by Tim Clayton
Three hundred men were collected in this hospital, the majority desperately, not to say incurably, wounded. Among them were one hundred and forty compound fractures, viz. 86 of the thigh, 48 of the leg and 6 of the arm. They had been collected all over the country by the peasantry, and dragged from barn to barn, often without food or dressings, and did not arrive at Brussels until various periods from the 8th to the 13th day after they were wounded …7
Some of the most badly wounded Frenchmen had been placed in the Gendarmerie, but the wounds they had suffered were fairly typical, as Donald Finlayson remarked to a senior doctor on the nature of the wounds suffered by all armies:
Of the total loss, one in 7 or 8 may be killed, the rest are wounded. A great number of the wounds are from cannon balls. Officers have compared the discharge from the cannon to discharges of musketry. Most wounds of the limbs are in the lower extremities. There are perhaps 15 or 16 legs taken off for one arm, there are not many bayonet wounds. There are sabre & lance wounds …
And among those with sabre wounds, Finlayson told his correspondent, was one of their most esteemed medical colleagues, the man, ironically enough, who had insisted on the importance of rapid treatment: ‘Poor Larrey the French surgeon is there, a prisoner & wounded, having two sabre cuts in his head.’ Larrey had been at Le Caillou with other surgeons of the Imperial Guard tending to the wounded when a squadron of Prussian lancers appeared. Expecting no mercy, Larrey fired his pistols at them and fled. The Prussians fired carbines and wounded his horse. He fell and at this point received the two sabre cuts; they knocked him out and the Prussians left him for dead.
When he regained consciousness Larrey tried to walk to France, but at the Sambre he was taken prisoner by a Prussian cavalry patrol. They seized his arms, his ring, his watch and most of his clothes and took him to an officer who sentenced him to be shot. A quarter of an hour before this sentence was to be carried out, however, a Prussian surgeon recognised Larrey as the doctor whose lectures had so impressed him in Berlin and obtained a reprieve. Larrey was taken to Bülow and then to Blücher. It happened that when Blücher’s son had fallen wounded into French hands during the Austrian campaign, Larrey had operated on him and saved his life. Blücher cancelled the sentence of death and gave him an escort to the hospital in Brussels. His wounds healed, Larrey then helped the British surgeons as he convalesced, suggesting measures to relieve the wounded of all nationalities brought in from the battlefield.8
The regimental and staff surgeons of the various armies worked tirelessly, helped by Belgian civilian surgeons, captured French surgeons and a number of men who came out from England, for ‘amateur surgeons flocked over from London’. Charles Bell, famed anatomist, consultant to the Middlesex hospital and author in 1814 of A Dissertation on Gun-shot wounds, left London with his brother-in-law on 26 June. Asked for a passport, they flourished their surgical instruments; they reached Brussels three days later, entering a very dirty, crowded, low-lying part of town with a rag market, a fish market and a fair. ‘The wounded everywhere conspicuous, dragging, pale; a great many wounded in the head. Those, of course, move about, and on the doors, 5 blessés, 3 blessés, 4 blessés …’
Bell’s main motive in travelling had been medical research and he spent his first five days in the hospitals making sketches and studies of difficult cases on which he gave his advice; he sketched a considerable number of patients and later worked his sketches up to fine and shocking watercolours of subjects such as William Wanstell of the 10th Hussars, who had suffered terrible damage to the brain and died, confused, six days after Bell drew him, or Voultz of the German Legion who, to the astonishment of the medical staff, survived tetanus. He found arrangements for receiving the wounded were still not complete and new hospitals were being opened. ‘The expression is continually heard, “We were not prepared for this”,’ he noted.
On 1 July Bell saw French wounded laid out in the hospital 100 in a row in low beds, and was impressed with the ‘strong, thick-set, hardy veterans’ who turned each others’ moaning into tunes. But by 3 July he ‘could not sleep for thinking of the state of the wounded French. “Pansez! pansez, [dress my wound] majeur docteur,” or “coupez, coupez,” sounded in my ears.’ He got up at four o’clock and wrote to the chief surgeon, offering to perform the necessary operations on the Frenchmen.
