by Tim Clayton
To defend Quatre Bras there were now nine battalions of infantry and sixteen guns, a total of 6500 men present despite rather than because of Wellington’s orders, and Prince Bernhard felt that he was owed some thanks for having had the initiative to prevent the French from occupying the place the previous evening. However, since it now looked as if the threat had been exaggerated, Wellington ignored him, so the Prince was left sullen and resentful.7
After making this brief assessment of the situation at Quatre Bras, where the small French force then present did not seem very threatening, Wellington set out on the seven-mile ride along the cobbled chaussée to Sombreffe, with Dörnberg, Müffling, some staff and a small cavalry escort. Just after he left, however, the light troops resumed their skirmishing and cannonading recommenced.
21
The View from Brye
The ‘Sombreffe position’, 16 June, morning
The Prussians were as keen as Wellington to concert plans for the cooperation of the two armies. So Gneisenau sent Hardinge to find Wellington, bringing with him a deserter from Grouchy’s staff. They met on the tree-shaded chaussée and returned together, turning off the cobbles into burning sunshine down a track to the village of Brye, which lay on a stream in a slight valley, then climbing up a wooded slope to a farm on high ground five hundred yards south-east of the village.
Nobody noticed the Duke as his party approached, until Ziethen’s chief of staff Reiche recognised him from the cavalry review the previous month. Then everyone turned to gaze at ‘the famous war hero’, as his Prussian admirer called him. Reiche was struck by the modesty of Wellington’s dress and even more impressed by his fine chestnut horse and the utilitarian practicality of his equipment. Behind his saddle was a little case in which Wellington kept a change of clothes; and where most officers had pistol holsters in front of their saddle, Wellington strapped a little mule box containing pieces of prepared hide – better than paper because it did not disintegrate when wet – on which he wrote orders in pencil.1
Reiche ushered Wellington up the stairs onto the balustrade around the wooden windmill of Bussy from where, through telescopes, the Prussian generals were studying French columns in movement in the hazy distance around Fleurus, nearly two miles south. It was clear that a large French army was converging in front of Blücher; he estimated it at 130,000 men, though this was certainly more than could be seen, and his estimate was probably based on what he had been told by deserters.
Overnight the Prussian staff had been very fearful for their prospects as they realised how late their troops were going to arrive at Sombreffe, and Ziethen’s I Corps had been forced into the front line because there were no other troops present. Now Ziethen’s men were lined up before and beside the generals in the open fields that sloped gently downhill towards the village of Saint-Amand in the valley below them. Viewing the disposition of Prussian troops from his position in the windmill, Wellington later claimed to have deplored the manner in which Ziethen’s corps, on the slope down to the Ligne stream, had been displayed to the enemy, exposed to French artillery. Ziethen’s men did indeed suffer in consequence, but much of the Prussian army was concealed from French view behind Wellington on the reverse slope beyond the cobbled road from Namur to Nivelles.2
Twelve hundred yards behind the generals, the cobbled road ran along a slight ridge forming a watershed from its intersection with the Roman road to Gembloux at the inn of Les Trois Burettes; it then dipped into a valley at the village of Sombreffe before climbing up to the inn called Le Point du Jour, which stood at the crossroads with the road from Fleurus to Gembloux. The road continued eastward to Mazy and Namur, from where tired Prussian regiments were still marching proudly in.
