by Tim Clayton
The Brunswickers advancing between Macdonell’s men and Maitland’s battalions ‘formed square beautifully, and did their part most effectively’.5
When Maitland’s battalions emerged from the wood, they threw out a skirmish line against French infantry whose main columns were defending a line from the farm of Grande Pierrepont, three-quarters of a mile south-east of Gémioncourt, to the high ground behind Gémioncourt and above Piraumont. The two battalions of Maitland’s 1st Guards emerged from the trees into a cornfield. ‘As all order had been lost in passing through the wood, the men formed up as they came out and extended the line into the standing corn. A great many men of other regiments who had been engaged before we arrived, very gallantly left the wood and fell in with our men.’ A fierce firefight developed while French cavalry prowled. As a Brunswick battalion manoeuvred to form on the left of the Guards, the French cavalry saw an opportunity to charge the flank of the second battalion, who ran for the wood and took shelter in the hollow way. From there, their fire drove off the cavalry, but they left many dead on the slope between the field and the track. Lord Hay, winner of the sweepstake at Grammont three days previously, was shot dead by a French cavalryman as he urged his horse over a hedge. French infantry then followed up and ‘their light troops advanced in such numbers as to oblige us to evacuate the wood at ten o’clock,’ as a lieutenant wrote three days later.6 Skirmishing continued until darkness, and in two hours of fighting the 1st Guards suffered over 500 casualties.
At the end of the day Wellington decided to take Gémioncourt, and Picton once again led the 28th and 32nd to the attack. The tough Welshman had been hit by a musket ball that had broken two of his ribs, but he was choosing to ignore the wound. The French abandoned the farm tamely, as it was now too far ahead of their front line, and the 30th took over the buildings. It was discovered that they had been used as a dressing station, and 140 wounded ‘and some excellent beer’ were found within.7
As the fighting died down, the 2834 men of General Kruse’s 1st Nassau Regiment marched in: ‘Some balls whistled over our heads, but not a single man was wounded.’ They had set out at 9 a.m. from the east gate of Brussels, and Heinrich von Gagern had found the gruelling twenty-five-mile ride in hot sun exciting but tiring. Gagern was nearly sixteen, the son of the prime minister of the Netherlands. He had studied at the military academy in Munich, but this was his first campaign. The regiment had marched round the city and then down the Charleroi road, stopping to rest in the forest shade and again at Mont Saint-Jean. From there they found the road forward blocked by an immense British baggage column which had followed Picton’s 5th Division as far as Genappe, before turning back towards Brussels. The Nassauers had to walk through the fields beside the road until they had passed it and then found themselves marching between two files of wounded soldiers. Some were themselves Nassauers and their news was depressing: ‘everything had been lost, their entire regiment dispersed, etc. The look of these wounded men was not encouraging, but, as one can imagine, their words made an even worse impression on our young soldiers.’8 But all was not lost, after all, and Gagern, though tired, was exhilarated, for even camping under the stars was new. ‘This was the first night I ever spent in the open air. I lay down at the rear of my battalion, next to a wall of the last house of Quatre Bras, and fell asleep, wrapped in my overcoat and hungry after all the exertions of the day.’9
As twilight gathered the British cavalry began to ride in. Some had ridden a very long way – the hussar brigade covered forty-five miles – but the whole of the British cavalry and its horse artillery had missed the battle. In the early morning, troops of horse artillery had got lost and had terrible problems dragging and pushing their guns along lanes that were deep in mud from weeks of rain. All the cavalry was delayed for hours at Enghien for lack of orders to move on, and one brigade stopped there for the night, twenty-five miles from the battlefield. Other regiments found their way forward obstructed by marching infantry or blocked by baggage trains; though the cavalry could ride round such obstacles, the artillery got stuck behind slow-moving wagons.10
Assistant surgeon John Haddy James, who had fallen behind when his horse lost a shoe, overtook a brigade of Hanoverian Landwehr ‘which had marched a weary way already that day, and were continually obliged to halt, and lie reclining on their mighty packs to procure some rest in the shade. Nevertheless they courageously pursued their march, singing as they went, a hymn-like music.’ Ahead of him, as his regiment passed through Nivelles, they saw ‘women seated at their cottage doors scraping old linen into lint, and this showed us that they expected many wounded soldiers to arrive’.11
There were a lot of wounded. Sir Edward Barnes told Sir Augustus Frazer that they totalled 5000, a higher figure than most historians have given; generally the allied killed and wounded together are set at about that figure. In addition there were about a thousand prisoners, most of them Netherlanders.12 Netherlands casualties were relatively light except in the 27th Jägers and 5th Militia, which were more or less wiped out in terms of military value. Some of the best British units suffered very heavy casualties and although they obstinately fought again two days later, the 92nd, 79th and 42nd Highlanders were all reduced to little more than half strength, and the 1st Foot, 69th and Brunswick 2nd Line lost nearly a third of their men. The French artillery and snipers were responsible for most of the damage. French losses were around 4200 and the allies took about a hundred prisoners.13
