by Tim Clayton
Napoleon rode back about two miles from La Belle Alliance along the cobbled road to a smart building called Le Caillou that had been chosen by Pierre Baillon, the Fourrier du Palais, and Frédéric de Guerchy, maréchal des logis, to be his palace for the night. It was a substantial farm on the chaussée, abandoned by its inhabitants after being vandalised and pillaged by Brunswickers. All was bustle there, but his room was not yet ready so he lay down on a bundle of straw by a bivouac fire and ordered supper. The Imperial vaguemestre, Captain Coignet, was supervising the parking of the coaches and wagons belonging to headquarters. Chief surgeon Larrey had claimed one of the barns for his hospital should it be needed next day, his doctors checking their instruments while Imperial grooms scoured the outhouses for fodder for their horses. The first battalion of the 1st Chasseurs of the Guard marched in to guard the palace and camped in the orchard. The cook started work in the kitchen, unhappy that the wagon with the Emperor’s tableware was missing in the darkness. The Emperor’s room was cleared and his own campaign furniture replaced what had been there. They set up his folding bed, a silver washbowl and his folding leather armchair, with portfolios in reach and maps on the table.16
Once his room was ready, Napoleon’s valets removed his saturated coat and pulled off his wet boots, and in dry clothes the Emperor sat by the fire in his leather folding chair. There he worked out a deployment and plan of battle for the following morning, hoping that Wellington would still be there to fight one. The plan envisaged the troops closing up as soon as possible in the morning, in order to attack at the earliest opportunity. His duty aides, Juvénal Corbineau, Charles de la Bédoyère and Charles de Flahaut, rode off to the various army corps to distribute deployment instructions and to establish the true situation of Napoleon’s own forces.17
Meanwhile, General Milhaud sent in the intelligence that his cavalry patrols had reported significant numbers of Prussians retreating north towards the town of Wavre through the valley of the river Dyle.18 In his memoirs Napoleon claimed that this led him to order Grouchy to send 7000 men to Saint-Lambert, a village situated on high ground just to the east of Wellington’s position, but this was fantasy, since there was no mention of Saint-Lambert in Soult’s letter to Grouchy the following morning.
Napoleon was confident that the Prussians could not yet fight another battle. If his Mémoires have a grain of truth in them, he expected them to head for Brussels and he feared that Wellington would slip away through the forest that night to join up with them. In that case, his problem would be dealing with the united armies, but the battle would not be tomorrow.
His valet Mameluk Ali recalled that as soon as he had succeeded in removing Napoleon’s saturated boots, the Emperor dined and then slept, while Ali lay down in his usual station on the floor outside Bonaparte’s door. Napoleon’s pages and aides shared the ground floor with him, while senior officers such as Soult slept on straw on the floor above and junior staff occupied the stables and sheds. Napoleon’s principal valet, Louis Marchand, had been delayed when his coach overturned in the rain and only turned up at Le Caillou an hour after the Emperor went to bed. He had been there two hours when the Emperor called him to ask what the weather was doing, to be told it was still raining hard.19
Napoleon woke again about two o’clock, probably as a result of the arrival of Grouchy’s evening report, saying he thought that some Prussians were retreating north-east but that others were heading north-west to join Wellington, and assuring Napoleon that if he discovered the main mass was heading for Wavre he would make sure that he cut them off from Wellington. In fact, Grouchy had wasted too much time working out which direction he should take. The more energetic and determined Prussians were already several hours and miles ahead of him.
Napoleon spent some time with the secretaries of his cabinet dictating correspondence relating to political problems that were emerging at Paris. At three he sent first orderly officer Gaspard Gourgaud to ascertain the state of the ground and investigate whether the artillery could manoeuvre. ‘You could tell that he was impatient to be able to attack,’ recalled Marchand. The Emperor gave orders to his duty equerry to have his horse ready by seven.20
At about the same time that Napoleon received Grouchy’s opinion that some Prussians might be heading for Wavre, Wellington received a firm commitment from Blücher that Bülow’s corps would march at daybreak, followed by the rest of his army, to join him. Blücher’s promise confirmed Wellington’s resolution to stand and fight. In the small hours he wrote the duc de Berri an accurate report of the situation, warning that Napoleon might sidestep his defensive position by marching through Hal and overwhelming the troops he had left there. Should that happen he asked Berri to take his French royalist army further north to the fortified port of Antwerp and to persuade King Louis to go there. He also wrote to the Governor of Antwerp, and to his dancing partner and close friend Lady Frances Webster, warning her to be ready to move to Antwerp at a moment’s notice.21 Should he be defeated, he evidently intended to retreat to Antwerp himself.
