by Alan Schom
Meanwhile, ascertaining the full gravity of the situation before him, Napoleon dispatched a courier to Ney to advance on the double from Quatre-Bras “so as to bring about the envelopment of those enemy troops.” If all went well, with the arrival of Ney’s troops by 6:00 P.M., reinforced by the Imperial Guard along the central position, he could entrap Blücher’s entire force. The whole battle would be over by sunset. It would be so easy.
*
The full French offensive began between 2:30 and 3:00 P.M. on June 16. Some 140 French guns poured a barrage against the exposed Prussian front lines, returned even more intensely by the Prussians, while Vandamme’s Corps hit the Prussians’ strongest point, at the center and right-center at St.-Amand-la-Haie. “Do not lose a minute,” Napoleon wrote in another hurried dispatch to Ney. “This [Prussian] Army is lost if you act quickly. The fate of France is in your hands.” The French continued to pound the Prussians as Wellington had predicted, but the Prussians continued to throw them back.
Independent of Napoleon’s orders directly to Ney, one of the Emperor’s staff officers also ordered Ney’s I Corps, commanded by Drouet d’Erlon, to come immediately to Sombreffe. But then another messenger arrived with other instructions, and d’Erlon, understandably confused, changed direction and started instead to march toward Saint-Amand. When d’Erlon’s corps finally did appear at 5:30 P.M., from the wrong direction behind General Vandamme and Napoleon, they at first thought it was the enemy. Bonaparte was about to launch his principal attack of the day, but he postponed it, waiting impatiently for an entire hour before establishing the identity of d’Erlon’s force approaching from the rear. D’Erlon then received yet another courier, this time from Ney, ordering him back to support that marshal’s left wing. Thus Drouet d’Erlon, though a little more than a mile from Napoleon’s troops, turned about and started countermarching back to Ney, leaving only one division with Bonaparte, d’Erlon ultimately keeping his troops out of all effective fighting that day.
Meanwhile Marshal Blücher remained supremely confident of his own superiority, secure in the knowledge that Count Bülow’s thirty-seven squadrons of cavalry and eighty-eight pieces of ordnance would soon be supporting him. In fact the contrary Bülow was not en route at all, refusing to advance from Liège, despite the fresh orders he had received from Blücher at 11:00 A.M. on the fifteenth.
Two intensive areas of fighting continued unabated that afternoon of the sixteenth, at Ligny and St.-Amand. No sooner would Vandamme repulse Ziethen from St.-Amand at four o’clock, than it was followed by a powerful counterattack. The gallant Blücher, mistaking a movement by the French Imperial Guard for a full retreat, personally led a superb cavalry charge of forty seven squadrons against St.-Amand-le-Hameau and St.-Amand-la-Haie,[788] the Prussians succeeding in retaking St.-Amand and holding it for the next few hours. But this last extraordinary charge by the bulk of the Prussian cavalry left them with dwindling reserves, and seeing this Bonaparte prepared to launch his main attack.
At the village of Ligny, the Prussians were fighting in an intensive house-to-house drama, with sixty cannon firing sometimes at point blank range. By four o’clock Blücher met Gérard’s ferocious attempt by ordering in a brigade of reserve cavalry and another infantry brigade, giving him 14,000 men by eight o’clock, versus Gérard’s 16,000. By now Blücher was clearly worried, and neither Bülow nor Wellington had come to his aid.
Meanwhile, in the French camp at 7:30 P.M., giving up all hope of d’Erlon’s reappearance, Napoleon finally gave the signal for the delayed major attack against Ligny, after five hours of fierce resistance by the Prussians. In the midst of severe hand-to-hand fighting in the narrow village streets, Blücher led another counterattack at the head of thirty-two squadrons. Just as the Prussians were stopped in their tracks by a fierce barrage of artillery and musketry, the Prussian field marshal’s horse was shot from beneath him while at a full gallop, throwing the septuagenarian Blücher heavily to the ground, where he lay unconscious and trampled in the churned-up mud as French cuirassiers passed over him.
Nevertheless the Prussians held on to Ligny until about nine o’clock, the slaughter great on both sides. Then, with their commander down, they began a complete retreat once Blücher had been found, battered but alive, by one of his aides. The Prussians made good their escape, but at the cost of 18,772 casualties, and twenty-two guns, leaving the honors of the day to Napoleon once again, with his 13,721 casualties. The bulk of the Prussian army made an orderly withdrawal, however, leaving few prisoners, and would soon be joined by Bülow’s still entirely fresh corps of 31,000 men. Napoleon Bonaparte therefore was far from happy with the results, for the Prussians could now regroup and join Wellington after all. All that fighting, all those deaths for nought.