Below the windmill hill occupied by the generals the ground dropped away either side and in front to the valley of the Ligne, a stream lined with the straggling villages of Wagnelée, nearly a mile to their right, Saint-Amand-la-Haye just over half a mile south-west, Saint-Amand proper reaching south, with its church a mile away and almost in front of them as they faced Fleurus, and Ligny, half a mile south-east on their left. Beyond Ligny, the stream, widening to a small river, meandered to Sombreffe, more than a mile north-east, and to further villages beyond. Karl von Steinmetz’s brigade had occupied the high ground above Saint-Amand in front of them, Friedrich von Jagow’s was close by around Brye and the windmill, those of Prussian aristocrat Count Wilhelm Henckel von Donnersmarck in and behind Ligny to their left, and Otto von Pirch’s in reserve behind them. Friedrich von Röder had covered the withdrawal from Fleurus with his cavalry and then took up a position between Brye and Ligny. He maintained an outpost of Black Lancers near the conspicuous tumulus called the Tombe de Ligny, south-west of the village.3
In the early morning Gneisenau had suffered the sickening realisation that the 32,000 men of Bülow’s IV Corps could not possibly reach the battlefield before evening, so they would have to fight with a quarter of their army missing. The messenger he had sent to meet Bülow at Hannut reported back in a note timed at 11.30 p.m. that IV Corps had still not arrived and that – somewhat belatedly – he was about to set out for Liège to try to find it. Meanwhile, a message from Bülow announced that he would complete his concentration at Hannut that morning. Gneisenau must have been torn between fury and despair, since the misunderstanding was partly his fault. Bülow’s corps left Liège at dawn but stopped for two hours around midday to rest and eat when they reached the old Roman road, still twenty-five miles away. There Bülow received Blücher’s order to keep marching along the Roman road to Gembloux.
Despite this setback, time passed with no French assault, the Prussian troops of II and III Corps began to assemble at the edge of the battlefield and the generals gradually became more confident. Meanwhile, the forward skirmishers of Ziethen’s division fortified the villages in the valley, made loopholes in walls and barricaded the approaches.4
Around nine o’clock, the first regiments of Georg von Pirch’s II Corps marched past Prince Blücher, who was standing outside the presbytery at Sombreffe, and cheered him. The field marshal was still there when Ludwig Nagel’s regiment arrived, ‘his head in his right hand as if deep in thought, watching us march by’. Volunteer rifleman Franz Lieber’s Colberg Regiment arrived slightly later, having marched all day and all night. As they approached the battlefield they got a grandstand view of the troops manoeuvring below, drums rolling and richly embroidered white flags with crosses in bright colours drooping in the listless air. The roads to a battlefield were always strewn with litter: soldiers would lighten their packs by throwing away books and old shoes, while the more superstitious threw away playing cards, for there was a widespread belief among these religious men that playing cards attracted musket balls. The same applied to dice and bawdy songbooks which, like packs of cards, had to be thrown over the head without a backward glance in order to free the soldier from their ill effect. Lieber, who was not superstitious, picked up a nice-looking pack of cards on the outskirts of Sombreffe.5
Having reached a position level with the village of Ligny, the men of the Colberg Regiment turned right and rested on the downward slope north of the cobbled road while their stragglers caught up with the main body. They waited nervously for action. Some swallowed cartridges, thinking that gunpowder prevented infection, or in the belief that they would not be shot if they already had a bullet inside them. Since each man in Lieber’s company of volunteer middle-class riflemen had brought his own rifle, they were of different calibres and they had to make their own balls to fit; they had received a supply of lead in order to cast their own ammunition just a week earlier. ‘It is one of the most peculiar situations a man of reflecting mind can be in,’ wrote Lieber, ‘when he casts his balls for battles near at hand.’ That night Lieber and two comrades lay in a hayloft feeling homesick and looking out thoughtfully through a hole in the roof at the stars. One friend said that his father had predicted that he would not come home again. The other, a Jew, said that he also
had the feeling he would be killed. Lieber had been confident he would survive with no more than a scratch.6
The soldiers checked their muskets and rifles and prepared their cartridges. Cartridges for muskets were distributed in paper packages of twenty, which were only opened just before use. Bandages and lint were distributed to each soldier. Behind Lieber’s company stood a cavalry regiment, out of which a near neighbour from Berlin rode up and asked Lieber to write home should he fall, agreeing to do the same if Lieber were killed.