Wellington’s staff and senior officers passed the night in houses close to the Duke’s headquarters at Waterloo, each man with his name chalked on the door of his quarters. In Thomas Picton’s cottage the general slept fitfully in severe pain, thanks to the musket ball which had broken two of his ribs at Quatre Bras. Determined to continue to command his division, he had not shown the wound to a surgeon who might have forced him into a hospital, but had got an old servant to bind it up and it was now blackened and swollen.22
The three veteran battalions of Major-General Sir John Lambert’s brigade reached Waterloo during the night and ‘crept into any hole we could find’. This brigade had just returned from New Orleans, had only been together in Belgium for a week, and had just made a forced march of more than forty miles from Ghent. They were luckier than the troops in the field, for they found ‘cowsheds, cart-houses, and all kinds of farmstead buildings for shelter’. Twenty-four-year-old grenadier Sergeant William Lawrence was the illiterate son of a small farmer from Bryant’s Piddle in Dorset. In the hard times his father had lost his land and become a labourer and Lawrence, having run away from apprenticeship to a cruel builder, had joined the army and been shipped first to South America, then to Portugal, then to North America, twice achieving promotion to reach his present rank. Yet even in Lawrence’s long experience this was exceptional misery: ‘I never remember a worse night in all the Peninsular War, for the rain descended in torrents, mixed with fearful thunder and lightning.’23
Lawrence’s commander, Arthur Heyland, distinguished in Spain and wounded at the siege of Badajoz in 1811 and the battle of Roncesvalles in 1813, was also in the village, and was writing a last letter to his wife, to be delivered only if he was killed:
My Mary, let the recollection console you that the happiest days of my life have been from your love and affection, and that I die loving only you, and with a fervent hope that our souls may be reunited hereafter and part no more.
What dear children, my Mary I leave you. My Marianna, gentlest girl, may God bless you. My Anne, my John, may Heaven protect you. My children may you all be happy and may the reflection that your father never in his life swerved from the truth and always acted from the dictates of his conscience, preserve you, virtuous and happy, for without virtue there can be no happiness.
My darling Mary I must tell you again how tranquilly I shall die, should it be my fate to fall, we cannot, my own love, die together – one or other must witness the loss of what we love most. Let my children console you, my love, my Mary.24
As was the custom before a battle many similar letters were written that night, but perhaps none was quite so beautiful and touching as this.
42
The Prussian March
Wavre to Saint-Lambert, 17 June, 5 p.m.–18 June, 11 a.m.
Thanks to early starts and good fortune with dry weather, the Prussians were a minimum of ten miles ahead of Grouchy and late in the afternoon of 17 June
one of the two corps that he had failed to detect at all crossed the river Dyle and camped to the west of the town.
At two in the afternoon of 17 June Gneisenau had reported from Wavre to the king of Prussia on the previous day’s defeat, expressing disappointment that because of the slow speed of concentration of Wellington’s army the Duke had been unable to make a positive contribution to their joint struggle. He reported that Wellington now wanted to fight next day if they could reinforce him with one or two corps. They would do so willingly, Gneisenau wrote, if they had ammunition, but the ammunition for two of his corps was missing.1
Given the condition of their army, Gneisenau had reservations about the wisdom of Blücher’s brave determination to support Wellington, for it was highly risky to fight on with two corps protecting a further forty thousand defenceless men. Although well aware that the misunderstanding with Bülow had been disastrous for the Prussians, he was upset at the Duke’s failure to help them: after all, Wellington had assured them the day before that his army could be concentrated within twenty-two hours of the first cannon shot, and there had been, as far as he then knew, only a tiny French detachment to deal with at Quatre Bras. Indeed, he was to express his frustration a few days later to Prime Minister Hardenberg: ‘The Duke of Wellington had promised to strike the enemy in the rear; he didn’t come either, because his army, heaven knows why, couldn’t concentrate in time.’2 Undoubtedly this had increased his distrust in Wellington, whom he saw as arrogant and selfish; but he was nevertheless totally committed to the cause and determined to support Wellington if it was safe to do so.
