Masters of the Battlefield

by Davis, Paul K.

  With an increasing sense of urgency, d’Erlon’s men began their advance at about 1:30. They made good progress at first, driving back the defenders at Papelotte, isolating the defenders within La Haye Sainte, and forcing the 95th to retreat from the sandpit. All seemed to be going well as a Dutch-Belgian brigade broke and ran, disrupting the advance of some of Picton’s division. Had some cavalry been available this could have been key to a French victory. But there were none available, and British artillery fire and a counterattack by the 92nd Regiment broke the French charge. As d’Erlon’s men began to retreat, the British cavalry came over the hill and rode many of the French soldiers down. Unfortunately, as so often happened throughout military history, the British horsemen did not know when to quit and found themselves in the midst of the French lines with no support. A French cavalry countercharge decimated the British cavalry, particularly the Scots Greys. The British cavalry took 50 percent casualties, 2,500 horsemen, failing to achieve what could have been a great success.105 Despite these losses, the British cavalry did prevent the French from trying the British left wing again that day.

  Wellington filled in his losses from d’Erlon’s attack with men from his reserves, but more French attacks, primarily cavalry, were thrown across the field. With neither failure nor retreat an option and with valuable time passing, Napoleon ordered Ney to seize the La Haye Sainte farmhouse, at any cost. At 3:45 Ney led the charge, taking his men across the field, up the opposite hill, and into the British forces on the reverse slope. There the British formed fourteen squares, each of about 1,000 men, able to stand with muskets and bayonets against multiple cavalry charges. The largest assault, 12,000 horsemen, beat themselves against the squares and were obliged to retreat.106 As the French cavalry were forced back across the Mont St. Jean ridge and to their own lines, the leading elements of the Prussian army were arriving along three parallel roads.

  Depending on his right wing to hold the Prussians at bay, Napoleon ordered yet another massed cavalry charge at the British center. Its bravery and its defeat were repetitions of the previous attack. By 5:00 the remnants of the French cavalry were streaming back across the field, although the defenders of La Haye Sainte had finally run out of ammunition and been forced to abandon their position. Prussian troops were also pushing the French back and were threatening the village of Plancenoit. As the Prussians took and lost and retook the village, Napoleon shifted some of his reserves to assist. These were the Guard units, his elites, and a mere two battalions managed to beat back fourteen battalions of Prussians. The French line was temporarily stabilized.107

  Napoleon had one last card to play. Certainly two major assaults on the British line had weakened them, he reasoned. Indeed, with the loss of La Haye Sainte the allied center was temporarily broken. Wellington deployed forward the last of his reserves and shifted his 7,000 from Braine-Alleud to the ridge overlooking Hougoumont. Unit commanders sent word to him for replacements or reinforcements, but no more existed. The British drew their flank forces to present as strong a line as possible along the ridge. Wellington himself led a unit of inexperienced Brunswickers, backed by two small units of cavalry.108 It was 7:00 and Wellington had nothing left to commit. He prayed for Blücher or darkness.

  Napoleon had had no more reserves when Ney called for them after taking La Haye Sainte, as they had been committed to his right against the Prussians at Plancenoit. With things somewhat stable there and with Wellington reeling in front, Napoleon could only do one thing to save the day for himself: commit the Imperial Guard.109 The Guard had just returned from Plancenoit when he ordered them forward. As they marched toward the British lines, word spread of the Prussian arrival. To stop these rumors, Napoleon ordered the word to be spread that the newcomers were the men of Grouchy’s column. This temporarily shifted enthusiasm. He gathered together eleven battalions of the Old, Middle, and Young Guard; five battalions, or 4,000 men, of the Middle Guard took the lead. The Guard battalions marched in column formation, which made for a lack of forward firepower as they approached the British line. Further, they were unsupported by artillery or cavalry. All they had going for them was their knowledge that they were the best Napoleon’s army had to offer.110

