by Foster, R E
Wellington also lacked confidence in the polyglot force that was his army. ‘It were to be wished,’ admitted Horse Guards, ‘that you had a more efficient army, composed of British materials.’ Though Britons would laud the army that fought the Waterloo campaign, only 33,000 of the 95,000 men at Wellington’s disposal were fellow countrymen, and most of them were not drawn from his battle-hardened regiments of the Peninsula. Of the rest, some 27,000 came from the German states of Brunswick, Hanover and Nassau. A further 8,000 Germans, based improbably in Bexhill, constituted the King’s German Legion. The latter in particular might be relied upon, but the same could not be said of the 20,000 Dutch commanded by the young and inexperienced Prince of Orange. Even less faith could be placed in the 6,000 Belgians, some of whom had only recently been fighting for the French Empire, of which they had been part for the twenty years since 1794. The Duke might well be forgiven for describing as ‘infamous’ an army that spoke at least four different languages and lacked common equipment.106 He was well aware that should Napoleon throw the full weight of his army against him, he would be both quantitatively and qualitatively outnumbered. Wellington’s resulting caution was grounded on recognising this hard-nosed reality. The fact that he emerged victorious in the campaign has meant that posterity has tended to overlook his first priority of ensuring that he was not decisively defeated. To do this, the Duke needed a secure line of retreat towards his main supply base at Ostend or Antwerp beyond it. It was superfluous of the government to issue the euphemistic reminder that, ‘Your Grace is well aware of the importance we have always attached to the possession of Antwerp and Ostend, not only as the means of providing for our communications with the army, but as securing a retreat in case of mischance.’107
Napoleon’s deciding to strike west, in order to threaten Wellington’s supply line at Ostend, was therefore a worrying possibility for the Duke. But the Emperor enjoyed the luxury of several options for an offensive.108 He might have struck east beyond the River Meuse towards the Rhine Valley. This would have posed little immediate threat to Wellington; indeed it would have exposed the French left flank to both his and Blücher’s armies. Both political and strategic logic, however, suggested to Wellington that Napoleon would opt for a more central thrust towards Brussels. The fall of a major city would rally support for Napoleon both in and outside France, perhaps even trigger the collapse of the Seventh Coalition. It would also open the way to Ghent, to which place Louis XVIII had decamped in ignominious haste. Wellington was very clear from the outset of the campaign that they should ‘not let the enemy get possession of Brussels even for a moment’. He was less sure that he could guarantee it, especially if it risked the destruction of his army. Writing a few weeks after Waterloo, Lady Shelley, someone who enjoyed his confidence more than most, recorded that, ‘my own impression is that […] the Duke would have retreated in the direction of Hal, for he had declared at Brussels that he would not risk a defeat to preserve that city.’109
Wellington’s presumption that Napoleon would seek Brussels as his first prize was correct, but it raised a further dilemma: along which of several roads would the blow fall? His conviction was that Napoleon would choose the main Paris to Brussels road running through Mons and Hal. Consequently, he believed that the initial attack would fall on Mons. The Duke was wrong, and he clung to his conviction until overwhelming evidence late on 15 June finally convinced him of his error. This was something else for which he would later be taken to task, for it meant that he was seemingly slow to react in support of the Prussians against whom Napoleon had decided to strike first. But to be guilty of over-caution was a lesser crime than to be fatally deceived – which is what would have happened had he allowed himself to be drawn east by a Napoleonic feint that left open both Brussels and his supply line. As he regularly insisted in later life, there ‘never existed a man […] in whose presence it was so little safe to make what is called a false movement’.110
Napoleon may not have induced the Duke to make the false step he dreaded but he did, for all Wellington’s later denials, achieve an element of relative surprise at the start of the Waterloo campaign. Though Wellington was aware that French forces were concentrating around Maubeuge on 6 June – which still suggested Mons as their possible target – he wrongly discounted rumours a week later that Napoleon had joined them.111 The Emperor was no apparition. His main attack was launched at 3.30 a.m. on Thursday 15 June along an 8-mile front towards Charleroi, which was in the Prussian zone for the defence of Belgium. This presented him with the option of a direct road to Brussels and also the opportunity, which he sought, of keeping the British and Prussian armies apart and defeating them separately.
