by Foster, R E
Another key reason why Waterloo came to assume a rapid and important place in the national consciousness was the part presumed to have been played in it by the British Army. One of the by-products of Wellington’s achievements in the Peninsula had been to drag the army’s reputation up with his own. As Lord Liverpool couched it diplomatically, in moving thanks to him for the defence of Portugal, though the army had been great under Marlborough, ‘In more recent periods, circumstances had induced us to attend more to maritime affairs.’ Wellington’s exploits ‘had clearly shewn us the value of our military character’. By 1814, the song ‘Wellington for Ever’ proclaimed in its chorus:
Britain’s chief, WELLINGTON,
Lion’s hearts have his men
They always are ready,
Steady, boys, steady,
They’ll fight and they’ll conquer again and again.
But Britain’s celebrations in 1814 had also acknowledged the reality that Napoleon’s first abdication had been the consequence of a long-term collaborative effort. Waterloo could more plausibly be presented as a triumph for British arms. The British public were now to believe that Wellington’s ‘scum of the earth’ were authentic heroes.163
Wellington himself remained integral to the story. But he would not dominate it in the way in which he had dominated popular media coverage of the Peninsular years. The range and variety of sources feeding the unending public fascination with the battle made it impossible for it to be otherwise. In any case he was, as Commander-in-Chief of the army of occupation in France, largely absent from Britain for over three years after Waterloo. That the story of the battle was told in his absence did not mean that he was uninvolved in its creation. He gave leads and was consulted, even trying on some occasions to control the process. He recognised – perhaps slowly and certainly not without irritation – that, ultimately, he could not do so; this would not stop him from trying. By the time he returned to England, effectively for good at the end of 1818, a popularly accepted version of the Waterloo saga was well established, if not entirely settled or uncontested.
Wellington’s most important contributions to the fashioning of the Waterloo story came in the twenty-four hours after the battle. He had returned to his headquarters, an inn in the village of Waterloo known locally as Jean de Nivelles, not much before midnight. His sleep was interrupted at 3.30 a.m. by his surgeon, Dr Hume, who roused him with the news that his aide-de-camp, Colonel Alexander Gordon had just died. Within half an hour the Duke had set to work on his campaign Despatch. The resulting document would be the first published British account of the action; it was this that Major Percy bore to London on 21 June. In due course its writing would itself become one of the iconic scenes of the story: Lady Burghersh painted it on the basis of information supplied to her by Wellington in 1839. A version of her work, which appeared in the hugely popular Illustrated London News shortly after Wellington’s death, further embedded the image in the national psyche.164
The Waterloo Despatch assumed the format Wellington had refined in the Peninsula. He shed tears as he embarked upon it, and desisted part way through when the news of General Ponsonby’s death caused emotion to get the better of him. He completed it when he was in Brussels later that day. It was compiled partly on the basis of what he had seen for himself but also from what his personal staff, trained in such experiences, gleaned from their movements around the scene of action. He also drew on reports gathered by senior officers, both written and oral, which he summarised. The finished document, addressed to Earl Bathurst as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, succeeded in being as detached in tone as it was brief in length. It stands in marked contrast to the personal letters he was writing during the same hours.165
As was his wont, Wellington began by setting the scene. Napoleon had concentrated his forces and attacked the Prussians. Claiming that ‘I did not hear of these events till in the evening of the 15th’, he responded to the news only when he ‘had intelligence from other quarters to prove that the enemy’s movement upon Charleroi was the real attack’. He acknowledged that the next day the bulk of the French forces were engaging Blücher, but that he was ‘not able to assist them as I wished, as I was attacked myself’. Both allied armies were then obliged to fall back. But the Despatch is not the place to turn for an account of the battle of 18 June. Wellington succinctly describes the Waterloo position but devotes only two brief paragraphs totalling fewer than 150 words to the various assaults on his main line. They provide neither a sense of the battle progressing (‘repeated attacks of cavalry and infantry occasionally mixed, but some times separate’), nor a clear sequence of events. The cavalry charge ordered by Uxbridge before mid-afternoon, for example, one of only three specific actions mentioned, appears at the end of this section. The other two referred to are Colonel Macdonell’s sustained defence of Hougoumont with the ‘utmost gallantry’ and the Duke’s belief that, owing to a want of ammunition, La Haye Sainte had fallen early on. Of Napoleon’s final attack he writes only that ‘after a severe contest, [it] was defeated’.
