Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles

by Cornwell, Bernard

  Several officers who had been sent out on reconnaissance and some spies who returned at half past three, confirmed that the English–Dutch troops were not moving … two Belgian deserters, who had just left their regiment, told me their army was preparing for battle and no retreat was happening, that Belgium was praying for my success and that the English and Prussians were both equally hated there … The enemy commander could do nothing more contrary to the interests of his cause and his country … than to stay in the positions he had occupied. He had behind him the defiles of the Forest of Soignes and if he were beaten any retreat would be impossible … The day began to dawn. I returned to my headquarters well satisfied with the great error which the enemy commander was making … the British oligarchy would be overthrown by it! France, that day, was going to ride more glorious, more powerful and mightier than ever!

  Napoleon’s headquarters that night were in a farmhouse, Le Caillou, just south of the wide valley where his enemies waited. He had a restless night, which is hardly surprising, and very early on the morning of Sunday, 18 June, he received a despatch from Grouchy that should have disturbed him. The message said that the Prussians, instead of retreating eastwards, had gone north to Wavre, which meant that Blücher’s forces were within a few hours’ march of the rain-soaked valley beneath Mont St Jean, yet the Emperor did not seem alarmed and was not to respond to Grouchy until mid-morning. He had, after all, despatched a large part of his army to keep the Prussians busy. Those 33,000 men were sent to prevent Blücher linking up with Wellington, and the Emperor was confident he could prevent such a junction. He was interested only in the troops that faced him, the British–Dutch army, and because Napoleon had never fought a pitched battle with British troops, he asked his generals for their opinions. It was at breakfast in Le Caillou that Marshal Soult told Napoleon, ‘Sire, in a straight fight the English infantry are the very devil,’ an opinion that irritated Napoleon, as did General Reille’s gloomy comment that well-posted British infantry was inexpugnable, impregnable. Napoleon’s riposte is famous:

  Because you’ve been beaten by Wellington you consider him to be a good general! And now I tell you that Wellington is a bad general, that the English are bad soldiers, and that this affair will be over before lunch!

  Napoleon has been mocked for that statement, as he has for his derisory comment that Wellington was nothing but a ‘sepoy General’, but as Andrew Roberts points out in his fine book Napoleon and Wellington, what else was the Emperor to say on the morning of battle? His task was to raise morale, not praise the enemy’s strengths. He knew Wellington’s reputation and knew his generals were in awe of the Duke, and so he belittled his opponent with scorn. And, almost certainly, he believed himself to be the better commander. ‘There are ninety chances in our favour,’ he told his generals. He had once said that ‘battles should not be fought if one cannot calculate at least a seventy percent chance of victory’.

  So did his confidence come from sickness? That may seem a strange question, but it has been suggested Napoleon was suffering from acromegaly, a rare hormonal disorder which, among other things, provokes over-optimism. It has also been suggested that Napoleon was suffering from piles, constipation, cystitis or epilepsy, all of which are offered as explanations of his lethargic behaviour that June. He was certainly tired, but so were virtually all the senior officers involved in the campaign. The late Sir John Keegan worked out that Wellington had no more than nine and a half hours’ sleep in the three days leading to the battle of Waterloo, which was probably less than the Emperor.

  Much of the argument about Napoleon’s illnesses smacks of excuses, though there is little doubt that he was not as energetic as he had been in his youth. Colonel Auguste-Louis Pétiet was on Marshal Soult’s staff and had many opportunities to observe Napoleon.

  Napoleon’s stoutness had increased. His head had become enlarged and more deeply set between his shoulders. His pot-belly was unusually pronounced … it was noticeable that he remained on horseback much less than in the past … I found it hard to keep my eyes off this extraordinary man upon whom Victory had for so long showered her gifts. His stoutness, his dull white complexion, his heavy walk made him appear very different from the General Bonaparte I had seen at the start of my career during the campaign of 1800 in Italy when he was so alarmingly thin that no soldier in his army could understand how, with so frail a body and looking so ill as he did, he could stand such fatigue.

  Yet, tired or not, the Emperor was eager for battle. His fear, during the night, had been that Wellington would retreat further, but dawn confirmed their presence. The night before, seeing their campfires light the rainy sky, the Emperor had exulted, ‘Ah! Je les tiens donc, ces anglais!’ Ah! Now I’ve got them, those English!

  And so he had.

