Napoleon Bonaparte

by Alan Schom

  Back on June 7 Napoleon had told the French army that they “must be prepared to die rather than survive and see France degraded and dishonoured,”[785] and he at least was prepared to do just that, although lacking the numbers he had counted on. In fact his own immediate army theoretically totaling 128,000 was reduced slightly to 122,652 men, comprised by four infantry corps: General Drouet d’Erlon’s I Corps, Reille’s II, Vandamme’s III Corps, Gérard’s IV, Lobau’s VI, and finally Marshal Mortier’s newly reconstituted Imperial Guard.

  Bonaparte left Paris June 12, traveling northward via Soissons, Laon, and Avesnes, reaching Beaumont just on the French side of the frontier on the fourteenth. Although Ney failed to appear, Napoleon summoned his obsequious but crafty new chief of staff, Marshal Soult, and dictated his marching orders for what he anticipated to be a lightning drive toward Brussels, with the intention of separating and attacking individually Wellington’s Anglo-Dutch Army and Blücher’s Prussians. As for the Austrians, he hoped they would wait their turn. Napoleon’s army included 21,600 cavalry and 101,000 infantry, with 358 pieces of ordnance.[786]

  Between 2:30 A.M. and 8:00 A.M. on June 15 the offensive was set to begin: General Vandamme’s III corps was to lead a central column northward followed by Lobau’s men, the Imperial Guard’s “Young Guard,” and the remainder of Grouchy’s reserve cavalry. At the same time a left column would set out for Charleroi along the west bank of the Sambre River, including General Reille’s corps, with orders to secure Marchienne as Drouet d’Erlon’s corps marched on Thuin on the east bank. At the same time Gérard was to head a right column advancing on Charleroi from Philippeville.

  But no sooner had Napoleon given the orders than Marshal Adolphe Mortier, commanding the Imperial Guard, was immobilized by sciatica at Beaumont, to be replaced by his second-in-command, Comte Antoine Drouot (not to be confused with General Drouet, Comte d’Erlon, commanding I Corps). Soult, who had bungled campaigns before, and most recently in Spain, made the blunder — and one can only presume it was deliberate — of sending only one set of orders to each of the corps commanders. Napoleon invariably sent at least two different messengers to each one in the event of some mishap, especially when traveling through unknown fields in the dark of night in potentially hostile territory. Thus the messenger dispatched ordering Vandamme to lead the attack did not reach his headquarters until 5:00 A.M., only to find Vandamme not there. The aide-de-camp sent after him was then crushed by his horse when it fell in the dark, leaving him unconscious. And thus Vandamme was still ignorant of events when he returned, only to learn of the marching orders when he found Lobau’s VI Corps marching up the road behind his encampment. Napoleon’s entire invasion plan was thrown into chaos and hours behind schedule. Lobau had to stop in his tracks with the road before him blocked, while a cursing Vandamme set his men out on the double, causing an immense traffic jam for the sixty thousand men of the central column, backing up many miles, not to mention all the caissons, artillery limbers, and thousands of horses congesting the road as far as Charleroi. So great was the confusion that it spilled over to the right column under Gérard also marching on Charleroi, but now forced to seek an alternative bridgehead over the Sambre at Châtelet, to the east. Only the left column under Reille and d’Erlon reached its objective, though delayed by most unexpected Prussian resistance.

  Charleroi was not even secure when Bonaparte reached it at noon on the fifteenth, Vandamme ultimately arriving five hours late, three hours after Napoleon. The Army of the North was off to a bad start, thereby signaling the Prussians in that sector of this surprise attack. And then just to ensure that result, General Bourmont, attached to Napoleon’s army, went over to the enemy with his entire campaign plans. He did not “want to help establish a bloody despotism in France,” Bourmont said in a note he left behind. Fortunately for Napoleon, when Bourmont’s information was passed on to the Prussian I Corps commander near Charleroi, General Ziethen, he cast such aspersions on any turncoat that he did not bother to transmit this valuable piece of intelligence to Marshal Blücher’s headquarters until 1:30 that afternoon, when it was already too late.

