by Foster, R E
The cannonade continued without intermission, and about 6 o’clock we saw heavy columns of Infantry supported by Dragoons forming for a fresh attack, it was evident it would be a desperate and, we thought, probably a decisive one; everyone felt how much depended on this terrible moment. A black mass of the Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard with music playing and the great Napoleon at their head came rolling onward from the farm of ‘La Belle Alliance’; with rapid pace they descended the opposite heights, all scattered firing ceased on both sides, our little army seemed to collect within itself, the Infantry deployed into line, and the Artillery charged to the muzzle with grape and canister, waited for the moment when the enemy’s columns should commence the ascent of our heights; those spaces in our lines which death had opened and left vacant were covered in appearance by bodies of Cavalry […] The French moved on with arms sloped au pas de charge: they began to ascend the hill, in a few seconds they were within a hundred paces of us, and as yet not a shot had been fired. The awful moment was now at hand, a peal of ten thousand thunders burst at once on their devoted heads, the storm swept them down as a whirlwind which rushes over the ripe corn, they paused, their advance ceased, they commenced from the head of their columns and attempted to extend their front, but death had already caused too much confusion among them, they crowded instinctively behind each other to avoid a fire which was intolerably dreadful; still they stood firm – la garde meurt et ne se rend pas. For half an hour this horrible butchery continued, at last seeing all their efforts vain, all their courage useless, deserted by their Emperor, who had already flown, unsupported by their comrades, who were already beaten, the hitherto invincible Old Guard gave way and fled in every direction. One spontaneous and almost painfully animated ‘Hurrah,’ burst from the victorious ranks of England, the line at once advanced; general officers, soldiers all partaking of one common enthusiasm. The battle was over.145
Mackworth did not, of course, witness every detail. He did not know that it was Wellington himself who was directly involved in the order for the British infantry to open fire. Neither did he see that as the Guard recoiled it was further battered by a brilliant flank attack launched on the initiative of Sir John Colborne’s 52nd Foot. Be that as it may, he was right that the decisive punch had been thrown. As the Guard fell back in confusion, Wellington judged that he could assume an improbable offensive. At 8.30 p.m. he signalled the general advance. The last notable resistance came from members of the Imperial Guard under the direction of General Cambronne near La Belle Alliance. His scream of ‘merde’ or, for more tender sensibilities, an approximation of Mackworth’s ‘la garde meurt et ne se rend pas’, would come to symbolise French defiance at Waterloo no less than Hougoumont’s defenders epitomised that of the British. Militarily, it was inconsequential. Wellington later remarked that the French implosion was ‘one of the most remarkable phenomena of sudden and total rout of a disciplined army he had ever seen’.146
So why had it been so sudden and total? The explanation lies in accepting that Wellington’s perspective from the crest of Mont St Jean on 18 June entirely neglects the events which unfolded that day to the east. Determined to honour his promise to support Wellington, Blücher’s Prussians in the shape of Bülow’s IV Corps had intended setting out from Wavre at daybreak. Unimpeded, they might have covered the 10 miles to Mont St Jean by 2 p.m. An unlikely cocktail of congestion, a fire in the town and the rain-sodden roads in fact meant that ‘the troops got on very slowly’.147 By mid-morning, however, they were well under way, followed by Pirch’s II Corps, Ziethen’s I Corps and Blücher himself. By 1 p.m. the leading units were at Chapelle St Lambert, less than 5 miles away. With a telescope Napoleon could see them for himself; he responded by despatching part of Lobau’s VI Corps to block their advance. What the Emperor had wanted to see was evidence that Grouchy and his force of 33,765 would interpose itself between the Prussians and Mont St Jean. He did not. Grouchy had spent most of 17 June assuming that the Prussians were retreating south-east of Ligny to Namur rather than north to Wavre. He realised the gravity of his mistake at Gembloux at 10 p.m. that night. Even then he dithered until 8am on the morning of 18 June before setting off for Wavre. By the time he approached the town, he was several hours behind Bülow. It was then a case of the interceptor being intercepted: Lieutenant-General Thielemann and 15,200 men of the Prussian III Corps had been left behind for that purpose. It was 4 p.m. before Grouchy’s men seriously assaulted Wavre; they would never reach Mont St Jean.