  The charge got off to a good start, since the forward center of the battlefield was now in French hands. Wellington had his men lie down just below the crest of the ridge on the reverse side. They had done this often during the day, and it greatly limited damage from the indirect artillery fire. On the right side of the advancing French troops were two battalions of grenadiers. They captured some artillery batteries, then crossed the crest to face elements of Halkett’s brigade, the 30th and 73rd Foot. They almost drove the British troops back but for the arrival of David Chassé’s men with artillery, who began firing grapeshot into the French troops. To the French left were three battalions of chasseurs, which ran into the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the Foot Guards (later known as the Grenadier Guards). Now was the time to turn the tide. Wellington called out to the Foot Guards’ commander, General Sir Peregrine Maitland, to engage with his infantry. They stood and fired at the French from a range of twenty yards, killing some 300 Frenchmen. The French Imperial Guardsmen kept advancing, but three more volleys broke their charge.111

  The attackers wavered, tried to return fire, and then fled into the battalions of the Old Guard, which were to be the second wave. Napoleon saw the assault faltering, followed by hordes of allied infantry and cavalry coming over the hill. With the Guard falling back, Wellington sensed the time was ripe for a counterattack. He waved his hat and the 40,000 men on the ridgeline burst forward.112 Napoleon ordered the remaining Guard units into squares; they put up a minimal resistance before fleeing themselves. The Young Guard held out a while longer in Plancenoit, covering the retreat of the remnants of the French army. The French left some 32,000 casualties behind, as well as virtually all of their artillery.

  Wellington won by fulfilling most of the tenets of a defensive battle. He had a day’s head start in arriving at the battlefield, ground with which he was familiar, and personally placed his units. No defensive works could be constructed in the time he had, but the existing strong points of Hougou-mont, La Haye Sainte, and Papelotte served him well. Security was his strength, as it had been in all his defensive battles: placing the majority of his troops on the reverse slope deceived his enemy as to his numbers, and played on the fears of Napoleon’s subordinates who had faced Wellington in the peninsula and were aware of his tactics. Wellington was not one to use spoiling attacks on this day, but his ability to recover his guns on the ridgeline every time the French drove the gunners away allowed him to maintain fire on successive French attacks. Fortunately for him, Napoleon’s army was sufficiently disjointed in their attacks that Wellington did not have to disrupt them with offensive actions. The forward strong points accomplished that goal. Wellington’s deployment in dead ground not only deceived the enemy but allowed him to move reserves unseen. Thus, he was able to maintain his front line after each French assault. His final reserves, brought up from Braine l’Alleud, were perfectly placed to enfilade the attacking Guard units at the end of the battle and begin the pursuit immediately.

  Wellington did not operate against Napoleon’s flanks—that was Blücher’s job. Although not under Wellington’s direction (so the British commander cannot be credited with this flexibility), the Prussian flank attacks from midafternoon onward not only diverted French reserves but maintained enough pressure to keep the French from throwing sufficient reserves at Wellington late in the day. Wellington’s greatest illustration of flexibility was in the nature of his defensive moves. He had no earthworks but used the existing strong points perfectly. His infantry squares did what they needed to do: break the French cavalry and quickly re-form into lines for the final assault.113 Wellington used all military aspects of the terrain masterfully. The ridge provided both concealment from French observation and cover from the long-range artillery fire. The strength of the farm complexes pr
oved sufficient that none could be taken until it was too late in the battle to make a difference.114 Wellington covered the avenues of approach as well as his own lines to the flank and rear. His personal position was wherever he was needed; he rode all along the line throughout the battle, giving immediate directives in reaction to French moves. By occupying the road along the ridgeline, both sunken and covered by hedges, he kept all the ground in front of him in a covered field of fire.