At six o’clock I took my knife in my hand, and continued incessantly at work till seven in the evening; and so the second and third day. All the decencies of performing surgical operations were soon neglected; while I amputated one man’s thigh there lay at one time thirteen all beseeching to be taken next; one full of entreaty; one calling upon me to remember my promise to take him, another execrating. It was a strange thing to feel my clothes stiff with blood, and my arms powerless with the exertion of using the knife.
It was Bell who operated on Dominique Modere, an intelligent man who thought surgery unnecessary since he suffered no more than a headache, but acknowledged that Bell had probably been right when he removed a musket ball from the left hemisphere of his brain. A month later Modere was still alive and saying that ‘from his present sensations he could not know that he had been wounded’.9
Modere was fortunate: the mortality rate of amputations carried out by Bell ran at approximately 90 per cent. But this was almost inevitable with patients treated so long after being injured, as the French surgeon Larrey had established. ‘Assuredly no body of men ever laboured harder in the cause of humanity than the British surgeons after the battle of Waterloo,’ wrote Staff Surgeon John Hennen, with Bell in mind, but as another famous surgeon noted, ‘nothing could recall … the irretrievable mischief the insufficient medical care had occasioned in the first few days.’10
On 3 July another noted surgeon arrived from London. George Guthrie had turned down a job with the army but came to Brussels to give advice and learn from what he saw. He undertook three operations, one of them being to remove at the thigh the leg of a Frenchman of the 45th Line who had been hit in the right buttock by case shot as he retreated and had lain on his back on the field for five days able only to turn his head to lap at puddles. Guthrie successfully kept him alive and he recovered in the York Hospital in London. Another patient, offered the same operation, refused until he was too weak. ‘I gently stated this to him, he thanked me, a tear for a moment glistened in his eye, he waved his hand once more over his head, and cried out “Vive l’Empereur”. He died a few hours afterwards.’11
EPILOGUE
The Hardest Battle that Ever Was Fought
The campaign ended swiftly. Having failed to break through General Thielmann’s defence at Wavre on 18 June though he had kept fighting until midnight, Marshal Grouchy renewed the struggle at two in the morning; until the messenger sent by Soult from Quatre Bras in the middle of the night arrived at half past ten, he was unaware that Napoleon had been defeated, while his Prussian opponents only found out half an hour earlier. It is remarkable that Grouchy’s troops had failed to make contact with those on Napoleon’s right flank – perhaps a tribute to the Prussian cavalry seeking to prevent it – but neither Grouchy’s cavalry nor Napoleon’s appears to have got a message through to their comrades at any point on 18 June. Grouchy pulled out skilfully, winning a defensive battle at Namur.
Napoleon rode south from Charleroi over the border to Philippeville in France, from where he wrote in fighting terms to his brother Joseph, and then travelled to Paris via Laon. News of the calamitous outcome of the battle spread through Paris on 21 June, the day that Napoleon returned to the capital. He spoke of creating a new army, but both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies were openly opposed to him. Napoleon hesitated to dissolve them, refused to use force and abdicated in favour of his son on 23 June. Joseph Fouché took charge of the government but did nothing to prevent the advance of the allies, with whom he was already secretly in contact. On 26 June Grouchy took over the army at Laon and fought a number of skirmishes with the Prussians as he withdrew to Paris with 50
,000 men, arriving three days later.