Both the speed and clarity of communication do much to explain the movements of all the major actors during the Waterloo drama. During the crucial hours before the French attack, Wellington relied for information about what was going on in the area south of Mons from Major-General Sir William Dörnberg. At 9.30 a.m. on 15 June he wrote, without much apparent concern, that, ‘I just hear the Prussians were attacked.’ The Prussians themselves twice sent word to Wellington that this was so: first, from General Ziethen at Charleroi by 5 a.m.; later, direct from Blücher’s headquarters. Establishing at what time those communications reached the Duke has proved remarkably tendentious. Though the Prussians claimed that the first information was in Brussels by 9 a.m., Major-General Baron von Müffling, the Prussian liaison officer attached to Wellington, said the first news only arrived at 3 p.m.112 The issue, for Wellington on 15 June anyway, was not so much ‘when’ as ‘what’: if this was the main French attack, what was its intention? By 7 p.m., and now sure of the former point, Wellington had issued orders for his army to concentrate with a view to marching at daybreak. But he was still uncertain on the latter point; hence his adding the strict rider that, ‘This movement is not to take place until it is quite certain that the enemy’s attack is upon the right of the Prussian army, and the left of the British army.’113 For that, ‘I must wait for my advices from Mons.’ Only towards midnight did this arrive.
For this reason, it was his metaphorical dancing shoes, not his campaign boots, which Wellington put on that evening. His newly-wed Quartermaster-General, Colonel Sir William De Lancey, who went to his lodgings shortly before midnight, found him ‘in his chemise and slippers, preparing to dress for the Duchess of Richmond’s ball’. The ball assumed a mythical status after Waterloo, but it was hardly unusual: Wellington had given ones himself on 28 April and 7 June, and was planning another for the anniversary of Vitoria.114 It made sense to go. His attendance would be reassuring to the anxious dignitaries of Brussels, and since many of his senior officers would be present it was a milieu in which pleasure could be mixed with any necessary business.
It was whilst Wellington was at the ball in Brussels, at around 1 a.m., that the Prince of Orange brought unexpected and unwelcome tidings. The main French advance was forging towards Sombreffe and the main Prussian force. Worse, the Prussian withdrawal from Charleroi had allowed a portion of that force under Marshal Ney to strike west into the Duke’s sector towards Quatre Bras. Ney’s orders were to occupy the strategically important crossroads where the Brussels to Charleroi road intersected with that from Nivelles to Namur only 20 miles south of the Belgian city. The situation would have been worse still had not generals Constant-Rebecque and Perponcher from the Prince of Orange’s corps taken it upon themselves to occupy the position with a brigade.115 The Duke withdrew to his host’s dressing room. Chosen more for the fact that it contained a large map than the privacy it afforded, Wellington studied the map and declared that, ‘Napoleon has humbugged me (by G-), he has gained twenty-four hours’ march on me.’116 He then left as unobtrusively as possible.