Even without being harassed from the rear, however, the Prussian forces continued to make only slow progress. Moving along what were no better than trackways, much of the terrain in front of them comprised the Bois de Paris, punctuated by ravines, streams and the occasional small settlement. Whilst the battle for Hougoumont raged, French cuirassiers swirled around La Haye Sainte and d’Erlon’s cavalry contested the main ridge in early–mid-afternoon, the leading units of Bülow’s corps were struggling through the defile of the River Lasne. Not until Ney was launching the first of his suicidal cavalry attacks were the first significant Franco-Prussian cavalry encounters taking place on the edge of the Bois de Paris. It took an hour for the Prussians to clear the wood and for Bülow to be ready to strike towards the village of Plancenoit at the rear of the main French deployment in front of Mont St Jean. By 5.30 p.m., outnumbered before the weight of Bülow’s corps, Lobau had fallen back to the village, surrendering it altogether after another hour’s bitter close-quarter fighting. To retrieve the situation, Napoleon needed to send eight battalions of the Young Guard under General Duhesme, to retake it.148
But the Prussians could now only be delayed at best. The leading men of Ziethen’s I Corps had reached Ohain by 6 p.m. Blücher’s instinct was to divert them south to assist the attack on Plancenoit; the timely intervention of Müffling persuaded him that they would be better used by proceeding on to Wellington’s east flank: Papelotte became a metaphorical hinge for the coming together of men from Wellington’s and Blücher’s armies. Crucially, it was Ziethen’s arrival that allowed Wellington to move men across from his left to his hard-pressed centre and right.149 Even without Ziethen, Bülow’s corps, ultimately 32,000 strong, was soon reinforced sufficiently to enable it to take Plancenoit for a second time. They in their turn were to be driven back at 7.30 p.m. when two battalions of Napoleon’s Old Guard were committed to the fray. By then, Napoleon was in the process of overseeing the deployment of the main body of the Imperial Guard for what would be his final assault on Wellington. He was powerless to do anything about the third and final Prussian capture of Plancenoit by the 5th Infantry Brigade of the Prussian II Corps at 8 p.m.
Establishing precisely the Prussian contribution to the outcome of Waterloo remains controversial. Some 72,000 Prussians marched to Wellington’s assistance; by the end of 18 June his own army numbered perhaps half that. From Napoleon’s perspective, from mid-afternoon there were two armies to think about; by early evening it could even be said that he was fighting two battles. Lobau’s corps sent towards Plancenoit numbered approximately 7,000; the various battalions of the elite Imperial Guard sent to assist them, nearly 5,000. Thus a sixth of Napoleon’s battlefield strength was diverted to protect his right flank and rear, not to mention his being deprived of Grouchy’s 33,000 men tied down by Thielemann’s Prussians at Wavre. If one includes them in the calculations, the Prussians by themselves confronted over 40 per cent of the French forces in action on 18 June.