As dusk set in, rifleman Ned Costello took shelter at Haute Cense, a farmhouse just north of the Bois des Censes. Here the 5th Division’s wounded gathered, being brought in until the outhouses and barns were crammed. Straw and hay were strewn on all the floors for them to sleep on, but Costello lay awake, troubled by the ‘anguish of my shattered hand and the groans of my fellow sufferers’. When he set out next morning his arm was in a sling but his wound had not been dressed, and it was not to be treated until some time after he reached Brussels.14
Indeed, at Quatre Bras the medical system could be said to have failed. Medical services were severely overstretched owing to the breakneck speed with which units had marched to battle. Just two days previously, on 14 June, the War Office had reappointed Sir James McGrigor, once a spectacularly efficient member of Wellington’s team in the Peninsula, as head of the medical service with a view to the invasion of France. He had no opportunity, therefore, to prepare his department for the unexpected battle on the 16th. The medical supplies, loaded on hospital wagons, had been left miles behind the marching battalions, and although some surgeons carried at least a small case of instruments with them, assistant surgeon James had to admit that ‘I was unable to do anything for their wounds as I had no sort of medical supply with me’; it was generally the case, he implied, that ‘the medical supplies had not been up the previous day.’15
In theory each battalion and cavalry regiment had a surgeon and two assistants – although there were rarely three surgeons in practice – and the British contingent also employed fifteen staff surgeons and a physician. This was a pathetically small group to deal with 5000 wounded at Quatre Bras, never mind what was to overtake them two days later. Usually, one surgeon provided first aid in the field, while the others were deployed at a dressing station established for a brigade or division in a suitable building a short distance behind the lines. The surgeons were helped by bandsmen, who stopped playing music when the fighting started, and they, or comrades, helped wounded men who could not walk from the rudimentary first aid post to surgeons equipped to saw off an arm in the dressing station.
The main dressing station at Quatre Bras had been established in the farm. Donald Finlayson, assistant surgeon to the 33rd Foot, said that he had been ordered to arrange for a field hospital at Nivelles where surgeons could operate in cleaner and less desperate circumstances than on the battlefield, but perhaps he was chiefly looking for help. In the evening some surgeons went out to locate and bring in wounded men, which proved a dangerous exercise. Not on
ly was the Brunswickers’ physician captured by the French, but sporadic shooting continued, as Finlayson noted:
The action ceased about 9 p.m., but solitary shots continued to be fired in various directions till the night was well advanced, which made it somewhat hazardous for the medical officers & the men with them to go in quest of the wounded. It is less pleasant to be killed by our own men or a random shot, & fall unheard of amidst a field of corn 5 or 6 feet high, than it is to die with the regiment in the execution of duty.16
About the same time Wellington left the battlefield and rode the two miles back to Genappe, where supper had been ordered at the Roi d’Espagne. The last messenger to reach him from Blücher had told him that when he left Brye the Prussians still held all the villages along the Ligne, but that they had taken heavy casualties and the best they could do was to hold their ground until nightfall. He had had no message since, and told his secretary Fitzroy Somerset that the Prussian was ‘a damned fine old fellow’. He intended to propose to the Prince that they should jointly attack the French next morning. During dinner Captain Hardinge came in, looking for a surgeon for his brother the liaison officer, who wanted a British surgeon to amputate his wounded hand, and he confirmed that when he left Ligny the Prussians were still holding their ground.17
Wellington went to sleep while his staff wrote orders for the troops to concentrate at Quatre Bras, still believing, as Somerset wrote to his wife, that the Prussians had held off the French. There were, though, unsubstantiated darker reports. Another of Wellington’s close aides, Felton Hervey, was to write in July that, although there had been no confirmation, rumours had reached them that the Prussians had been defeated with heavy loss and were retreating in confusion.18
The allied armies had narrowly avoided disaster. Sixty-two thousand of Wellington’s 95,000 troops had failed to reach the battlefield, which meant that he had failed to come to Blücher’s aid and so they had missed the opportunity to defeat Napoleon. Thirty thousand of Blücher’s troops, moreover, had failed to turn up, as a result of which he had been defeated. On the other hand, 30,000 of Napoleon’s troops had also failed to take part, which meant that he had missed the opportunity to destroy one of his two opponents.