  * * *

  The British–Dutch headquarters was in the little town of Waterloo, where the Quartermaster’s department had chalked names on doors to show where men were billeted. ‘His Grace the Duke of Wellington’ was written on the front door of a comfortable house on the main street (it is now a museum) where the Duke spent much of the night writing letters. He had about three hours’ sleep. The rain kept falling.

  He wrote to the British Ambassador to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Sir Charles Stuart, who was in Ghent, ‘Pray keep the English quiet if you can. Let them all prepare to move, but neither be in a hurry or a fright, as all will yet turn out well.’ He also wrote to Lady Frances Webster, the 22-year-old friend he had met in the Brussels park. At the top of the letter he wrote ‘Waterloo, Sunday morning, 3 o’clock June 18th 1815’:

  My dear Lady Frances, we fought a desperate battle on Friday, in which I was successful, though I had but very few troops. The Prussians were very roughly handled, and retired in the night which obliged me to do the same to this place yesterday. The course of the operations may oblige me to uncover Bruxelles for a moment, and may expose that town to the enemy; for which reason I recommend that you and your family should be prepared to move to Antwerp at a moment’s notice. I will give you the earliest information of any danger that may come to my knowledge; at present I know of none.

  It was all very well for the Duke to counsel against panic, but it had already started. Rumours spread fast and those rumours said the British–Dutch had been defeated, the Prussians were fleeing, and that Napoleon was advancing unstoppably towards Brussels. Tupper Carey was an Assistant Commissary-General, and had been sent towards Brussels in search of supplies.

  I had hardly proceeded a mile when suddenly a panic seemed to have seized every one at the cry of the enemy being at hand. It seemed ridiculous to me, who had just arrived from the front, where all was quiet … Never did I witness a scene of such confusion and folly. To add to its bad effects, it was raining hard, and we were in the Forest of Soignes. The servants got rid of their baggage, let it drop on the ground, then, jumping on their animals, galloped off to the rear … The peasantry, carrying provisions in the country waggons, cut the traces of the harness and ran away with the horses, abandoning the waggons.

  It was scarcely better in Brussels. Rumours of Wellington’s defeat spread and English visitors were desperate to find transport out of the city. John Booth, an English civilian, was in the city that night and left an account of the confusion:

  The scuffle that took place to get at the horses and carriages it is impossible to describe; the squabbling of masters and servants, ostlers, chambermaids, coachmen, and gentlemen, all scolding at once, and swearing at each other in French, English and Flemish … words were followed by blows … one half of the Belgic drivers refused either to go themselves, or let their beasts go, and with many gesticulations called upon all the saints and angels in heaven to witness, that they would not set off, no, not to save the Prince of Orange himself; and neither love nor money, nor threats, nor intreaties, could induce them to alter this determination. Those who had horses, or means of procuring them, set off with the most astonishing expedition, and one English car
riage after another took the road to Antwerp.

  Antwerp lay directly to the north of Brussels and the roads to the port were good, as was the canal system. Lucky travellers could get a berth on a barge and be served fine meals in a luxury cabin while draught horses pulled them smoothly northwards, but by 17 June the barges had either left Brussels or been commandeered by the British army to serve as floating ambulances to carry the wounded to Antwerp’s wharves. Rumours of a great British defeat at Quatre-Bras reached Antwerp with the refugees, causing more panic. Similar rumours had infected the French on the evening of Quatre-Bras where ‘everyone was running away in total confusion and shouting “Here comes the enemy!”’ Ned Costello, the Rifleman, wrote, ‘It is curious to observe that, in the rear of an army in battle, confusion and uproar generally exists while all in front is order and regularity. Many people imagine the reverse.’

  The Duke was displaying order and regularity. At some time that night he received an assurance that the Prussians would march to his aid next morning, and that assurance was all he needed. His concern that night was that Napoleon would turn his right flank, thus cutting him off from a retreat to Ostend, and to guard against that eventuality Wellington posted 17,000 men in the village of Hal. Those troops would play no part in the battle because Napoleon never tried to manoeuvre Wellington out of his prepared position, he just attacked head-on, but that rainy night Wellington had no way of knowing what the Emperor planned. The Duke’s second in command, the Earl of Uxbridge, asked Wellington what he planned for the morning and received a very dusty response. ‘Who will attack first tomorrow,’ the Duke demanded, ‘I or Bonaparte?’

  ‘Bonaparte,’ Uxbridge replied.

  ‘Well, Bonaparte has not given me any idea of his projects, and as my plans will depend upon his, how can you expect me to tell you what mine are?’