Where Wellington does offer something by way of analysis is in how the battle climaxed. In words that would inspire many a poet and artist, he wrote that:
having observed that the troops retired from this attack in great confusion, and that the march by general Bülow’s corps […] upon Planchenois [sic] […] had begun to take effect, and as I could perceive the fire of his cannon, and as Marshal Blücher had joined in person, with a corps of his army to the left of our line by Ohain, I determined to attack the enemy […] The attack succeeded in every point.
The battle was gained. But rather than exult in his success, Wellington was relatively restrained, concluding that ‘the army never, upon any occasion, conducted itself better’. Some thirty-five or so senior officers are then listed by name as having distinguished themselves, including a number who had been killed or wounded. This led to his penultimate point that ‘such a desperate action could not be fought, and such advantages could not be gained without great loss; and I am sorry to add that ours has been immense’.
Wellington’s final observations, before news of fresh fatalities prompted him to detail them in a postscript, are at once the most telling and controversial part of what he wrote:
I should not do justice to my feelings, or to Marshal Blücher and the Prussian army, if I did not attribute the successful result of this arduous day to the cordial and timely assistance I received from them.
The operation of General Bülow upon the enemy’s flank was a most decisive one, and even if I had not found myself in a situation to make the attack which produced the final result, it would have forced the enemy to retire, if his attacks should have failed; and would have prevented him from taking advantage of them if they should unfortunately have succeeded.
As he had throughout his time in the Low Countries, Wellington was acknowledging that he might have been worsted by the French. In explaining that he had not been, his formulation of words can be taken to imply the belief that he might have won the battle alone, for the Imperial Guard was defeated and he was able to take the offensive even as the Prussians were still attacking Plancenoit. And yet he is categorical that it was the arrival of the Prussians that had contributed decisively to the shape of events. The more one reads his words, the more ambiguous and contradictory they become.
Unsurprisingly, the Waterloo Despatch has regularly been subjected to microscopic analysis. Wellington gets some details wrong. Blücher, for example, was not outnumbered at Ligny; the first big attack on Hougoumont did not start at 10am; Uxbridge’s cavalry charge secured two Eagles, not one. So too, he errs over the fate of some individuals. He lists Colonel Ompteda for praise, unaware that he was dead; Sir William De Lancey is recorded as dead – Wellington believed he had witnessed the death – when he still lived. Many matters go unrecorded: why had he not personally secured Quatre Bras; why did he not mention Colborne’s flanking manoeuvre against the Imperial Guard; why, generall
y, was there not more praise? Did he deliberately falsify some details he did include, such as the time he heard of the initial French advance?