The fact of the Prussians’ imminent arrival may also have contributed to the shape of events on the slopes of Mont St Jean; just possibly to the frenzied nature of Ney’s cavalry attacks; certainly to Napoleon’s brusque rebuttal of his Marshal’s request for more reserves. The final attack of the Old Guard too, can be seen as a last desperate throw of the dice to smash Wellington’s line before the French Army was crushed vice-like between the jaws of its enemies. The Prussian casualty figures alone – 7,000 at Waterloo and another 2,500 at Wavre – tell us th
at however late their arrival at Waterloo, their contribution was something more than peripheral. Above all, and a fact Wellington never denied, the Prussians turned what would have been an indecisive victory for him into a comprehensive one. Without them, the Duke’s depleted and exhausted forces would have been unable to exploit fully the fruits of their sustained and heroic defence. With them, more than willing to conduct a brutal pursuit, not least by Brunswickers intent on avenging their Duke who had fallen at Quatre Bras, the dividend for victory was enormous. Reports of the Prussian Army’s savagery lingered long and made Britons uneasy, but as Captain Barlow put it, ‘Their co-operation was really most important as it so totally annihilated and dispersed this once formidable army that it never afterwards appeared in a regular and organised body.’150 The campaign, in other words, would have had to continue. It did. But the Prussians took the lion’s share in it and there was no need for a further great battle. The campaign, if not the Battle of Waterloo, was emphatically an allied victory in which British soldiers accounted for only roughly a sixth of the fighting strength.151
How Wellington would formally gauge the contribution of his ally remained to be seen, but his initial reaction to the day’s events just ended is well-documented. First was his recognising the good fortune that had allowed him to survive the battle unscathed. Uxbridge, who sustained the most famous wound of the battle even as the French Army was disintegrating, was remonstrating with him not to expose himself to unnecessary danger when his own right knee was shattered by grapeshot. In the Duke’s version of the incident in July 1815, he replied, ‘Oh, damn it! In for a penny, in for a pound is my maxim, and if the troops advance they shall go as far as they can. A few moments after this Lord U. was wounded.’ This is less colourful than the popular version originating with Horace Seymour, Uxbridge’s aide-de-camp. He told Croker that, ‘He was next Lord Anglesey when he was shot; he cried out: “I have got it at last.” And the Duke of Wellington only replied: “No? Have you, by God?”’ Either way, however, it confirms the truth of Wellington’s admission to Lady Frances Webster that, ‘The Finger of Providence was upon me and I escaped unhurt.’152
At least Uxbridge survived. The Duke felt keenly the loss of those close to him who did not. One was his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Alexander Gordon. Gordon’s thigh had been shattered at 6.30 p.m. near La Haye Sainte; his dying in Wellington’s bed at Waterloo nine hours later reduced the Duke to tears. Another was his Quartermaster-General, Sir William De Lancey. De Lancey had been riding beside Wellington at 3 p.m. when struck by a spent cannonball. Eight ribs having been detached from his spine, De Lancey finally passed away on 26 June. The memory of what happened to him lingered long in Wellington’s mind. Small wonder that he told Dr Hume in the early hours of 19 June that, ‘I don’t know what it is to lose a battle, but certainly nothing can be more painful than to gain one with the loss of so many of one’s friends.’153
But there were competing emotions too. One, given the clear evidence only hours before the fighting started that he was less than sure about the likely outcome, was relief. It was encapsulated in his admission to Creevey that Waterloo was ‘the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life’. There was also professional pride in his own performance: he was far from being alone in thinking that, ‘I don’t think it would have been done if I had not been there.’ Creevey was at pains to note that Wellington’s tone in saying this was not one of triumphalism, but there can be no gainsaying that the Duke was also experiencing a measure of exhilaration. The great Napoleon, he informed his mother only hours after the event, had ‘fought the battle with infinite skill, perseverance, and bravery’.154 And yet, after confronting him for more than eight hours, certainly for longer than he had reckoned on before a substantial Prussian intervention was in evidence, he had prevailed. Many of the above elements are apparent, as well as his remarkable attention to detail, in a now unfamiliar letter Wellington wrote to Sir Charles Flint in the early hours of 19 June. Amongst the Waterloo fatalities was Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Fox Canning who had been carrying Wellington’s despatch box:
Poor Canning had my small dispatch box in our battle yesterday, and when he was killed it was lost. I shall be very much obliged to you if you will send me another of the same size as the last, with the same lock and key and leather cover &c., as soon as possible. Let it have in it a small silver or thick glass inkstand with one of Bramah’s patent penholders and one of his pens. What do you think of the total defeat of Buonaparte by the British Army? Never was there in the annals of the world so desperate or so hard-fought an action or such a defeat. It was really the battle of the giants. My heart is broken by the terrible loss I have sustained of my old friends and companions and my poor soldiers. I shall not be satisfied with the battle, however glorious, if it does not of itself put an end to Buonaparte.155