Thielmann’s III Corps had left Namur before dawn, following II Corps closely, and its first elements began to deploy on the eastern flank about noon. The Silesian 22nd Regiment from Pirch’s corps, travelling from furthest away, was one of the last to arrive, and was still marching when Wellington joined Blücher in his windmill. At 7 a.m. they had set off from Namur after two hours’ rest and soon met a wagon full of wounded from the previous day’s skirmishing. They were delayed by traffic and when the sun broke through they began to roast:
There was not a cloud in the sky. The June sun was burning hot, the dust suffocating, and we were all suffering from thirst; the wells in the villages we passed through were already dry. Our men were already falling down with exhaustion, and with every hour the number of stragglers increased. It was past noon when the regiment stopped in a village, partly to wait for the stragglers to catch up, partly to quench its thirst from a pond; the water tasted wonderful, despite the fact that artillery and cavalry horses had drunk there, mixing it up with mud. A despatch rider arrived with the order to hurry up to reach the battlefield, as the honour of the regiment depended on it. We marched off immediately, even though more than half of the stragglers, exhausted by their 24-hour march, had yet to catch up.7
With three corps within striking distance, Blücher had something like 83,500 men and 216 guns.8 The Prussians thought themselves to be at a great numerical disadvantage, and almost all of them had been marching all day and all night. In reality, their army was more than twice as large as Napoleon had bargained for and substantially outnumbered the 65,000 men he was gathering round Fleurus.
A Prussian plan for a battle at Sombreffe had in fact been developed by the staff when they surveyed the position weeks earlier. Its details are not known, but I Corps was to take a position on the right around Brye and Saint-Amand with IV Corps in reserve behind it, while II Corps defended the road from Fleurus to Point du Jour with III Corps in reserve.9 The idea was to defend the strong position on the left between Sombreffe and Tongrinnes, a mile or so to the east, and to attack on the right from Brye with a hook at the French flank and rear. When the Prussians realised that Bülow would not arrive during daylight on 16 June they had to decide whether to fight or to retreat. Thinking their defensive position strong, they decided to fight. They ordered Bülow to march to a position in the rear of their army on which they could fall back, or from which he could attack next day.
Their revised plan envisaged Thielmann’s III Corps defending the eastern flank with von Pirch’s II Corps poised behind Ziethen’s men, ready to deliver an offensive blow on the right wing. The original plan had not envisaged any British involvement, but now it seemed that the Prussian army might hold the French until Wellington arrived to deal the decisive blow from the west, so discussions began as to how he might intervene. Still under the impression that there was negligible French opposition at Quatre Bras, Wellington believed that the bulk of his army was likely to be available to fight within an hour or two.10 If, by now, he harboured fears that he might have begun to concentrate his army too late, he did not confess them to the Prussians.
Wellington’s idea was to drive any French troops in front of him back along the road towards Charleroi and then turn into Napoleon’s rear, but Gneisenau opposed this on the ground that it would take too long. His own proposal was for Wellington simply to turn left along the Namur road and reinforce the Prussian right flank. According to Müffling, Wellington left with the intention of carrying out this manoeuvre, while Fitzroy Somerset wrote that Wellington ‘told Blücher that he would give him all the support in his power’. At any rate Gneisenau had the impression that ‘the Duke of Wellington had promised to strike the enemy in the rear’. With some such assurance, Blücher decided to accept battle in the present position, signalling his decision by firing a gun.11
Blücher accompanied Wellington for a short distance along the road back to Quatre Bras with the loud ‘Hurrahs’ of Prussian troops ringing in their ears, and then the old man wheeled his horse around. ‘What a fine fellow he is!’ exclaimed the Duke as he watched him canter back to lead his men into battle.12
22
Napoleon Changes his Plan
Ligny, 16 June, 1–2.30 p.m.
Shortly after Wellington climbed down from the windmill at Bussy, Grouchy and Soult returned from their reconnaissance and met Napoleon at their own windmill at Naveau just outside Fleurus. The two mills were in clear view of each other, about two miles apart, and French headquarters was established under Napoleon’s with a table and chair at which he could study his maps. When a messenger arrived with Marshal Ney’s report that he thought it would be easy to brush aside the estimated 3000 hostile troops at Quatre Bras, Napoleon replied with a brisk note instructing Ney ‘to attack with the greatest impetuosity’.1 The plan was still for Ney to clear the path for a night march and a sudden appearance at Brussels next morning, while Marshal Grouchy sent the Prussians reeling and seized Sombreffe and Gembloux. To that end, Grouchy’s horsemen were riding towards Tongrinelle, sweeping the area immediately north-east of Fleurus, General Vandamme’s corps was resting in front of the town, while General Gérard’s and the Imperial Guard were approaching from the south.