  The one good thing to happen at Charleroi that afternoon was the belated arrival of a sultry Marshal Ney at 3:30. “Hello, Ney,” a relieved but cool Bonaparte greeted him, ordering him to take command of Drouet d’Erlon’s and Reille’s corps, as well as the Guard’s light cavalry. Tomorrow he would be joined by Kellermann’s cuirassiers. For now he was to push the enemy up the road toward Brussels and take up a position at Quatre-Bras. These instructions, mentioned in just a few moments, were to affect the outcome of the entire campaign. Ney, whom Napoleon privately derided as “brave and nothing more...good at leading 10,000 men into battle, but other than that...a real blockhead,” had just been handed command of half Napoleon’s entire army. Ney for his part, usually so energetic and decisive, had been unable to make up his mind about joining Bonaparte. In the end, however, he had decided to throw in his lot with the Army of the North, giving Napoleon his second marshal in the field, three counting Soult, out of the surviving twenty-three marshals he had created. (This for instance compared with the ten he had during the Russian Campaign.) For the simple Ney, it was a decision he would soon regret most bitterly, his hesitancy over the next few days reflecting his own real qualms. As Ney went to take command of Drouet d’Erlon’s and Reille’s corps, Napoleon made another decision that he was soon to regret, giving Grouchy a marshal’s baton and the command of the right column or wing of his army, over the vociferous protests of its two corps commanders, Vandamme and Gérard, who detested Soult just as much.

  Field Marshal Prince Gebhard Leberecht Blücher von Walstadt — “Old Marshal Forward March,” as his troops called him — a native of Rostock, who was again commanding the Prussian force — was surprisingly active for a soldier of seventy-three who had experienced many a bloody battle, including several nasty defeats at the hands of this same Napoleon. His army, the result of the major reorganization and new training program introduced years earlier, following Prussia’s initial defeat by the French, now comprised four corps: Lieutenant General Ziethen’s I Corps, Major General Pirch’s II, Lieutenant General Thielmann’s III Corps, and Graf Bülow von Dennewitz’s IV Corps. Blücher’s quartermaster-general and chief of staff, Lieutenant General Graf von Gneisenau, was a very capable man, though not always on the best of terms with some of the corps commanders, while serving on the staff of Thielmann’s III Corps was an unknown but highly observant colonel by the name of Carl von Clausewitz.

  The smaller Anglo-Dutch Army, in reality left its commander in chief, Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, with only 69,000 infantry and 14,500 cavalry, only a third of them British. It was hardly a brilliant army, including an inexperienced young Prince of Orange (a political necessity), commanding I Corps. The able lieutenant general, the earl of Uxbridge, headed the small, predominantly British cavalry corps, and Lieutenant General Lord Hill commanded Wellington’s own Reserve Corps. Altogether the British government had provided Wellington with only 27,985 men, or one-third of his new army.

  The forty-six-year-old Wellington had a superb reputation after vanquishing Marshals Jourdan, Kellermann, Marmont, Mortier, Ney, Soult, and Victor during the Peninsular campaign, even the defeated General Foy comparing him to “our great Turenne.” For all that, however, Wellington had encountered one obstacle after another from London as a result of the political tug-of-war between Tories and Whigs.

  After his arrival at Brussels from the Congress of Vienna on April 11, he had requested a minimal British force of 55,000 men (including infantry and cavalry) and moreover had specifically asked that he be sent as many of his 47,000 Peninsular Army veterans as possible. Although the Tory prime minister, Lord Liverpool — Robert Bank Jenkinson — apparently did his best against formidable opponents, including the Royal Family, others in authority balked. The incompetent commander in chief of the entire British army, Frederick, duke of York, resented th
is Wellington who had achieved in the field what he had singularly failed to do. And it was York who decided what forces were to be sent his subordinate. When Wellington again asked him to send and promote a list of his veteran officers from Iberia, York snarled at him, “The power of appointment to commission is not invested in you.” “I am overloaded with people [officers] I have never seen before,” Wellington complained to the secretary of war, Lord Bathurst, “and it appears to be purposely intended to keep those out of my way whom I wish to have.”