It is clear from this letter too, that Wellington was of the opinion that Waterloo had been a victory for the British Army: not an allied victory, and still less a Prussian one. Such an opinion, that British forces could claim the laurels of Waterloo because they had done most to endure it, is not incompatible with a version of events which holds that the Prussians had contributed more to the Waterloo campaign. Given the physical and mental strain he had had to bear over the previous twenty-four hours, as also such relatively trivial practicalities as his need for a replacement despatch box, it was understandable that the Duke’s thoughts focused primarily on the battle just ended. Whilst it is not inconceivable that the letter is an example of Wellington’s deciding how much of the truth to relate, the context in which it was written surely makes it more probable that he was expressing his real visceral emotions in its closing lines. Moreover, the sentiments they reveal were not without substance. The Anglo-Allied losses, just over 17,000, represented about 25 per cent of his starting strength. Of these, approximately 3,500 were killed and 10,200 wounded. British regiments had suffered particularly badly, incurring perhaps two-thirds or more of the losses.156 He repeated his belief that it was the dogged British soldier who had prevailed in the letter written to his mother. It ended ‘your affect and dutiful son’.157
Lady Mornington’s awkward son had come a long way. In the wake of Waterloo the Marquis Wellesley referred to ‘my brother’s transcendent increase of glory’. A few days later the Countess of Pembroke’s view was that Wellington had ‘now proved himself to be beyond all doubt a very great man’.158 And so it was, with his and their reputation secure, that men from Wellington’s army encountered men from Blücher’s at La Belle Alliance on the night of 18 June. Prussian bands played ‘God Save the King’; the British replied with three cheers for Prussia. It was an unforgettable scene. When the two victorious commanders met there in person at about ten o’clock, at what had so recently been Napoleon’s headquarters, the inescapable symbolism of their rendezvous point commended itself to them too. The Morning Post, at least, reported as fact that ‘they agreed to call this famous battle by so auspicious a title, “The battle of La Belle Alliance”’.159 Wellington made no such commitment. The battle of posterity was about to begin.
3
The Battle of Posterity:
Opening Shots 1815–1818
On the morning of 18 June 1815 Mr Sutton, who made his living by running passage vessels from Essex to Belgium, was in Ostend. Confident that he was sufficiently apprised of recent military developments, he returned to his native Colchester by means of one of his own ships and thence to London. The Times, hitherto confused by competing rumours and conflicting stories emanating from French and Dutch press sources, was persuaded by his account. It was published on 21 June. Napoleon, it reported, had driven in the Prussian position at Charleroi and was intending to separate the two armies and take Brussels, which ‘would give great éclat to the opening of the campaign’. But he had been thwarted. The British had had the better of a battle between Nivelles and Fleurus. This enabled the two allied armies to join at Genappe ‘so that on the 18th Buonaparte w
as constrained altogether to abandon his attempt; and before Mr Sutton came away, the cannonading in the line of retreat sufficiently proved that the French troops had sought refuge within their own frontier’. The Duke’s genius had thus prevailed over Napoleon. ‘We have strong reason to believe,’ claimed the editorial, ‘that he was completely deceived by the Duke of Wellington, who affected total inattention to the movements of the enemy, insomuch that his Grace was actually engaged at a ball in Brussels when news arrived of the attack on Charleroi.’160 This was an interesting spin on who had been surprising who. As an account of what had happened more generally, it was also seriously deficient.
The official news of the Waterloo campaign, together with the two captured French Eagles, was entrusted to Major Henry Percy. He reached Downing Street shortly before 10 p.m. on 21 June.161 This was early enough for the London Gazette to publish it the next day. Compared to news of Wellington’s Peninsular War victories, which typically took two to three weeks to arrive, this was remarkably quick. It was one reason why Waterloo made such an impact. Within days, the broad outline of the battle had become familiar to the general public. Within weeks, they were equally well versed in the details of the exploits of some of its noteworthy participants. This was partly the consequence of the familiar official despatches and parliamentary thanks. But exponentially more so than over the previous seven years, it was also the product of soldiers’ letters, detailed histories, exhibitions of art and memorabilia, poetry and prose, memorials, even personal visits. Waterloo became a self-generating industry in a way that the Peninsular War, or certainly its constituent battles, did not. Reasons for this are obvious enough: the campaign had been brief, bloody, conclusive and dramatic. The Spanish General, Miguel Alava, put it well on 20 June when he described Waterloo as ‘the most important battle that has been fought for centuries, in its consequences, its duration, and the talents of the chiefs on both sides; and because the peace of the world, and the future security of all Europe, may be said to have depended on its result’.162