  Wellington and Blücher met immediately after the battle at La Belle Alliance. Which man was most responsible for the victory? Most give credit to Wellington, although some favor Blücher since without his flank attack the French would almost certainly have won the day. As Gordon Corrigan comments, “Arguments as to whether or not the Prussians, rather than Wellington, won the battle are irrelevant: had Wellington not relied upon Bliicher to come and join him, he would not have fought the battle at all. As it was, the two commanders trusted and respected each other and the result was to the credit of both.”115 The Prussian cavalry were given the task of pursuit, but the exhausted horsemen went no more than a few miles to the Dyle River, where they stopped to rest. By the next morning the French army was out of touch. Napoleon hoped to regroup, but at each planned rallying point he found nothing but refugees or dead soldiers. He finally hustled to Paris to see if he could salvage a propaganda victory. Neither he, Wellington, nor Blücher ever saw battle again.

  Wellington’s Generalship

  REVIEWS OF THE BATTLE at Waterloo almost always look at the multitude of mistakes made, primarily on Napoleon’s part. While it is true he made more than was his wont, it still took a commander able to take advantage of those mistakes in order to emerge victorious. In considering the principles of war that Wellington best implemented, the clear choices are mass, maneuver, unity of command, and morale. Although he showed the elements of offensive in a number of battles and used surprise to his advantage at Vittoria, enough of his battles were fought on the defensive that these principles cannot be selected.

  In the three battles discussed here, Wellington was outnumbered twice. Leading up to the battle at Assaye, he tried to implement a pincer movement with Stevenson’s force. Should he have divided his forces and hoped for coordinated attacks across miles of unfamiliar terrain without communication between the two columns? On the surface of it, no. But neither would it have been wise to wait for Stevenson’s arrival rather than attacking the Marathas on his own. In his book on the Anglo-Maratha Wars, Brigadier K. G. Pitre expresses the opinion that it “would have been logistically and strategically impossible to conduct this campaign with a single force. If Wellesley had combined both armies, the combination would have been not only hopelessly clumsy and slow, but totally incapable of guarding the Peshwa and the Nizam’s territory. It could not have secured Ahmednagar and Jama. Moreover, both corps could not have advanced through the same defile on the same day.”116 Neither could he have withdrawn after making contact with the Marathas, for their cavalry would have harassed his column unmercifully. Once on the battlefield, however, his concentration of force was handled admirably. He used the mass of his troops at the Maratha right, breaking their line and forcing a withdrawal. Any other maneuver would almost certainly have ended in his destruction.

  At Vittoria, although his forces were on separate lines of approach, they converged on the bulk of the French army along the Zadorra River line. The mass, three-fourths of his army, struck the front and both flanks of the primary French line, forcing a retreat. The fourth column was sufficient to accomplish its task of securing the road to Bilbao and, had it been more aggressively employed, could have been the anvil for the main attack’s hammer.

  At Waterloo, the use of mass only occurred at the end of the day. Wellington had no single decisive point to hold, and thus his numbers were dispersed across the battlefield. Only when the French had thrown in the Imperial Guard, and failed, did he get to use the mass of his force, which at that point was almost every man still upright. After being subject to attacks at almost all points, his entire line became the mass of his offensive as he went over from defense to offense.

  Wellington also demonstrated the principle of maneuver from the earliest days in India. The battle at Assaye showed his ability to read terrain and respond almost immediately. Surprised to find the Marathas in a strong defensive position rather than in open formation as he had been led to believe, he saw the ability to shift his arriving troops around to the right to strike the Maratha flank. Again surprised by the speed of the Maratha change of front, he adapted his plan on the spot to deploy his forces more strongly to his left to strike the decisive blow while maintaining pressure on other parts of the enemy line. Corrigan asserts, “Assaye surely gives the lie to any suggestion that he was always cautious or lacked the speed of reaction to fight an encounter battle. Immediately upon realising that the Mahratta army were as close as they were, he had galloped straight to where he could see for himself, then in minutes had decided that the best option was to attack at once, had made his plan, issued his orders and had got the army under way.”117