  The result was hardly encouraging. “I have got an infamous army...In my opinion they are doing nothing in England,” Wellington summed up his new Anglo-Belgian-Dutch army in a private letter to Lord Stewart. Ending up with about half the small force of British soldiers he had requested, he would be largely dependent on foreign troops, the newly created army of the new King William of the Netherlands, which was riddled with officers and troops strongly sympathetic to memories of the former Grande Armée and to its leader. What is more, King William’s choice of war minister could not have been worse: General Janssens, who had fought against the British in South Africa and Java, and made no secret of his open hostility to Wellington. In a real crisis, in the heat of battle, all would ultimately depend on fewer than 28,000 British troops, most of whom had never been under fire before, whereas the majority of Napoleon’s army was comprised of veterans of several campaigns. The Allies might boast to the world of having theoretically fielded 715,000 men or so, but they were not present in Belgium now.

  Napoleon simply dismissed his opponent, this Wellington born in the same year as himself, with a mocking smirk and dismissive wave of the hand as “a mere Sepoy general.”[787] A good commander studies his opposition; Napoleon could not be bothered. The English and Wellington were not worth the trouble. For all those defeats at this same soldier’s hands in Iberia, Napoleon had learned nothing.

  All was quiet in Wellington’s headquarters in Brussels on June 15, when around three o’clock in the afternoon three dispatch riders pulled up abruptly outside. The first one rushed in with a message from Blücher at Namur, informing Wellington of the attack at Charleroi and that he was moving his general headquarters to Sombreffe. The next one came from the prince of Orange at Braine-le-Comte, confirming that heavy gunfire had been heard around Charleroi. The final report came from Ziethen’s headquarters repeating Blücher’s — eleven hours after the event.

  The British were caught completely unawares, because General Ziethen, responsible for the southern sector, had been lax in posting pickets and sending out patrols and then in notifying the foreign commander, Wellington, when he did have vital news.

  In any event Wellington, who had been expecting an attack along the most direct route from Paris to Brussels, via Mons, now had to obtain confirmation that the attack at Charleroi was not just a feint. He could not afford to move men from such widely scattered points until he knew precisely, and thus he could do little over the next several hours, apart from instruct all commanders to move their troops to prearranged divisional assembly points, to be ready to move quickly when word came through. He ordered Orange’s I Corps to Nivelles, Enghien, and Soignies, rather than to secure Quatre-Bras, the main crossroads controlling the highway between Charleroi and Brussels. This meant that much of Wellington’s force would be too far away to support any action taking place at Quatre-Bras the following day. And then, curiously enough, Wellington did not prevent most of his senior officers from attending a supper and ball given that very night by his good friend and aide-de-camp, General Lennox, the duke of Richmond, and indeed prepared to go there himself.

  The reports confirming the powerful French position in the vicinity of Charleroi finally reached Wellington later that evening at the duchess’s supper. It was only now he learned that in the absence of the Prince of Orange (also at Richmond’s now), his Chief of Staff, Baron de Constant Rebecque, uneasy about the immense unmanned gap between Nivelles and Sombreffe, the nearest Prussian position, had overruled Wellington’s orders and at two o’clock that afternoon had ordered General Perponcher to move one brigade to occupy the critical crossroads at Quatre-Bras. Even as the elegant couples were preparing to set out for the duchess of Richmond’s that evening, these men were clashing with some of Ney’s initial troops, just down the road at the hamlet of Frasnes. While the prince of Orange danced, Constant Rebecque reinforced deposition with another brigade, thereby saving not only Wellington’s reputation but the city of Brussels itself.

  “Napoleon has humbugged me, by God!” an embarrassed Wellington exclaimed to the duke of Richmond. “I have ordered the army to concentrate at Quatre-Bras.” And by 7:00 A.M. the next morning, June 16, Wellington and his staff officers were heading south under lowery skies, reaching Quatre-Bras at 10:00 A.M. After studying the situation and the latest reports, the Duke turned east to confer with “Alter Vorwärts” Blücher at the hamlet of Byre, near Sombreffe.

  “There are systems one applies on the battlefield,” Napoleon explained at Charleroi, “just as when laying siege to a fortress, and in this case it means concentrating all one’s firepower on a single point,” the road from Charleroi north, where the two allied armies joined — “attacking the central position,” he called it. It sounded good, but half of “the system” would not apply now because instead of having a concentrated army to destroy, Napoleon was to discover Wellington’s army scattered irregularly in more than twenty separate places, from Brussels westward across to Ghent, from Nivelles to Oudenaarde, from Mons to Tournai. The English were not very logical.