Late in the afternoon of 17 June, to Gneisenau’s intense relief, he got news that most of his ammunition had not only escaped the French, but was approaching Wavre. Georg von Pirch’s artillery commander had located the column on the Namur road before the French got to it and had turned the wagons to the north and led them to safety. There was now enough ammunition, Gneisenau grudgingly admitted, to fight, even if with only two-thirds effectiveness; as he wrote a few days later, ‘the fate of Europe was at stake and so we risked the battle’.3 He pronounced himself satisfied that they were well enough equipped to march to join Wellington and fight the next day as Blücher wished.
‘Gneisenau has given way! We are going to join the Duke,’ announced Blücher triumphantly to the wounded liaison officer Henry Hardinge and embraced the Englishman, who recoiled at the smell of the noxious garlic-based ointment applied to Blücher’s bruises. ‘Ich stinke etwas!’ apologised the field marshal.
Early in the evening the ammunition wagons of I and II Corps finally began to trundle over the Dyle bridge into the town, and, three hours later, Thielmann’s vanguard followed. Before the downpour, marching had been easy, but the going had got slower and slower, muddier and muddier, and it was late at night before Bülow’s tired men made camp just south-east of Dion-le-Mont, a village three miles east of Wavre.
Before midnight Blücher received a dispatch from Müffling, the Prussian liaison officer, confirming that Wellington’s army had reached Mont Saint-Jean and was prepared to give battle next day if the Prussians could support them with one of their corps. Von Grolmann replied that Blücher was on the way with his whole army and would have Bülow’s corps on the march from Dion-le-Mont at daybreak, followed immediately by Pirch’s, with Ziethen’s and Thielmann’s ready to follow, apologising that because the troops were exhausted and some had not yet arrived, he could not set out to join Wellington earlier.
Soon afterwards Blücher sent orders to his generals to do what he had just promised, and to clear the roads of baggage,4 while during the night and the early morning the infantry and artillery of I and II Corps received fresh supplies of ammunition. It was decided to send Bülow’s corps first because it was fully equipped, having not yet fought, although unfortunately the weather had slowed it down so that it was still three miles from Wavre. There had been no choice but to employ Bülow to cover the retreat because only his troops could fight back if attacked.
At two in the morning Bülow sent out marching orders, warning his troops (in order to forestall marauding) to carry as much food as possible since the neighbouring villages offered little in the way of plunder, and around sunrise his vanguard crossed the river Dyle into Wavre. Before seven o’clock Prussian patrols took a look at Grouchy’s camp at Sauvenière, ten miles south of Bülow’s, and satisfied themselves that Grouchy’s infantry had not yet marched off. The Prussian staff calculated that a single corps would be sufficient to hold the line of the Dyle against Grouchy, and Thielmann was given the job.