That day, June 16, proved to be a bizarre one for Marshal Ney, when Soult’s order, repeating Napoleon’s initial instructions, reached him at 6:30 A.M. Ney literally had not moved an inch in the past thirteen hours, and even now, instead of advancing as ordered, he sat down to a hearty breakfast, then set out to inspect his outposts at Frasnes. Ney, Soult, and Grouchy, although personal enemies, nevertheless all acted in the same manner, with the same unpardonable laxity. Napoleon’s secretary, Fleury de Chaboulon, explained that “these men were simply sick and tired of war,” and no doubt he was right.
In any event, after next receiving a third set of orders brought personally to Ney at 11:00 A.M. by Napoleon’s aide-de-camp, General Flahaut (Talleyrand’s bastard, and the father of Hortense’s bastard, the future duc de Morny), Ney finally broke camp at noon and set out for Quatre-Bras. “It is my express desire that you be ready to march [from Quatre-Bras] on Brussels,” the last dispatch had read. But when Reille’s 24,336 men reached Frasnes and found Wellington’s 7,806 men there, Reille refused to obey Ney’s orders and instead called for reinforcements before resuming the march. French morale was at rock bottom.
At 2:00 P.M. an angry Ney finally led the new attack himself, in three columns comprising three divisions marching north to seize the crossroads of Quatre-Bras itself. The third column, under the command of Lt. Gen. Jérôme Bonaparte, was ordered to secure Pierrepont Farm and Bossut Wood, while Reille’s fifty guns and howitzers provided a protective barrage of steel, shot, and canister.
At Quatre-Bras itself, just before 3:00 P.M., Wellington returned from his meeting with Blücher and instructed the first units of his Reserve Army from Mont St.-Jean to take up positions, while General Reille’s corps rebuffed the Prince of Orange’s initial cavalry charge a half hour later. Although Ney’s 24,000 men at first well outnumbered Wellington’s, reinforcements kept arriving, soon giving the Allies 23,000 men. This was the situation at four o’clock that afternoon when yet another courier reached Ney with Napoleon’s two-o’clock orders to come immediately to Wag-nelee and Sombreffe to execute the enveloping operations. As if that were not enough, d’Erlon’s chief of staff, General Delcambre, now also arrived, informing Ney to support the right wing at Sombreffe. Turning purple with rage, Ney finally said, “Tell the Emperor what you have seen here!” He pointed with a sweep of his arm at the thousands of Allied troops just up the road reinforcing Wellington. “I will hold on where I am, but nothing more.” At the same time he ordered General Delcambre to disregard Napoleon’s orders and to proceed instead at once to Quatre-Bras.
With his adrenaline and ire up, Ney threw himself into battle with all the energy of yesteryear, leading his lancers in a mighty, frenzied charge against the eccentric Gen. Sir Thomas Picton’s newly arrived division at Quatre-Bras, now deployed in squares bristling with long bayonets and successfully repulsing the French. Undaunted by high losses, Ney next ordered Marshal Kellermann’s son, Gen. F. E. Kellermann, and his cavalry to attack again. Young Kellermann, considered the finest cavalry commander in the army, balked at the order to commit suicide, but when Ney repeated the order, personally taking the lead of four thousand cuirassiers, Kellermann gave in. “Pour charger!” Ney commanded. “Au galop!
En avant! Marche!” His voice cracked like a whip as the thundering mass of heavy cavalry pitched themselves headlong against Picton’s division, deployed in a line of infantry squares again. Wellington himself personally directed the first volley, when the cuirassiers in their shining heavy chest armor and steel helmets were only thirty yards away, killing and wounding hundreds of the cavalry and their mounts, supported by five batteries of cannon fired at point-blank range and by the rolling half-company volleys of musketry all along the Allied front. The duke, with little cavalry and less artillery at his disposal, nevertheless succeeded in halting a bewildered Ney and Kellermann, who were not used to such resistance. “The finest fellow I ever saw,” Col. Sir Augustus Frazer recalled in admiration, as the French cavalry beat a bloody retreat, Kellermann himself grounded when his mount was shot under him, barely escaping by grabbing hold of two passing horses. But with Wellington’s troops extremely low in ammunition, the situation seemed pretty grim for the Allies.