Napoleon had lost the advantage of surprise, but he had succeeded in keeping his opponents apart from each other and one of them was badly wounded. What he did not know was that Wellington was ignorant of Blücher’s fate and that his sleeping army, exposed by the retreat of the Prussians, with 40,000 Frenchmen in front of them and another 60,000 on their flank, was currently at the Emperor’s mercy.
35
Council by Lamplight
Ligny and Mellery, 10 p.m. 16 June–2 p.m. 17 June
Around 10 p.m. the Prussian staff gathered in a moonlit huddle on the cobbled road north of Brye and spread out their maps. With Blücher missing presumed dead, Gneisenau took command of the Prussian army and reviewed the situation. The French had driven a wedge between Ziethen and Pirch, stationed around Brye, and Thielmann’s corps beyond Sombreffe, but darkness had saved them from disaster and their rearguards still held Brye and Sombreffe itself. Many troops had already left the field, and were retreating in different directions. Broken units and deserting fugitives had fled eastward towards Namur, while Henckel’s men had pulled out through Sombreffe towards Gembloux. Friedrich von Jagow had also taken five battalions and two cavalry regiments to Gembloux; the general, who had lost his horse, led his troops on foot, wrapped in a cuirassier’s cloak, first to a lonely farm and then north-east up the Roman road.
Gneisenau was determined not to become separated from Wellington, but it was far from clear that the Prussians were in a position to join him to fight another battle next day, as they had all hoped, or indeed for some time to come. Gneisenau knew they had suffered serious losses and he was especially anxious about the fate of the artillery park, containing their reserve ammunition, which had disappeared. The regiments he still controlled could not simply march to join Wellington because there were French troops between them and Quatre Bras, and it would be impossible for Thielmann to follow. The army did at least have the solid support of Friedrich von Bülow’s corps, which was approaching from Liège along the Roman road. About this time, in fact, its vanguard were stopping to camp just north of Gembloux, the remainder spread behind it along seven and a half miles of the road.
According to Ziethen’s chief of staff, Ludwig von Reiche, Gneisenau recommended a retreat to the village of Tilly, about two miles north, towards which much of their right wing had already been forced. However, Reiche found that Tilly was not marked on his map, and suggested that many officers might fail to find the place for the same reason. As a rendezvous for their scattered troops they needed a town that was marked on all their maps, so they decided to spread the word for a retreat towards Wavre, fifteen miles away in the direction of Brussels.1
In fact Reiche’s explanation of the retreat to Wavre was disingenuous. The Prussian army was in no state to withdraw to Tilly and renew the struggle next day, and they must really have decided that they had to try to buy time to rearm and regroup further back. Moreover, there was a perfectly good line of communication between Brussels and Germany through Wavre. The decision to maintain contact with Wellington by retreating north, rather than along their lines of communication to the east, was vitally important, although it is likely that they had already agreed to do this in case of defeat.