Blücher advanced fast, leaving troops behind him to mop up the fortresses that he had bypassed, and by 29 June he was close to Saint-Denis and Vincennes. In the words of Assistant Surgeon James Gibney, the Prussians ‘were like a swarm of locusts, making all barren around them. Indeed, for miles round they seem to have wantonly destroyed all they could lay their hands on. If revenge for the French occupation of Berlin a short time previously was their object, they certainly obtained it.’1
As an officer of the King’s Dragoon Guards wrote on 26 July to his father:
The hatred that exists between the two nations is astonishing; the French shudder at the very name of the Prussian, who plunder and burn wherever they go, and spare nothing. This retaliation is perfectly just, for the French committed much more atrocious when they were in Prussia. You may imagine what comfortable work it was following their troops who were a day’s march before us; nothing but the bare walls of houses, not a soul in the villages, and nothing but water to be had – not a bit of bread, if you were to give your life for it.2
Wellington followed at a more sedate pace, escorting the king of France, who was to be restored to his throne whether the French wanted him or not. He crossed the border near Malplaquet on 21 June, issuing a general order forbidding plundering the French. The town of Cambrai was stormed and the citadel surrendered to General Colville on 25 June. As Sergeant Wheeler of the 51st noted in a letter home:
The 25th. we halted and His pottle belly Majesty, Louis 18th, marched into the loyal town of Cambray. His Majesty was met by a deputation of his beloved subjects who received their father and their king with tears of joy … But the papers will not inform you that the 4th. Division and a brigade of Hanovarian Huzzars were in readiness within half a mile of this faithful city, and if the loyal citizens had insulted their king, how it was very probable we should have bayoneted every Frenchman in the place. The people well knew this, and this will account for the sudden change in their loyalty or allegiance from their Idol Napoleon (properly named) the Great, to an old bloated poltroon, the Sir John Falstaff of France.3
Having detached forces to deal with the numerically powerful French garrisons in the north, Blücher had only 66,000 men when he approached Paris; Wellington, further back, was down to 52,000. Napoleon, now resident at his Château de Malmaison, just west of Paris, was eager to take them on again with the 120,000 troops around Paris, but the government refused. Blücher sent cavalry with orders to take Napoleon dead or alive but Marshal Davout had the Seine bridge nearest Malmaison blown up to prevent them.
Napoleon’s British admirer, Sergeant Wheeler, watched the Prussians go past towards Paris, noting that ‘they did not forget to destroy every thing they could as they moved on. Ney’s country seat was none the better for their visit, everything they could lay their hands on was knocked to pieces. A small town about two miles from us which we marched through was completely sacked …’4
On 2 July the Prussians advanced on Saint-Cloud and Versailles. When General Sohr raided Versailles, however, Rémy Exelmans attacked and defeated him at Issy, and after this reverse Blücher paused to allow Wellington to catch up. A convention was signed at Saint-Cloud by which the French army would evacuate Paris and retire south of the Loire. The government recognised Louis XVIII – he would return to the Tuileries on 8 July after 110 days’ absence – and the Prussians entered Paris on 6 July in vengeful mood. Wellington was worried that Prussian retribution would cause the city to rise against them and quashed a plan by Blücher to blow up the Pont d’Iéna, which he had mined. ‘It is now spared on Condition of paying four Million Livres – and altering its name. The Statues, Paintings &c. plundered from other Countries are immediately to be restored to their right owners, on Paris alone Marshal Blucher has laid contributions to the amount of five Million Sterling independent of which the Parisians are under the necessity to provide 150,000 Thousand [sic] Prussian troops with extravagant rations.’5
Tom Morris of the 73rd Foot found himself in a pleasant encampment in the Bois de Boulogne, making occasional visits to the city. While guarding the duc de Berri’s apartments, he ‘had an opportunity of witnessing the removal of the celebrated Group of Horses, of which Napoleon had despoiled the Venetians and which were now about to be restored’. They were lowered from the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, which served as a gate to the Tuileries Palace, into wagons guarded by British and Prussian soldiers, while the Parisians looked on in gloomy silence. William Nicolay, commander of the Staff Corps, wrote:
Their pride has been also greatly humbled by the removal of so many monuments of the gloire of la grande nation – The 4 famous horses in bronze, brought from Venice, have been taken down from the triumphal arch for the emperor of Austria – this was performed by a party of the Staff Corps under Major Tod, the Austrians not understanding how to do it – he likewise attempted to remove another famous statue, but unfortunately failed by the tackle giving way – So many of the pictures & statues have been removed from the Louvre that the famous Gallery is now hardly worth looking at.6
The allies got on with this cultural work quickly: 3000 statues and 2000 paintings, surrendered to France through treaties imposed after victorious campaigns, were restored to their previous owners, leaving only a few that had been overlooked. Morris witnessed the dismantling of the ‘celebrated gallery of pictures, selected by Bonaparte, at the various places he had conquered, and deposited in the palace of St Cloud’. He saw many of the famous pictures, but regretted that he was ‘not connoisseur enough to describe them’.