Wellington rose at 5 a.m. on 16 June and gave orders for Picton’s Fifth British Infantry Division to advance to Quatre Bras. But still old doubts lingered. Ney was moving only slowly towards Quatre Bras. It was still conceivable that he might be headed tow
ards Nivelles with the aim of turning Wellington’s right flank. Picton’s men were ordered to halt south of Brussels at Waterloo all morning. From there they could just as easily be directed towards Nivelles or Quatre Bras. Wellington passed them as he rode to the Quatre Bras position. He arrived at the crossroads by mid-morning. There were as yet only 6,500 men and guns to confront the approaching French force of 28,000. A less dilatory Ney could easily have seized the crossroads. That he did not may partly have been the consequence of Wellington’s reputation: the circumspect General Reille, who was with Ney, could not believe that the Duke would not have hidden considerably more men than they could see before them.117 The Duke meanwhile, wrote to Blücher at 10.30 a.m. from Frasnes, a hamlet just over 2 miles south of the crossroads, confirming that it was his intention to support him in his venture to give battle against Napoleon’s main force in front of Sombreffe. Shortly after, with British forces approaching and Ney still yet to attack, he judged the position at Quatre Bras sufficiently quiet that he went to see Blücher in person. The two met at the Moulin de Brye at 1 p.m. On the condition that he was not attacked himself, Wellington confirmed his promise of support. Both the ‘Frasnes letter’ and his verbal commitment are problematic. It would be several hours before any of his men could reach the Prussian position, surely only a notional possibility anyway, given that a major engagement at Quatre Bras was almost certainly about to begin. Was Wellington, in being less than ingenuous, trying to steel the resolve of the Prussians, fearing that they might be tempted to fall back and leave him to face the French alone?118
By the time Wellington arrived back at Quatre Bras at 3 p.m., what had begun as a skirmish was quickly evolving into a full-scale battle. Crucially, from Wellington’s point of view, though Ney was at last attacking in strength, the British were even more quickly reinforcing the position. With Picton’s men arriving, Wellington’s total force of 30,000 men outnumbered the French by the end of the day. Ney was thus unable to use the crossroads to turn east and attack the Prussian flank. To this extent, Wellington had provided considerable help to Blücher. The British saw this as sufficient reason to claim victory. More accurately, Quatre Bras had been bloodily indecisive. The Anglo-Allied force suffered the heavier of the heavy losses, some 4,800 as against 4,200 for the French. Wellington’s fatalities included the Duke of Brunswick. The one who caught the popular imagination, though, was the exuberant and handsome 17-year-old Lord James Hay. Hours before, he had cut a dashing figure at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball, but now, as the press whimsically put it, ‘early closed an honourable career’. The same report noted that, ‘The Duke of Wellington exposed himself as usual to imminent danger: the bullets, says our informant, were whizzing about him in every direction.’119
Quatre Bras was clearly no sideshow – Wellington’s losses were amongst the highest he had ever sustained on a single day – but Ligny was the main battle on 16 June. Indeed, with 83,000 Prussians facing 65,000 French, the initial dispositions exceeded those at Waterloo. It was a battle in which Wellington was meant to have been the supporting actor to Blücher, a sort of Waterloo in reverse. But it was Napoleon who stole the show. Commencing at 2.30 p.m., the Emperor launched a series of frontal attacks around Ligny and the villages west of it. Five hours of bitter and costly fighting ensued before the French prevailed. The casualties, some 13,700 French and 19,000 Prussians, were enormous. It is staggering that twenty years later a Hanoverian veteran of 18 June could write, apparently without irony, that ‘we had heard that the Prussians had taken part in a skirmish’ at Ligny.120 Gneisenau, Blücher’s deputy, attributed the Prussian reverse to Wellington’s non-arrival. The French General, Gourgaud, attributed Prussian losses to their having been on an elevated plain ‘where they were absolutely unprotected, and exposed to all the firing of our artillery’. The Duke, for the same reason, had feared for Blücher’s men. Napoleon therefore had it about right when, ‘He attributed the battle of Ligny to the decided character of Blücher, and that of Quatre Bras to the necessity under which Wellington was placed of supporting the Prussian army.’121
By nightfall on 16 June Wellington had made up much of the twenty-four hours he had complained of losing. The French, by contrast, might have made more of the situation. Both Napoleon and Ney had summoned d’Erlon’s I Corps of 20,000 men to their aid during 16 June: the bemused commander dithered and ended by assisting neither. Quatre Bras, perhaps even more so Ligny, would have turned out differently had he intervened. For despite having been beaten at Ligny, the Prussians were far from being destroyed. Logic suggested they would now retreat east away from Wellington and towards their supply line at Liège. With Blücher missing, initially presumed killed or captured after his horse had fallen on him, this was Gneisenau’s preference. But on 17 June, testimony to the old man’s constitution and the restorative powers of gin and rhubarb, Blücher appeared before Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Henry Hardinge, Wellington’s liaison officer with the Prussians, to inform him that other counsels had prevailed. They would fall back northwards towards Wavre, 14 miles to the south-east of Brussels.122 Combined operations in defence of the city remained an option.
