Instead of just diverting twenty thousand Frenchmen towards the Prussians, I now saw the opportunity to keep them out of both battles entirely. It would take bluff and bluster to gammon these experienced men, but I had nothing to lose. I cleared my throat.
“Who the devil are you, sir?” asked the first general.
“My apologies, gentlemen.” I threw up a respectful salute that took in all of them. “Marshal Ney has sent me to enquire how quickly the first corps will return. He fears that the British could break through his lines at any moment. Indeed, from the sound of fighting coming through the trees they may have already done so.”
That put the Ligny debating society into a fine frenzy of squabbling. The general from Napoleon’s headquarters was initially insistent that D’Erlon march at once for Ligny and fall on the rear of the Prussians. I left them to bicker amongst themselves for a while and then intervened and respectfully asked them all to stay silent for a moment and listen to the sounds coming through the trees. They did, reluctantly in the case of some, and sure enough you could still hear the distant banging of guns. It was not easy to pick up above the much louder sound of battle from Ligny, just a mile away, but it was definitely there.
“That could be coming from anywhere,” insisted Napoleon’s man. “It could be the noise of Ligny echoing back at us.”
“With respect, sir,” I offered, “I have heard the noise from the trees all the way on the ride from Quatre Bras, where it was much louder.” I was lying; the noise was louder at the Ligny end, but I needed to paint a picture of Ney being in a precarious state, rather than just lacking the men to go on the offensive. “When I left,” I continued, “the marshal was using a charge of Kellermann’s cuirassiers as a desperate measure to keep the British infantry at bay. They had reinforcements pouring in down both the Brussels and Nivelles roads.”
To my delight, Ney’s other messenger also spoke up then. “Yes, I saw the marshal order Kellermann to charge the British. The general was not happy about sending his eight hundred men against the British army, but the marshal insisted.”
“But the emperor’s orders are paramount,” insisted his man. “They must be obeyed.”
“Enough,” shouted D’Erlon, holding up his hand for silence. He considered for a moment and I found myself holding my breath as he made his decision. “If the British come through the forest and fall on the emperor’s flank while his men are fighting the Prussians, they could turn the battle here. And if Ney is also beaten at Quatre Bras we could lose all of our gains and be driven back into France.” He turned to Napoleon’s man. “The emperor’s orders are paramount but His Majesty does not have this information and I must act as I think he would want.” D’Erlon paused and took a deep breath. He knew that the outcome of battles and the entire campaign could depend on what he said next. Some have dismissed him as a fool, but as I was to learn later, he wasn’t that. He was cautious, perhaps too much so, and that was his downfall; but he was passionately committed to his emperor and desperate to see him succeed.
“I will leave a division here and some extra cavalry,” he announced. “They will protect the emperor’s flank from any British that emerge from the woods and give him time to react. The rest of the corps will return to Frasnes. If the British are driving Marshal Ney back through the town we will be able to fall on their flank and destroy them.”
So it came to pass that twenty thousand men, who could have had a decisive impact on two battles, spent the afternoon marching back and forth between them without firing a shot. We can only wonder what would have happened in the following days if they had succeeded in helping the rout of the British force or completing the destruction of the Prussian one.
Chapter 32 – Saturday 17th June, Quatre Bras
I woke that morning lying in a hedge on the outskirts of Frasnes. It had been a warm and humid night and while every building in Frasnes was now full of men, I could probably have got some space at Ney’s headquarters if I had wished. He had stayed in the largest house in the village with Prince Jerome Bonaparte, who commanded a corps under Ney that had arrived piecemeal during the battle. Doubtless Jerome had spent the evening listening to how his brother had stolen the marshal’s victory. I had not wanted to join that unhappy gathering and so after reporting that D’Erlon’s men were on their way back I had found a place where I could lie quietly with my thoughts.
Ney might not have had his victory, but with a steadfast defence he had not suffered much of a defeat either. Kellermann and his cuirassiers had brought terror to the British lines, but they had lost a quarter of their number in doing so. As the British squares closed up, the horsemen were shot at from all sides and in the end, they charged back towards French lines. Their flight did not end there. They went on past Frasnes and spread stories about a huge British army which caused many supply wagon drivers to flee for their lives.
As I had foreseen, by the time D’Erlon’s men arrived, weary and footsore, it was dusk and too late for them to take part in the battle. There was no exposed British flank for them to attack. By nightfall, the British had pushed the French out of the fortress-like farm in front of the crossroads and the far forest, but the French still held the high ground that dominated the battlefield.
I had lain awake under that bush for half the night, considering what would happen next. The sound of distant cannon fire at Ligny had stopped at dusk. I wondered if the Prussians had been able to hold out after all, without D’Erlon’s attack. If they had managed to resist Napoleon’s forces and Wellington had stopped Ney, then there was still a chance that the allies could join together. With their larger combined army, they might beat the French yet.