However, the marshals had concluded that during the morning Prussian reinforcements had arrived, and more were still arriving, though for the most part they could not be seen, while Prussian front-line positions were concealed among houses, gardens and orchards. After making their report, Soult and Grouchy followed Napoleon onto the gallery that Napoleon’s sappers had built round the windmill to take a further look at the enemy. Colonel Charles de Forbin-Janson of the État Major-Général leaned on a rail while the Emperor used his shoulder to support the end of his large and powerful telescope, through which he made a careful, lengthy survey of the terrain occupied by the Prussians.2
Napoleon’s windmill was close to the road from Charleroi to Gembloux, on the highest ground of an essentially flat plain. Before him was an undulating expanse of wheat, rye and other standing crops, rising to a slight ridge where the main road from Namur to Nivelles ran in the distance. Three miles north-east of his mill the Charleroi road intersected the main road at the crossroads marked by the Point du Jour inn above Tongrinnes, a mile west towards Nivelles was the village of Sombreffe, and more than a mile further west, in front of Napoleon as he looked at the main Prussian position, was the village of Brye. Half a mile behind it to the north-west the highway to Nivelles met the old Roman road to Gembloux at Les Trois Burettes.
The stream that meandered through boggy ground in the populated valley was hidden from their view in a dip, but Napoleon’s local guide, a surveyor from Fleurus named François Simon, must have pointed it out to him.3 A little brook flowed south from Brye to join the main stream, which rose further west and ran through the village of Wagnelée, two miles away. It meandered to the east of Saint-Amand-la-Haye, winding past its castle and to the east of the hedged gardens of Saint-Amand proper. Saint-Amand church, the nearest point of the village, was nearly a mile away. In a marshy area below the church more little brooks flowed in and the more significant river Ligne, widening to five yards, flowed on north-eastward for nearly a mile, past a moated castle, to the edge of Ligny. This larger village was nearly a mile from Saint-Amand church, and a mile and a half from Napoleon’s mill. The Ligne then flowed through the centre of Ligny, bending east to Potriaux, and meandering south and east past Tongrinelle, Boignée and Balâtre. Within these villag
es various châteaux, farms and churches formed significant strongpoints.
‘The old fox will not break cover,’ said the Emperor. Just what Napoleon saw as he watched the Prussians remains mysterious, but his survey had indicated that there were more of them present than he had initially thought. He may even have picked out Blücher’s staff gathered round their own windmill. Below and behind it many of the 30,000 men of Ziethen’s corps were standing in full view, with a line of guns on the ridge between Saint-Amand-la-Haye and Ligny that commanded Saint-Amand and the open fields between it and Ligny itself. But more Prussian regiments had been marching in for some hours, partly concealed behind the ridge, while others were still on the road to the battlefield. The Emperor found it difficult to believe that they had mustered an army, but he cancelled Grouchy’s attack on Sombreffe and instead sent out scouts, while he and his marshals conducted a reconnaissance closer to the enemy lines.
General Maurice Gérard was trying to find the Emperor, while making his own reconnaissance with a small escort of staff and hussars, when suddenly he was charged by a squadron of black-clad Prussian lancers. Gérard’s horse fell as the French galloped away, unseating his rider; his companions turned and threw themselves into a fierce mêlée in which Gérard’s aide was shot in the kidneys and his chief of staff stabbed by a lancer. They were saved only by the arrival of a detachment of chasseurs who drove off the Prussians.4
Gérard finally located the Emperor at the Naveau mill, to which the Imperial party had by now returned. Meanwhile Grouchy’s eastern patrols had identified more troops on the highway marching towards the battlefield, and as Bonaparte came to terms with the reality of ever-increasing numbers of Prussians a new plan formed in his mind. Instead of simply driving the Prussians towards Gembloux by striking at Le Point du Jour, he would set a trap so that they could not again escape him.