Wellington’s German 1st Hussars had been selected to ‘transmit communications to the Prussian generals and obtain information on their approaching columns’, and their patrols had made contact with Prussians during the night; in the morning two of their officers brought Wellington the first news of Bülow’s approach.5 Between 8 and 9 a.m. a Prussian cavalry patrol reached the village of Ohain, a mile and a half north-east of Smohain at the eastern end of Wellington’s defensive line, and was directed to Major Taylor of the 10th Hussars, the regiment known as ‘the Prince’s Dolls’ from the way that their royal colonel the Regent liked to tinker with their pampered appearance. Taylor was in charge of a chain of lookouts (known as vedettes) protecting Wellington’s eastern flank. While touring his lines, he had already seen two bodies of French cavalry uncomfortably nearby, and had watched a French cavalry patrol heading eastward. The Prussian patrol delivered the message that Bülow and 25,000 men were three-quarters of a league away.6
Müffling spent the early morning devising contingency instructions for the Prussians in case of various attacks by Napoleon. He recommended that should the Emperor attack Wellington’s right, the Prussians should march the eight miles from Wavre to Ohain by the quickest route and provide Wellington with a reserve. Should he attack Wellington’s centre or left, one Prussian corps should march seven miles to Saint-Lambert and Lasne to attack the French right flank, while another should march via Ohain to reinforce Wellington. Should the enemy march on Saint-Lambert in order to separate the two armies, the Prussians should make a stand there, while Wellington attacked the French in their flank and rear.7 He put his suggestions to Wellington, who said, ‘I quite agree.’ Just then, a hussar officer delivered the news that Bülow’s vanguard was approaching. Although nobody could locate on a map the place the Prussians were supposed to have reached, Müffling told his aide to show his proposal to Bülow if he passed him on his way to Wavre.
However, the Prussian approach was not going as smoothly as Blücher and Wellington would have wished. Soon after Bülow’s vanguard had left Wavre, a major fire had spread from a bakery to neighbouring houses, causing panic because there were ammunition wagons nearby. The infantry marched round it by clambering through neighbouring gardens, but the cavalry and artillery had to wait while pioneers put the fire out. As a result most of Bülow’s corps was delayed by two hours, while both Pirch’s behind it and Ziethen’s, which was waiting for it to pass, were also held up.8 The roads, which in good weather were no more than sandy tracks, proved appalling after heavy rain, especially for artillery, which frequently bogged down to the axle and had to be hauled free with ropes. Bülow’s vanguard of hussars and fusiliers reached Saint-Lambert, two and a half miles east of Wellington’s left flank at Smohain, around 10.30 a.m. but the rest of General Michael von Losthin’s leading 15th Brigade did not close up until noon, and the other brigades only trudged in during the afternoon.9
Having received Müffling’s recommendations, Bülow issued him with a warning. There were problems – he had only two brigades with him and did not expect the rest for some hours:
If it turns out that Wellington’s centre or left wing is attacked, General Bülow is willing to cross the Lasne at Lasne with his corps and form up on the plateau between La Haye and Aywiers, thus attacking the enemy in his right flank and rear.
My advice is that then another Prussian corps should go via Ohain, so that, ac
cording to circumstances, it can support the most threatened point of the English position. A third Prussian corps can go via Maransart and Sauvagemont to cover IV Corps’ left flank and rear. The remaining fourth corps would form a reserve at Couture.10
As soon as Bülow reached Saint-Lambert he sent out scouts. Major Andreas von Witowski, leading a strong detachment of Silesian Hussars, explored the roads to the village of Maransart; this lay three and a half miles further up the Lasne valley, less than a mile east of Plancenoit, the village around which much of the French army had camped. Witowski did not see a Frenchman until he approached Maransart itself.
Simultaneously, Bülow sent Major von Falkenhausen with a hundred Silesian horsemen south-eastward to establish a chain of outposts connecting Bülow to a reconnaissance force he had posted the previous day at Mont Saint-Guibert, a village on the far side of the Dyle valley eight miles to the east. This was an area where they might expect to encounter Grouchy’s patrols and ambush messengers travelling between Grouchy and Napoleon, and indeed, after three miles Falkenhausen ran into a French cavalry detachment and became involved in a sharp skirmish; prisoners taken by the Prussians claimed to have been sent by Grouchy to make contact with Napoleon’s army. Meanwhile, patrols from Mont Saint-Guibert clashed with Exelmans’ dragoons, who were inspecting the bridges over the Dyle.
While Prussian cavalry outposts intensified what was already proving to be a successful effort to inhibit communication between Napoleon and Grouchy, Bülow’s chief of staff, Generalmajor von Valentini, set off to explore the terrain to the west of Saint-Lambert. Taking a local farmer as their guide, his party first identified another problem: their path westward was blocked by a deep, flooded valley, across which there were only three practical routes. On the other side, however, there was a wood, apparently unoccupied as yet, that would serve for a bridgehead.