It was not a peaceful night. Even though the sounds of battle had died away, they were replaced by the occasional scream of a wounded man in the now dark fields around Quatre Bras and the sporadic crackle of fire from the outposts. More disturbing were the odd single shots that rang out throughout the night. Some may have been nervous sentries, but others were soldiers ending their own or another person’s suffering. Years before I had spent a night wounded on a battlefield expecting to die. I could easily imagine the horror and pain that would cause a man to end his existence while he lay alone in the darkness.
My melancholy mood was not improved by dawn, which brought with it a thick summer mist. I awoke under my hedge in the early morning chill, with my clothes damp from the dew and my muscles stiff. My stomach was also rumbling with hunger, but as I staggered to my feet, I noticed about a dozen field mushrooms growing under the bushes. I picked them and put them in my pocket. If I could commandeer some meat and eggs, they would make a handsome breakfast.
There was no point going near the battlefield – I would not be able to see anything and was just as likely to be shot by outpost sentries of either side if I loomed out of the mist. Instead, I walked down the road into Frasnes. My joints started to loosen and as I got closer I saw more soldiers emerge from their bivouacs until a whole army of ghost-like figures was moving through the fog.
I found Ney’s headquarters but the good marshal was very sensibly still in bed. With no staff, he had no cook, but General Reille did. I was able to get a lump of bread – not quite the breakfast I had hoped for – although the smell from an oven promised more. However, I had barely wolfed down the last piece of crust when horses’ hooves could be heard clattering on the cobbles.
“Victory!” the rider was shouting. “The emperor has had a famous victory!” I have never seen a crowd materialise so fast. Soon men were thronging about the horseman, who must have been sent off at the first glimmer of dawn’s light. “The Prussians were driven from the field,” the rider shouted in answer to a dozen different questions asked around him. The Imperial Guard had smashed through the centre of the Prussian formations and now the sausage-eaters were in headlong retreat, he announced. The emperor’s men had blocked any move west to join the British and they had captured some guns that had been fleeing east back towards Prussia, but the m
an did not know where the Prussians had gone. “They are beaten,” the rider assured us. “Their regiments are broken and scattered in all directions. Many ran away without their weapons. It will be weeks before they are ready to fight again. They may not stop running until they get back to Prussia,” the man boasted before Heymès pushed his way through the crowd and insisted that the man follow him to report personally to the marshal. Looking up I saw Ney glowering from an upstairs window of his headquarters still in his nightshirt. If he was pleased with Napoleon’s victory his face did not show it. But he could have just been annoyed that the messenger had announced his news to the army at large, before coming to inform him.
I wandered off feeling more despondent than before. With the French now occupying Ligny, I suspected that when the fog lifted it would show that the British had already withdrawn, giving up the ground that so much blood had been spilt for the previous day. They could not stay where they were with Ney able to attack their front and Napoleon ready to fall on their left flank, or even get behind them.
As the sky brightened the fog began to thin and Frasnes came more to life. As with the day before, the army took time to recover from a period of battle before it was ready to fight again. Horsemen were sent galloping down the road towards Gossalie in search of supply wagons, many of which had dispersed when Kellermann’s horsemen had retreated. Having fired continuously for much of the previous day, the artillery, in particular, was short of ammunition; but many of Reille’s corps who had fought from the beginning were also in need of supplies. Only D’Erlon’s men had full ammunition pouches and they were the ones who now manned the outposts.
Soon carts were seen coming up the road. They were swiftly unloaded and refilled with the badly wounded, who were to be taken back to Charleroi. Many of the walking wounded did not wait for the transport. Instead, they set off by themselves, alone or in groups, helping each other, as they made their way back home. Alongside them trudged a straggling column of around a thousand prisoners – mostly Dutch – but I saw a few redcoats mixed in with them. Some of those were also wounded, but there were no spare carts and so they struggled along with their comrades or were carried in makeshift stretchers. I have seen it a score of times and there are few sadder sights than wounded and beaten men being taken away to captivity.
Napoleon’s great gamble had paid off. He had beaten the Prussians and driven them away. Isolated and outnumbered, the British would have little choice but to pull back to Antwerp for disembarkation to Britain, leaving their Dutch allies to their fate. The Austrians with their trump card of Napoleon’s son would sue for a beneficial peace. That left the Russians, isolated and a long way from home. They might join up with the rump of a Prussian army, if Prussia could still afford to maintain an army in the field, but I did not fancy their chances.
So Napoleon would remain on the throne of France and while he protested he wanted peace, in the long run, a return to war would be certain. At least, I thought, my friends among the British army should get away, even if they would have to fight another day. It was a bleak prospect but things were about to get worse: a horseman came galloping down the road from our front line to announce that the British were still in Quatre Bras.
The man had to be wrong, it had to be just a rear-guard, for if the British had stayed they would be trapped and destroyed. Ney was already sending the news to Napoleon as this was a capital chance for them to destroy two enemies in two days. I found my horse and rode out to the higher ground occupied by the Imperial Guard artillery. From there I would be able to see for myself.