  Vittoria was almost a textbook example of moving a force along separate lines. The entire 1813 Peninsular Campaign up to the battle at Vittoria showed Wellington’s ability to continually threaten an enemy flank to force his retreat. His fast-moving army, operating in very rough terrain, kept the French army completely at bay until the French forces held their ground around Vittoria, where he was almost able to pull off a complete battle of encirclement.118 Once the French decided to make a stand, his forces came together to oblige their retreat from the battlefield. Given the difficulties of communication over the miles separating the four columns, to assign routes and responsibilities to three men (while he commanded the fourth column) and have them come together, if not perfectly, then certainly in a sufficiently timely manner to accomplish his goal was a remarkable feat. The southernmost column operated virtually independently on the Heights of Puebla while Wellington was able to shift the line of attack immediately upon hearing of the uncovered bridge near Tres Puentes. The arrival of Picton and Dalrymple was almost fortuitously late, since Wellington’s earlier attack with the Light Division meant the French northern flank was more exposed than it would have been had the two attacks been simultaneous.

  At Waterloo, all of Wellington’s maneuvering prior to the battle was in response to the surprise line of attack Napoleon chose and Ney’s attack at Quatre Bras. After Quatre Bras, however, he was able to withdraw his men along lines he ordered to a battlefield of his choosing. Once the battle commenced, all of his maneuvering was again in reaction to attacks; the real maneuvering was his shifting of reserves from point to point as the battle progressed. It was the arrival of the flank attack by the Prussians that provided the bulk of the allied maneuver that day, but it was a move Wellington expected, even if he did not command it.

  Wellington employed the principle of unity of command increasingly as his career progressed. This was due mainly to the very irregular quality of his subordinate commanders. In India he had few subordinates to worry about; as he and most of his officers were young, they learned together and were more likely to think alike. He learned some tactics from the Marathas and had no trouble implementing them without others who disagreed with his views. As Corrigan points out, “It was Wellesley and Wellesley alone who, without teaching, training or instructional manuals to help him, devised the tactics and organisation which won the war.”119 At Assaye, Wellington’s personal reconnaissance gave him the opportunity to take in the situation and immediately move to action. Pitre notes, “His first infantry attack… unhinged the Maratha right flank.… An unexpected situation developed, when the ‘dead’ gunners turned their guns and started firing at the cavalry. Wellesley restored the position by employing his remaining infantry units who restored his rear area.… Wellesley ordered Maxwell’s second charge, but in the time thus gained, he realigned his infantry for the second attack.”120 His constant movement around the b
attlefield was what saved the day after the skirmishers advanced in the wrong direction. He was on the spot to see the developing problem and order in the cavalry to save the exposed soldiers, and in doing so drive some Maratha cavalry back into their own lines.

  In Portugal Wellington often complained about the low caliber of officer sent to him from England. In 1811, he wrote to the Horse Guards concerning some of his commanders: “I have received the letter announcing the appointment of Sir William Erskine, General Lumley and General Hay to this Army. The first I understand to be a madman. I believe you agree that the second is not very wise. The third may be useful.”121 Even had they been of better or even consistent quality, it probably would have made little difference; Wellington had little use for seconds in command: “It has a great and high-sounding title, without duties or responsibility of any description… excepting in giving opinions for which he is in no manner responsible.”122

  Almost all accounts of Wellington’s command style reflect his disdain for those under him, and he not only rejected the concept of an immediate subordinate but also was not terribly fond of the idea of a staff along modern or even Napoleonic lines. He was not inclined to consult with subordinates on anything but technical matters, and he was not happy with the independent views of others.123 He was, however, dependent on subordinates who would follow orders, since he was often in the thick of the battle on a large field and could not, as at Assaye, be everywhere. After the battle at Vittoria, he court-martialed a battery commander for moving his guns on the directive of another senior officer. At the same time, had Graham not followed his orders to the letter and cut the road to Bayonne, he might have been able to seize Vittoria instead and destroy the French army.