Returning from the charge after having lost his second horse of the day, Ney now found another courier waiting with an even more urgent order from the emperor: “Regardless of the situation Marshal Ney now finds himself in, it is absolutely imperative that Comte d’Erlon’s orders [to join him] be executed. It is of little consequence what happens over there [at Quatre-Bras].” A furious, mud-splattered Ney, covered with his horse’s blood, and cursing a blue streak at this impudent officer before him, ordered a third mount to be brought up. Swinging into the saddle, he ordered all the remaining cuirassiers, lancers, and hussars forward as he launched another blind charge against the Allied squares.
At long last a much relieved Wellington saw fresh reinforcements arriving from Mont St.-Jean and Nivelles. The wounded Picton formed one of these two fresh brigades into four regimental squares barring the Brussels Road, extending over to Bossut Wood, only to have his order countermanded by the foolish young prince of Orange, redeploying Halkett’s fresh British brigade in a thin line at the moment Ney’s cavalry reached them, savagely slashing through four fully exposed regiments before turning against Picton again. It was only thanks to Wellington’s intervention, countermanding Orange’s orders, re-forming the remnants of those much reduced regiments into squares, that he was able to repulse Ney’s nearly successful charge.
From this point on, time was on Wellington’s side. By 6:30 P.M. he had 36,000 men and seventy guns, with fresh caissons of ammunition rolling in. Ready at last, he launched his first major attack of the day, hurling Reille’s corps back from Bossut Wood, Gémioncourt Farm, and Piraumont Farm, and by nine o’clock that evening the Allies had regained all the ground they had lost, bringing the Battle of Quatre-Bras to a successful conclusion. The price paid was 5,200 Allied casualties, compared to Ney’s 4,100. Meanwhile Drouet d’Erlon’s corps was still marching, having not fired a single round all day.
“I attacked the English position at Quatre-Bras with all I had,” Ney informed Napoleon, “but an error on the part of the Comte d’Erlon deprived me of a fine victory.” Napoleon wrote back by return courier: “If Marshal Ney had attacked the English with all his troops, he would have crushed them, and at the same time given the Prussians their coup de grace. And if after having committed that first error he had not made his second blunder, by preventing the Comte d’Erlon from joining me Blücher’s entire army would have been captured or destroyed.” In fact Ney had lost the Battle of Quatre-Bras the day before, when he had refused to obey his marching orders.
It was not until 7:30 in the morning of the seventeenth that Wellington received the report of the Prussian defeat and retreat north. “Old Blücher has had a damned good licking and gone back to Wavre,” he sighed aloud to Captain Bowles of the Coldstream Guards. With Blücher gone, Wellington was exposed, for Napoleon would soon be marching up the very road he had traveled from Byre yesterday. Thus at noon the duke gave the orders to withdraw from Quatre-Bras to the village of Mont St.-Jean, about three miles south of Waterloo, which would place the Prussian army at Wavre, a little more than ten miles due east of them. With a bit of luck the two allied forces could finally join. Little did Field Marshal Wellington realize how fortunate he was even to have the Prussians moving to Wavre. While Blücher was still unconscious, his second-in-command and chief of staff, the strongly anti-British General Gneisenau, had blamed their defeat on Wellington’s failure to come to their rescue, and had initially ordered the retreat not north to Wavre but east to Liège and the German frontier. Fortunately, when the loyal old Blücher did revive, he proved fit enough to ride and resume command, chastising Gneisenau, rescinding his earlier orders, and now directing his army to Wavre after all. Although several thousand wounded and deserters did continue up the road to Liège and Namur, the main Prussian force remained intact with the field marshal.[789]
The French had sent the Prussians flying and remained the technical victors. Yet confusion reigned in their camp the evening of June 16. An exhausted Napoleon retired for the night still thinking that Ney had defeated the Allies, who would now be falling back in disarray toward Brussels. It would be just like the old Danube campaign, marching practically unopposed to Vienna. Unfortunately an overconfident Napoleon had not bothered to send out patrols either to nearby Quatre-Bras or after the Prussians. Indeed, he ordered no real pursuit of the Prussians that night, thinking that the stream of Prussians reported on the road to Liège constituted their whole army. It was very sloppy, and very cocky, but typical of Bonaparte, who had done this time and again in previous campaigns. Even as late as eleven o’clock the following morning, Napoleon was receiving reports that the entire Prussian army was still retreating to Namur and Maastricht. Fortunately he now took the trouble to demand confirmation of the enemy’s flight back to Germany, “to learn what precisely Blücher and Wellington intend to do, in the event they do plan on joining forces after all...and fight.” Had Napoleon been more energetic and decisive, he could have dispatched fresh troops — such as Lobau’s ten thousand men, whom he had forgotten to deploy during the Battle of Ligny — to participate in a vigorous pursuit and stop the battered and momentarily shaken Prussians from getting anywhere near Wavre. By the time he finally learned that Blücher was heading north in two columns, via Walhain and Mont St.-Guibert, and not to the east, it was too late. And it was only on the morning of the seventeenth that he also discovered that d’Erlon had not joined Ney before Quatre-Bras and that his marshal had instead been defeated there. “It was with great dissatisfaction that the Emperor saw that you did not succeed yesterday,” Soult admonished Ney, preventing Napoleon from taking “perhaps some 30,000 Prussian prisoners.” That did not help sagging French morale in Ney’s defeated left wing.