  That was not the only setback now. Both Ney and Grouchy had ignored their orders, and instead of advancing on the double — Ney due north from Charleroi toward Quatrc-Bras and Grouchy coming up the road to the large village of Fleurus to face the Prussians round Sombreffe — by nightfall on the fifteenth both wings of the French Army of the North were far from their objectives.

  Ney was surprised to encounter Wellington’s forces at 5:30 P.M., when he repulsed the Nassau battalions near Frasncs, south of Quatre-Bras. But although Ney’s two corps had some 44,500 men, and had only two enemy battalions opposing him, nevertheless he stopped dead in his tracks and would not budge. Thus Orange was permitted to reinforce his hold on the critical Quatre-Bras crossroads with a mere 8,050 men. Ney even dropped back, his left wing camping for the night between Marchienne and Gosselies. The usually vigorous Ney was suddenly cautious, hesitant, indecisive, already regretting having volunteered to join Napoleon on this campaign. In any event the previously clear open road to Brussels was now blocked, with more troops pouring in.

  Reassessing the situation early on the morning of the sixteenth, Napoleon issued new instructions. “I am moving Marshal Grouchy’s 3rd and 4th Infantry Corps up against Sombreffe,” he informed Ney, and “I am taking my [Imperial] Guard to Fleurus where I shall arrive before noon...and then clear the road [of the Prussians] as far as Gembloux.” Unfortunately, having heard nothing to the contrary, Napoleon thought Ney was in possession of Quatre-Bras, and ordered his left wing, theoretically in place there to “start marching for Brussels this evening [to arrive] there at seven o’clock tomorrow morning. I shall support you with the Guard...and hope to arrive there myself tomorrow just after you.” Thanks to Ney’s silence, Napoleon, knowing nothing of the Allied seizure of Quatre-Bras, continued, issuing instructions to Grouchy: “If the enemy is at Sombreffe, I want to attack him. Indeed, I want to attack him even if he is beyond at Gembloux, securing that position as well...Therefore, do not lose a moment...[and] keep the road open [to Flcurus] for me. The Prussians certainly cannot muster more than 40,000 men,” he closed. As usual, Napoleon’s almost nonexistent intelligence of either the enemy’s strength or positions was to recoil on him with a shock. It had happened throughout his career, during the two Italian campaigns, at Wagram, at Eylau, during the campaign of 1812. The final instructions simply stated that the Imperial Guard would be held in the rear, to be able to reinforce either wing, as event
s required.

  On reaching Saint-Amand at 11:00 A.M. Napoleon quickly realized that there were indeed more than 40,000 Prussian troops there — in fact there were 84,000 arriving from Namur — and that he would not be simply skirmishing but unexpectedly facing a full-fledged battle. What is more, his own troops, Grouchy’s right wing, were not even in place. Facing the French were Pirch’s II Corps on the Quatre-Bras road west of Sombreffe, Ziethen’s I Corps before Brye and St. Amand-La-Haie, extending over to the village of Ligny, with Blücher’s III Corps, Thielmann’s, straddling the Charleroi-Gembloux Road and securing the east side of Sombreffe.

  Napoleon found a seven-and-a-half-mile-long front covered with prepared Prussian positions. But despite their 224 guns, their troops were too thinly deployed to hold such a long line (Blücher’s IV Corps, of another 31,000 men, had not yet arrived). Napoleon’s own troops were still moving up, however — Vandamme’s corps anchoring his left flank before St.-Amand-le-Hameau and Wagnelée and St.-Amand-le-Château, with Gérard’s corps holding roughly the center before Ligny, and Excelleman’s and Pajol’s cavalry securing a mobile right flank.

  Even as Napoleon’s ultimate force of 76,800 men were taking up their positions, a little after one o’clock Wellington was conferring with Blücher at Bussy Windmill in Brye. The duke saw immediately the weakness of the overly extended Prussian line and told Blücher in his usual forthright manner that the French “had it in their power to cannonade them and shatter them to pieces,” but that because of an extensive marshy area separating the two forces, the Prussians could not easily advance and attack the French. “I said that if I were in Blücher’s place...I should withdraw all the columns I saw scattered about the front, and get more of the troops under shelter of the rising ground. However, they seemed to think they knew best, so I came away shortly.” Before leaving, Blücher asked him to reinforce him, and Wellington agreed, “provided I am not attacked myself.”