The sun burned through the last of the mist as I galloped up the hill and into the trees: it promised to be another hot day. As I emerged from the forest behind the battery to stand amongst the guns, my hopes turned to dismay. There had been no mistake. The British army lay before me like an innocent lamb being stalked by wolves. They had a few guard outposts but most were at rest. Smoke from cooking fires rose into the air and hundreds of men could be seen out searching the battlefield, apparently without a care in the world. A few were helping wounded comrades back to the crossroads, but most were indulging in the time-honoured privilege of survivors: looting the dead.
“If the marshal wants to re-start the battle, he should know that we only have an hour’s ammunition.” I turned and it was my old friend the captain standing at my side.
“I am amazed that they are still here,” I told him with feeling.
“They must believe that the Prussians are still at Ligny,” said the captain. “Instead of pulling back they still have men arriving. Look, the road to Brussels is half jammed with their supply wagons.” I pulled open my glass and could see the tops of wagons over the hedgerows, but also noticed hundreds of horses hobbled for grazing in a field of clover to the side of the road.
“Have their cavalry arrived?”
“Yes, they have also been pulling in all morning. There must be several thousand of them. They have more guns too, but we have marked where they are. They won’t last long when we get started.”
I dismounted and sat down on a nearby fallen tree trunk. Surely they were trying to reach the Prussians? They had to know soon that they were alone and exposed, surrounded by their enemy. There was nothing I could do to warn them for D’Erlon’s men formed a solid picket guard in the fields. After men like General Bourmont had defected to the enemy earlier in the campaign, there would be no hesitation in shooting a senior officer suspected of doing the same. And even if I did manage to get past them I would just be ensnared when the French trap was sprung. For by then it was nine in the morning and I imagined that Napoleon would already be on the road with as many troops as he could muster. He only had some four miles to cover and then the British would be bottled up and at his mercy.
I sat and watched for some sign of alarm amongst the British and Dutch for most of the morning. The hands of my watch moved so slowly, they made snails look like greyhounds in comparison. Ten o’clock came and went but still the men around Quatre Bras were as oblivious to their fate as cattle in the slaughterhouse yard. Ammunition wagons for the French guns arrived and with them some news. Napoleon had refused to believe the first despatches from Ney. He thought Ney was exaggerating again about the size of the force in front of him and had sent his own general to confirm that the British were still there. That general had been and gone, galloping back to the emperor to assure him that Ney’s report was accurate. Everyone now expected that the emperor would be marching on the crossroads with every man he could find. Napoleon’s doubts had bought the British some time, not, however, that it seemed they had any intention of using it. Then finally, at around eleven, there was some sign of increased activity amongst the men in red.
I had a clear view of the Brussels road half a mile beyond the crossroads where it crested a shallow rise. All morning I had seen a trickle of walking wounded heading north but now the flow of men increased. Then carts parked along the road were being turned around and they too started heading north. Any doubts I had were allayed by the artillery captain.
“They are pulling out,” he announced.
“Are you sure?” I asked, trying to keep the hope out of my voice.
“Yes, they are dismantling one of their batteries. Do you think the marshal will order us to attack?”
“I have no idea,” I told him and I certainly was not going back to ask. But we had the chance to find out for ourselves half an hour later when Ney and several of his generals, including Prince Jerome, arrived at our vantage point. The marshal was still smarting from his stolen victory of the day before and just grunted an acknowledgement when the artillery captain reported that that the British were withdrawing. Jerome said something I did not catch and Ney retorted angrily, “Well if he had believed my despatches he would be here by now.”
Jerome was pressing Ney to start another attack. “We can pin them down until the emperor gets here to destroy them,” he insisted. The artillery captain piped up that they now had enough ammunit
ion for at least three hours of bombardment, but Ney just brushed his suggestion aside.
“They outnumber us. We will wait until the emperor gets here before we start an attack,” he announced while turning his horse away.
“But they are pulling back now,” Jerome shouted after him. “If we attack without delay the emperor can rescue us if we are pushed back.” I saw Ney’s face at that moment; the marshal visibly winced at the thought of him being ‘rescued’ by the emperor. After his stolen victory the day before, that notion was just too much for his pride to accept. Muttering some profanity, he raked his heels hard into his horse and galloped away back through the trees, leaving his disappointed staff to follow on behind.
Ney’s pride brought the British another hour but then a large cloud of dust became visible in the east. It was noon by then, and stiflingly hot. There was little if any wind and the horizon was marred by a huge column of storm clouds that was coming our way. Everything seemed to portend a climactic clash.
Chapter 33
The British saw the dust cloud and their cavalry mounted up and formed three huge lines on the eastern side of the crossroads to cover their retreat. There must have been around seven thousand horsemen; heavy cavalry, lights, dragoons, hussars; you name it they were all there. The artillery captain cursed that they had no orders to fire, for it was a prime target. I kept my eye on the road; it was now thick with men and guns moving north and I suspected that yet more were moving west to Nivelles behind the far forest. The British outposts were pulling back and the French were moving in after them. I turned my glass to the east and saw that the long dust cloud now had a dark line at the bottom. From the glint of sunlight on metal, I guessed that these were thousands of French horsemen leading the emperor’s advance.
Flashman's Waterloo Page 27