When Napoleon finally reached Quatre-Bras at two o’clock in the afternoon of the seventeenth, he did not find a single French soldier anywhere in sight. Instead he discovered Ney and his men several miles to the south sitting leisurely around campfires enjoying their lunch. This time, out of control, Napoleon shouted at a mortified Ney before his aides-de-camp, staff, and troops, ordering him to pursue the withdrawing Allied force on the double. As usual Bonaparte’s presence had an electrifying effect, d’Erlon’s corps unstacking their arms, forming up, and moving out in the direction of Quatre-Bras and Genappe, followed by Reille’s and Lobau’s corps, with Napoleon at a full gallop at the head of the column with the Imperial Guard and d’Erlon’s cavalry.
Just as the first units of French cavalry approached the British rearguard cavalry, a thunderstorm broke over the entire area, soon turning the highway to Brussels into a long, narrow strip of mud, slowing the French troops and causing hundreds of cannon, including 3,400 12-pounders and limbers, to sink axle deep in the road, effectively reducing the French pursuit to a crawl. By 6:30 P.M. Wellington was already in position around Mont Saint-Jean when the initial French troops began to reach the Belle Alliance Inn.
After catching a couple of hours’ sleep at the Gros Caillou Farm, Napoleon was awakened at three o’clock in t
he morning of the eighteenth to receive a dispatch from Marshal Grouchy then at Gembloux, dated 10:00 P.M. the seventeenth, finally confirming that Blücher was indeed marching toward Wavre and that he was in pursuit. But Napoleon failed to send any reply or instructions whatsoever. Unknown to Napoleon, the dithering Grouchy set out, after an eleven-hour siesta, from Gembloux at 8:00 A.M. on the eighteenth, while everywhere the rain continued to fall.
*
Bonaparte now had 74,500 men and 254 pieces of ordnance (including many 12-pounders) with him — the Imperial Guard, the I, II, and VI Corps and two Reserve cavalry corps for a total of 104 battalions of infantry and 113½ squadrons (15,830 troopers). Grouchy, slowly making his way north many miles to the east, had under his command III and IV Corps, for a total of nearly 30,000 men.[790]
Wellington had finally beefed up his army to give him 74,300 men including Orange’s I Corps, Hill’s II, the Army Reserve and Uxbridge’s cavalry, divided into 84½ battalions of infantry, 93 squadrons of cavalry (14,457 and only 157 guns, nine-pounders being his largest). Well to the west at Hal, Prince Frederick had another 17,000 men in reserve. Napoleon in fact had a superiority in cavalry with thousands of cuirassiers, of which Wellington had none, and 97 more pieces of ordnance. In addition Napoleon had a cohesive, entirely French force, largely veterans of other campaigns, compared to Wellington’s mostly new recruits. Nor did Wellington have a large number of veteran commanders to spare — Uxbridge, Clinton, Hill, Cook, Colville, and Alten against at least sixteen French generals. On the other hand Wellington had the advantage of selecting the battlefield best suited to his needs and style of fighting, while Blücher’s remaining effective field force, reduced to 89,000 men, was within marching distance of Mont Saint-Jean.[791]