a gruelling night march later on. Both generals have been accused of lethargy on the morning of 16 June, but with many of their troops a long way from the points at which the enemy was awaiting them and having to be brought up, there was really little that either man could do to make things happen faster.
20
The Prince of Orange at Quatre Bras
16 June, 5–12 a.m.
The hamlet of Quatre Bras was clustered around the crossroads of the Nivelles–Namur highway and the Charleroi–Brussels chaussée, twenty-three miles south of Brussels and nine miles north of Charleroi. There was nothing naturally strong about the terrain there and it did not lend itself to defence; it was only strategically important thanks to its location at the junction of the two routes from Nivelles and Brussels that Wellington’s army would naturally use to come to Blücher’s aide, or by which Blücher would most naturally retreat towards Brussels.
Both roads were wide and cobbled for vehicles, with broad dirt tracks for horses beside the cobbled area, and both were relatively level because they ran through cuttings or on causeways where the surrounding contours changed. Dominating the flat, golden plain towards Frasnes, where the French were based, was the large Bois de Bossu, extending for a mile and a half from the Nivelles–Namur road towards Frasnes and between 500 and 1000 yards wide. The wood was a remnant of an ancient forest of beeches with a few oaks, dense at its fringes but largely clear within, where the mature trees prevented much undergrowth.1 A sunken lane ran between high banks along its eastern edge and another track ran through it from east to west. To the east of the village of Frasnes was a similar huge wood, the Bois Delhutte, and it was into this wood that French troops were directed as they arrived, so as to remain concealed.
General Perponcher and Prince Bernhard toured the outposts at first light on a misty morning. Perponcher moved a battalion of Nassau light infantry into the Bois de Bossu to support the rifle-armed Nassau Jägers who were guarding it, and deployed the light infantry of the Dutch 27th Jäger battalion as skirmishers in the fields of tall crops between the strongly built farm of Gémioncourt and the hamlet of Piraumont. After grabbing a couple of hours’ sleep, the young Prince of Orange arrived and inspected the position, to find that the mist had still not cleared. He ordered the front line to undertake a fighting reconnaissance to get a sense of French strength, and his Netherlands Jägers and Normann’s Nassau light infantry pushed forward and seized back all the ground that had been lost the previous evening. The French retreated tamely, their cavalry outposts skirmishing with the troop of Silesian Hussars that Perponcher had persuaded to join them.
Blücher had sent a Prussian staff officer to discover the cause of the gunfire that had been heard by Prussian troops the previous night, and he reported to Blücher at 6.30 that according to the Prince of Orange all the Belgian troops and many of the British would be at Nivelles in three hours. The Prussian sent the displaced troop of Silesian Hussars to Marbais, hoping they might keep the road open.
Orange was still worried, understandably, that while his forces were pinned down defending Quatre Bras, the French might make a thrust at Nivelles. So he sent orders for Chassé’s division to take up defensive positions above the town and Alten’s 3rd Division to reinforce them as soon as they arrived from the west. Needing cavalry desperately, not least in order to discover what was happening around him, he summoned Merlen’s light horsemen to Quatre Bras. A second forward probe by the Nassauers was met by artillery, which suggested that the French had been reinforced. Orange sent a messenger to Wellington to report what he had learned and what he had done.
Wellington left Brussels with his staff about 8 a.m., trotting past the reserve column which had halted, as instructed, between Waterloo and Mont Saint-Jean where the road forked right for Nivelles or left for Charleroi. The 95th Rifles were in front: ‘The recruits lay down to sleep, while the old soldiers commenced cooking,’ wrote Sergeant Ned Costello, who noticed the astonishingly loud birdsong at the forest edge that beautiful morning.2 The sun had broken through the mist and it was one of those days you knew from the start was going to be hot, so most of the column had stayed in the shade under the trees.
Waterloo was a small village towards the edge of the Forest of Soignes. As you marched south the trees remained thick on the left but thinned out towards open fields on the right. Whitewashed cottages roofed with slate or tiles lined the road on both sides, and opposite a couple of inns, catering to the carters carrying coal from Charleroi to Brussels, was an open space around a surprisingly imposing domed church with an elaborate portico. From the forest edge the ground rose gently to a long ridge, with the road running through cuttings where the gradient was at all steep. The trees stopped just before the windmill of Mont Saint-Jean, where there was a first straggle of thatched cottages, followed by a second where the road forked. Higher up the slope towards Charleroi stood the large enclosed farm of Mont Saint-Jean. Along the top of the ridge ran a lane, and from there the open fields of grain and clover dipped gently down and up to another, higher ridge. While Picton’s men rested, waiting to be told which branch of the road to take, Carl von Rettberg’s artillery battery caught up with them, and the Brunswick Leib-Battalion overtook them, marching rapidly after their Duke who had ridden ahead with Wellington towards the town of Genappe on the road to Quatre Bras.
Wellington arrived at Quatre Bras in mid-morning, to see the tail of two Netherlands militia battalions and a battery of guns march in from Nivelles. The troops of both sides were cooking. Nothing was happening and Wellington’s cool approach to the crisis seemed entirely justified. The Netherlanders had identified their opposition as chasseurs, lancers and horse artillery of the Guard with some infantry of the line; this led the officers gathered at Quatre Bras to admit, somewhat sheepishly, that this might be merely a strong reconnaissance by the French. Possibly it was masking some other attack, perhaps on the Prussians, perhaps on Nivelles.3
Wellington discussed the situation with Blücher’s emissary and sent the marshal a note containing his assessment of the current location of his forces and their expected time of arrival. The Duke, however, was wildly over-optimistic: in reality, the British troops still covered the roads to Brussels from Tournai at Enghien, from Mons at Braine and from Binche at Nivelles. Although part of it would arrive by nightfall, Wellington told Blücher that Lord Hill’s corps was already at Braine-le-Comte when it had actually barely reached its points of concentration and had not yet received the order to march. Similarly, he told Blücher that he expected the
cavalry to be at Nivelles by noon.
Some historians have suggested that it was Wellington’s deliberate policy to mislead Blücher or to deceive him into basing calculations on false hopes; others speculate that he and his staff knew they had blundered and were too embarrassed to reveal the full extent of the likely delay before their troops appeared. If this was so then it was wrong. However, it seems more likely that a problem was discovered only after the message was sent. Although Wellington had sent orders to proceed onwards to both bodies before he left Brussels, he may have learned only at Quatre Bras that a mishap had occurred for, according to Dörnberg, he there made out a second order for the cavalry to move from Enghien to Quatre Bras. The memoirs of cavalrymen confirm that many regiments were delayed at Enghien for a considerable period awaiting further orders.4
At 10.30 Picton received orders to march on the ten miles to Quatre Bras rather than towards Nivelles, while Alten’s division entered Nivelles and promptly collided with Chassé’s battalions which were marching through it. Fortunately, Constant arrived and got all 15,000 men into position to defend the town, with the British on the east side nearest Quatre Bras. When a convoy of commissariat wagons appeared, the troops were issued three days’ allowance of salt beef and ship’s biscuit.5 Ompteda’s brigade of legionaries was sent forward to check any French advance from Binche. General Cooke’s Guards division had meanwhile reached Braine-le-Comte, fifteen miles west of Quatre Bras, but had found the road through it blocked by baggage wagons. The men, sweating under their weighty packs in the extreme heat as they waited, ceaselessly sang a popular song with the refrain ‘All the world’s in Paris’.6 Cooke rode to Le Miroir for orders but discovered that headquarters had departed for Nivelles without leaving him any new instructions, so he decided to make his own reconnaissance while the troops threw their packs down and rested.