Wellington’s Despatch has recently been described by Adam Zamoyski as ‘a fascinating document in relation to the known events, as it clearly sets out to falsify the record by marginalising the Prussian role in the victory’.166 The seeking of both personal and national advantage is given as the reason for this. It is a tendentious set of claims. One must be very sure before ascribing such base motives to the Duke. That the Despatch did bring personal and national glory does not prove that these were his intentions when writing it. If they were, he need not have mentioned the Prussians at all, nor alluded to the possibility of his defeat. Instead, he could have used the sort of language employed by Alava, cited above, or in the first Dutch bulletin issued at 3am on 19 June, which said that, ‘The army of Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington covered itself with glory. The victory was complete. The enemy was totally defeated and put to the rout.’ In this account the Prussians are mentioned only as an afterthought: ‘Prince Blücher having joined the Duke of Wellington, their armies are pursuing the enemy beyond Genappe.’167
The Despatch should be seen as what it was, the report Wellington was obliged to make to his political masters on the operations of the British Army. It was by definition biased. Couched in his characteristically sparse style, what is most surprising about it is that he says so much about his Prussian allies and in such a laudatory way, far more than he confided in his private correspondence during the same hours. He would rarely, if ever, go so far again in acknowledging their contribution. Viewed overall, as an historical account of the events it describes, the Despatch was an understandably imperfect first draft. This was because it was written on the basis of conflicting and incomplete information, and when he was in a state of extreme stress and fatigue. It is, however, consistent with what he believed to be true at the time as revealed by what he wrote in his first letters home after the battle. Where the Duke would prove unreasonable in future years was in maintaining that nobody could – or should – write a more accurate account of events.168 Though there was some logic to his point that no other participant was better placed to do so, it does not follow that he got things right. Specifically, even if he really believed during the afternoon of 18 June that the Prussians were not having a significant impact upon the French Army until late in the day, he would not modify his position when due reflection and further evidence might suggest the truth to be otherwise. He wanted his first draft, albeit duly clarified, to be the final word.
One point on which Wellington would have the final word, in Britain at least, was on the choice of name for the battle of 18 June. There is a long-standing myth that Wellington opted for Waterloo because it had a British ring to it.169 The French, by contrast, were initially inclined to call it the Deroute de Fleurus. More serious competition was provided, as Walter Scott noted, by La Belle Alliance, the name pressed especially by the Prussians.170 Müffling’s account of the campaign refers to Waterloo as La Belle Alliance; the official Prussian despatch was headed Battle of La Belle Alliance (Waterloo). Gneisenau devoted the final two paragraphs of the latter to arguing the case, ‘that this battle should bear the name of La Belle Alliance’ above all because, ‘There […] it was, by a happy chance, Field Marshal Blücher and the Duke of Wellington met in the dark, and mutually saluted each other as victors.’ The name would also symbolise the alliance of armies and nations. Czar Alexander I endorsed the point when he visited the battlefield in September, accepting a glass of wine proffered from the inn and observing, ‘Yes! It is really the fair Alliance both in respect to the States, and the families.’171
In Britain too, for perhaps up to two weeks after the event, the name of the battle hung in the balance. The Morning Post of 26 June reported on ‘the tremendous battle of La Belle Alliance’, whilst the Royal Cornish Gazette, referring to Waterloo, added in parentheses ‘or, as it has, perhaps more properly, and certainly more happily, been called, of La Belle Alliance’.172 The Poet Laureate, Robert Southey, was just one of many Britons who preferred La Belle Alliance. Three weeks after the event in Paris, Captain George Barlow was still calling Waterloo by the name of La Belle Alliance. Contrary to myth, Britons experienced no problem with the name. It was at once romantic, symbolic and more accurate than Waterloo. Some early British visitors to the battlefield were surprised to find La Belle Alliance bearing many scars of battle when buildings in Waterloo were unmarked.173
One person, Wellington, decided what the battle would be called. The Prussians admitted as much in asking that the British contemplate calling it La Belle Alliance. Had Wellington acceded to their request, the British would undoubtedly have embraced it. But the Duke seems never for a moment to have considered it. There was, on one level, nothing surprising in his opting for Waterloo. His usual habit was to name his battles after his headquarters. He headed and wrote most of his victory Despatch from there. His instructions for 17 June were that his forces should fall back to Waterloo. One veteran, who knew his chief well, noted in a letter home of 20 June that the battle, having been fought at Mont St John, should be designated as such, but that ‘it will probably be called, Waterloo’.174