But if they were not to halt at Tilly, but instead to continue towards Wavre, then their retreat would leave Wellington’s army exposed to a flank attack by Napoleon next morning. It was imperative, therefore, to warn Wellington so that he also retreated. Crucially, however, the final messenger sent by Gneisenau to Wellington with this grim news was shot and killed by the French, so Wellington was left in ignorance of both the outcome of the battle and the Prussian decision.2
At the crossroads at Les Trois Burettes behind Brye, a staff officer began directing troops up the Roman road towards Gembloux and another then instructed them to take a left turn up a track to Tilly on the road to Wavre. ‘The detachments which had already taken the Roman road or the Namur road could not, of course, be recalled,’ Reiche noted; ‘in itself this was a bad thing, yet it had the advantage that the enemy would be deceived as to the line of our withdrawal.’3 One virtue of Bülow’s location was that troops that had missed the Tilly junction eventually walked up the Roman road into his camp. Around midnight the last regiments of Ziethen’s and Pirch’s corps began to move off towards Tilly, leaving rearguards on the battlefield. Ludwig Nagel was near Brye when ‘shortly after midnight we decamped; it appeared the enemy was approaching. At the village of Tilly we encountered troops around invigorating fires, near which we also encamped. That did us good; soon I lay fast asleep.’4
Johann von Thielmann received orders to withdraw along a parallel course to the right wing if possible, or to go to Gembloux if not. He took the safer option, retreating to the town, four miles north-east along a clear road from Sombreffe. Regiments gathered in the darkness, an advance guard moved off at one in the morning, and the rearguard slipped away at four.
Some hours earlier, Blücher’s faithful aide Ferdinand von Nostitz had led the bruised and semi-conscious field marshal off the battlefield, hoping he could keep the old man alive. They had been extremely lucky to escape: in the deepening twilight French cuirassiers had twice raced by the prone general and his aide without noticing them. A counter-charge had now driven the French back to their lines, and as the pursuing Prussian lancers approached the pair, Nostitz sprang to his feet and waved his arms for help. A group of Lützow’s Black Lancers reined in and helped to pull Blücher’s dead horse off the old man’s body. He was still alive so a sergeant gave them his horse, a group of them hoisted the seventy-three-year-old general onto it, and Nostitz led him away from the battlefield, taking the dirt road to Tilly.
Nostitz trudged through the mud produced by the thunderstorm, surrounded by wounded men and fu
gitives. They passed through Tilly, but when they reached Mellery Blücher admitted that he could go no further and Nostitz began to search for a refuge. The village had been deserted by its inhabitants and Nostitz couldn’t see a house with a light. Eventually, he spotted a glimmer behind a shutter and ushered Blücher into a farmhouse. There was nobody inside, so Nostitz stood guard at the door until some horsemen approached. Nostitz ordered them to guard the field marshal while he went for help.
Near Tilly he located General Steinmetz, told him where Blücher was and that he must be kept safe, and then returned to Mellery where he found the old man sitting on a stool, complaining of severe pain and a burning thirst. The farmhouse was now full of wounded men, moaning for help, but the owner returned, fetched a pot of milk, made a bed of straw on the floor, and Blücher slaked his thirst and slept. By chance Gneisenau had established his own headquarters elsewhere in the village, and he and the big, burly Grolmann joined them after midnight.5
By the dim light of an oil lamp, they held a council of war while the old general lay on his pile of straw, having his bruises massaged with garlic and schnapps. His surgeon had forbidden him to drink the schnapps, but had allowed him a magnum of champagne.6 The situation looked desperate. Sitting on a barrel of sauerkraut, Gneisenau laid out the difficulties and the argument in favour of a retreat to the east: this was not something he wanted, but as things stood the army was not fit to continue fighting. ‘Our ammunition was expended and our reserve munitions were nowhere to be found,’ he was to write six days later to the Prussian Prime Minister. ‘It was a dreadful situation and we were almost unable to come to help the Duke of Wellington. You can imagine my feelings.’7 They had little idea where much of the army was, while there was a fair chance that their ammunition was already in French hands; men with no ammunition were little use. Nevertheless, Blücher insisted that they must fight on: ‘We have taken a few knocks and shall have to hammer out the dents!’ he said. By 2 a.m. they had worked out how to gather the army at Wavre, and Grolmann sent instructions to Ziethen and Georg von Pirch to march on immediately.