Morris derived some pleasure from the idea that King Louis must have realised uneasily ‘that he was only secure on the throne of his ancestors so long as he was supported by foreign bayonets’; it was ironic, he added, that he remained with the army of occupation, designed ‘to prevent any further out-break against “Louis le Désiré”, as the French King was most inappropriately styled’.7 The Bonapartist Cockney sergeant was not alone in registering the distaste of Parisians for their new ruler. The aristocratic John Fremantle, aide to Wellington, was fairly shaken by it, writing to his uncle on 17 July, ‘I never could have believed there had existed such a rooted aversion to the Bourbons as I now find reigns.’8 There were parades and reviews throughout July as the Austrians and Russians arrived, and nobody left in a hurry: the last British regiment departed from Paris only on 23 November 1818.
The battle of Waterloo would be significant historically simply as the defeat that brought an end to the remarkable career of Napoleon Bonaparte. His final campaign had been brilliant in conception, but its execution required a degree of speed and precision that proved to be beyond his staff, his subordinates and possibly even the ageing Napoleon himself. He had tried to assemble an old and practised team but key components – most obviously Berthier and his people – were missing. He had plenty of leisure in which to identify his errors afterwards: he should have chosen better subordinates – Grouchy lacked initiative, Ney lacked calm intelligence, others should have been employed differently – his staff lacked experience; he should have slept near Fleurus on the night of the fifteenth and had he done so he would have destroyed the Prussians before they all marched in; he had been too tired to stay in the saddle all night; he detached too much of his infantry with Grouchy; the rain …
Though he did admire the discipline of the ‘English’ infantry, Napoleon gave little credit to the enemy. The fact was, however, that both allied armies were a different proposition to the forces over which Napoleon had won his early victories. Both were led by efficient and talented generals with experienced teams of staff and subordinates who for the most part trusted each other. Both armies had an experienced core and some of the British infantry and the German Legion were veterans of very high quality. Most of all, Napoleon underrated the determination of the leaders to help each other: he thought that Wellington would not try to support the Prussians on 16 June and he was wrong. At Waterloo he thought the Prussians c
ould not come to the aid of Wellington and he was wrong.
Napoleon lost at Waterloo because the Prussians intervened, but as Brigade Major Harry Smith sensibly pointed out, ‘to those who say the ultimate success of the day was achieved by the arrival of the Prussians, I observe that the Prussians were part of the whole on which his Grace calculated.’9 The whole point of the Waterloo campaign was that the armies of Wellington and the Prussians should fight united. Napoleon almost succeeded in preventing them from so doing, but in the end the determination of the allies prevailed. Wellington’s claim – implied in his dispatch and reiterated in later years – that he had won the battle on his own before the Prussians intervened decisively, fails to stand up to close scrutiny: the Prussians diverted French reserves for much longer than Wellington’s staff on the British right wing may have realised. Similarly, the idea that the French never seriously troubled the allied infantry belittles the astonishing bravery and discipline of the best of that infantry, who dropped dead in square rather than admit defeat. The weight of evidence now points to an allied line whose centre had fallen back a considerable distance and which was under severe strain. If the whole allied line had actually disintegrated under the hail of French shot and shell, and the constant threat of cavalry, Prussian intervention would have been futile, and Wellington deserves great credit for keeping it in being.
Towards the close of the battle the French still believed that they were winning. Had the battle not been so close that Napoleon gambled everything to win it, the allied victory would not have been so complete. Participants were struck by the extraordinary intensity and violence of the fighting. Frenchmen had known other bloody battles and although most, like Leipzig, were spread over many miles, some, like Borodino, had been similarly compact. Nevertheless, even for Frenchmen Waterloo had seemed extremely hard fought and sanguinary, while for Britons there was nothing to match it. ‘Military men say it is the hardest battle that has been fought for many years & that in comparison Leipzig was nothing to it,’ wrote the surgeon Donald Finlayson. ‘We who escaped out of the bloody Battle of the 18th do bless ourselves most amazingly,’ remarked an experienced cavalryman a week later. ‘Never was such a severe one fought before – all we have ever before seen are a joke to one hour of this … by the immense number of deaths one scarce dared ask for a friend.’ Sergeant Billy Tennant of the 3rd Guards was not wrong when he wrote to his wife Ann the day after, ‘This was the hardest battle that ever was fought, but it is a glorious victory. We have give them a complete drubbing and I think another month the war will be over and then my love I shall embrace you in my arms once more.’ Only the last hope failed him; Tennant was to remain in France with the army of occupation until 1818.10