The story of 17 June is therefore one of which commander would respond best. Though he later claimed that he literally saw that the Prussians had been worsted at Ligny, the truth seems to be that Wellington at first inclined to believe that they had had the best of the contest.123 Since Hardinge had suffered wounds necessitating the amputation of his left hand in the battle, the Duke needed to be sure. Two squadrons of the 10th Hussars were sent to establish the truth. Before 9 a.m. Wellington was in possession of the facts, including the critical detail of the Prussians’ falling back towards Wavre. Captain Bowles of the Guards records Wellington as telling him that, ‘Old Blücher has had a d-d good licking and gone back to Wavre, 18 miles. As he has gone back, we must go too. I suppose in England they will say we have been licked.’ It is interesting that at such a moment Wellington could still be concerned as to how news of his actions would play at home. But he was typically decisive: ‘I can’t help it; as they are gone back, we must go too.’ By 10 a.m. the retreat was under way.124
The Anglo-Allied retreat from Quatre Bras was one of the smoothest chapters in the story of the campaign, thanks in no small part to the rearguard provided by Uxbridge’s cavalry together with the horse artillery. But it also owed much to inaction on the part of the French. Ney did nothing by way of harassing the allied retreat until 1 p.m. Like Wellington, he was unsure what had happened at Ligny; now outnumbered at Quatre Bras, he was much slower in finding out. Marshal Grouchy, who had been charged by Napoleon with shadowing the Prussian withdrawal, displayed a similar torpor. But it was the Emperor himself who set the tone of lassitude. Whilst Grouchy dealt with the Prussians, he should have descended on Wellington’s left flank. Had he done so, with Ney re-engaging from the front, Wellington would surely have met his Waterloo that day at Quatre Bras. The French might have been in Brussels, as they planned, by Saturday night. By the time Napoleon’s lancers appeared at Quatre Bras at 2 p.m., his would-be victim had vanished. Wellington would be forever mystified as to the reasons for his adversary’s inertia.125
For Wellington’s army, therefore, the dominant memory of the retreat was less the pursuit from behind than the violent thunderstorm which broke out overhead. Hope Pattison recalled that, ‘The rain descended as if the windows of heaven had been opened, or the bars of the mighty deep unloosed […] nothing that I have ever seen before or since can bear any comparison to this fearful visitation.’ The Duke, less attuned to the Almighty, remembered it as ‘the most terrible storm of rain that I have ever seen – our horses could not face it’.126 Whilst it posed problems for all those that had to contend with it, life was inevitably harder for pursuer than pursued, especially the cumbrous French artillery. By nightfall on 17 June, Wellington’s army had reached the relative safety of Mont St Jean.
The ridge of Mont St Jean lies roughly midway along the road from Quat
re Bras to Brussels. Along it, thus bisecting the Charleroi-Brussels road lay another road running east to west from Ohain to Braine l’Alleud. A little to the north, on the edge of the forest of Soignes, lay the village of Waterloo where Wellington established his headquarters. Learning by messenger from Blücher at around 1 a.m. that the whole Prussian Army would cross from Wavre in the east to his assistance at daybreak, the Duke determined that he would stand and fight. He was still up at 3 a.m., for several letters were dated as being written at that hour. Though couched in a reassuring tone – ‘all will yet turn out well’, he informed Sir Charles Stuart in Brussels – they betray an unmistakeable subtext. The battle in the daylight hours might not turn out favourably. His female friend, Lady Frances Webster, was told that, ‘The course of the operations may oblige me to uncover Bruxelles for a moment, and may expose that town to the enemy.’ More explicitly still, the Duc de Berri was told to ensure that Louis XVIII was ready to make for Antwerp ‘upon certain information that the enemy has got into Brussels’. The Governor of Antwerp was duly informed that there might be some unscheduled arrivals.127