There is no denying, however, that Wellington quickly displayed sensitivity in face of the suggestion that La Belle Alliance would be more apposite. Waterloo commended itself to him in part by drawing attention only to the battle of 18 June; not to the more general allied campaign of which it had been the culmination. Waterloo also focused attention on the British position at the start of the battle when Prussians were in short supply. La Belle Alliance inclined one to think about the end of 18 June, the French position and the Prussians; both literally and figuratively, it would have suggested the British and Prussians to have been something like equals. Waterloo left Blücher and the Prussians only as an adjunct to victory. This is not simply speculation. Southey found that part of his article on Wellington for the July 1815 Quarterly Review had been added to, specifically a clause ‘saying that the good sense of Europe had rejected the name of Belle Alliance for the battle as being some degree false’. He rightly suspected Wellington’s friend, John Wilson Croker, to be the author of the interpolation; he was aghast to discover that Croker had made it after consultation with the Duke himself. More suggestive still of Wellington’s desire to downplay the rival pretensions of La Belle Alliance is that within a year he rubbished the fact that his encounter with Blücher took place there at all, insisting bizarrely, that, ‘It happens that the meeting took place after ten at night, at the village of Genappe.’175 He never would erase the imagery of La Belle Alliance, but could at least content himself that he had won the battle of names. Even Southey recognised that ‘once it had been named for Waterloo a word so English in its appearance would prevail’.
It was thus Waterloo to which the British press devoted enormous attention from 23 June onwards. The earliest reports followed Wellington’s Despatch closely, buttressed usually by some commentary and reference to parts of his private letters, which had been immediately made public by their recipients. Specifically, these included those to Lord Aberdeen and the Duke of Beaufort, condoling with them respectively on the death of Colonel Gordon and the wound to FitzRoy Somerset. Both were taken by the newspapers as confirmation of Wellington’s humanity; both letters too, included variants on the theme that winning a battle was only slightly less tragic than losing one. Wellington’s letter to Sir Charles Flint lamenting the losses sustained by his ‘poor soldiers’ was also alluded to – but not the portion where he might be construed as exulting in victory. Instead it was Wellington’s humility and fastidious preparation that was emphasised with direct reference from his letter to his brother William that, ‘Never before was I obliged to take such pains for victory, and never before was I so near being beaten.’176
The Duke’s Despatch, and specifically its encomium of the Prussians, also provided a cue for parliamentarians. In
the Lords, Bathurst said that though Wellington would not have been defeated had the Prussians not arrived, he could not have taken the offensive without them. The Times, too, judged that without the arrival of Bülow’s corps, Wellington would probably not have ordered the advance, ‘which decided the fate of the day’, adding a few days later that ‘we must not be backward in expressing our admiration of the persevering bravery of our gallant Allies, the Prussians whose acts converted an orderly retreat into a total and irretrievable rout’.177 Its comments were occasioned by the publication in full of the Prussian despatch. The newspaper particularly approved of the fact that it gave ‘full and liberal praise to the English’, in particular approving of the comment that, ‘The English army fought with a valour which it is impossible to surpass.’ In fact, for those readers who chose to read and reflect on the despatch for themselves, the most interesting part of it was not, as The Times insisted, whether the battle should be called Waterloo or La Belle Alliance, but rather the Prussian perspective on their contribution to the victory. Believing the Anglo-Allied army to be outnumbered (Gneisenau’s figures of an 80,000 Anglo-Allied army ranged against 130,000 French were considerably awry), ‘it was not possible but that such heroic exertions must have a limit’. Bülow’s engaging the French right flank from 4.30 p.m. was therefore essential. Even so, at 7.30 p.m. ‘the issue of the battle was still uncertain’. At that point, however, Ziethen’s corps appeared in strength: ‘This moment decided the defeat of the enemy.’ It triggered the collapse of the French right, ‘while, at the same time, the whole English line advanced’.178 It had not appeared quite like that from where Wellington was positioned on Mont St Jean, but in the heady days of late June 1815 most Britons were too euphoric to notice. They would generally always be more ready to acknowledge the contribution of their Prussian ally than the Duke and his inner circle.