  Wellington had not wanted Uxbridge to be his second in command and leader of the British cavalry. It has frequently been suggested that this was because Uxbridge had eloped with the wife of Wellington’s youngest brother, Henry. It was a major scandal. Wellington would have preferred Lord Combermere as his cavalry leader. Sir Stapleton Cotton, as Combermere had been called in 1812, had led the British cavalry at the battle of Salamanca and had been a crucial part of that astonishing victory, but Uxbridge had royal patronage and that trumped a mere Duke’s wishes. ‘Lord Uxbridge has the reputation of running away with everybody he can,’ a friend quipped to the Duke when the appointment was announced.

  ‘I’ll take good care he don’t run away with me,’ was Wellington’s curt rejoinder. And on the night before the battle, doubtless feeling he had been too hard on Uxbridge with his put-down over his plans, he clapped his second in command on the shoulder. ‘There is one thing certain, Uxbridge, that is that whatever happens you and I will do our duty.’

  Uxbridge was, in truth, a talented cavalryman, but must have found being second in command to Wellington extremely frustrating. The Duke did not delegate. He had no Chief of Staff as Blücher and the Emperor did. He was his own Chief of Staff and trusted no one to do his job half as well as he knew he could do it himself. Lord Uxbridge’s question, about what the Duke planned, was entirely justified and deserved a considered answer, but Wellington did not want a discussion, and certainly he did not want to tempt Uxbridge to offer advice. He was the commander and that was that.

  The tone of the letters he wrote that night, and the brusqueness with which he treated Uxbridge, betray that he was not as confident as Napoleon. Nor should he have been. He trusted only half his army to fight well, and that army would be beaten if the Prussians failed to arrive. The Czar might have called Wellington the conqueror of the world’s conqueror, but he had yet to prove it, and he must have been assailed by doubt on that rain-soaked night. He was about to face the man universally reckoned to be the greatest soldier of the age, a man he had never met in battle, and a man often called a genius.

  Yet Wellington knew he could not show nervousness. In the morning, as the rain cleared, he met his friend Álava, the Spanish ambassador to the Netherlands whose presence at Waterloo was solely out of loyalty to the Duke. Álava was worried that Wellington was not his usual confident self, but the Duke put his friend’s mind at rest when he nodded across the valley to where the French were forming up for battle. ‘That little fellow’, he said of Napoleon, ‘doesn’t know what a licking he’s in for!’

  * * *

  Yet Napoleon would only be licked if the Prussians came. This is, perhaps, the most important thing to understand about the Waterloo campaign. There has been argument about who ‘won’ the campaign, as if the Prussians and the British were in competition for the honour, but the essential fact is that Wellington would never have made a stand at Mont St Jean unless he believed the Prussians would march to his aid, and Blücher would never have risked that march if he believed Wellington could not hold off the French attacks.

  Gneisenau, Blücher’s clever Chief of Staff, presented the argument for abandoning Wellington. Gneisenau has come in for a great deal of criticism, especially from British commentators, for urging a retreat eastwards, but he was being entirely responsible. He was pointing out the dangers to his mercurial, passionate commander. It was true that Gneisenau had a low opinion of British troops and believed Wellington to be untrustworthy, and those convictions doubtless coloured his views, but he was telling Blücher that Wellington might only pretend to make a stand, then slip away, leaving the Prussian army vulnerable. Napoleon could then turn on Blücher’s men, giving Wellington time to save his army. Did Gneisenau believe that? Maybe not, but he was right to present Blücher with the possibility. The old Marshal had to make the decision and he needed to know what risks lay in a choice to help Wellington. And Gneisenau, when he had been temporarily in command of the Prussian forces while Blücher lay bruised in the village of Mellery, had made certain that the retreat was northwards. He had posted staff officers at crossroads to direct the men onto the lanes leading towards Wavre. He had kept his commander’s options open.

  Gneisenau, whatever his private opinions about his British–Dutch allies, did not press his objections. When Blücher decided he would march to Wellington’s aid, Gneisenau put the plans into operation. A young staff officer in Blücher’s army wrote later:

  Blücher had abandoned his natural line of retreat in order to maintain contact with the Duke of Wellington because he felt that the first battle had to some extent been bungled and he was therefore determined to fight a second. So he informed the Duke of Wellington that he would come to the duke’s assistance with his whole army.

  That young staff officer was Major Carl von Clausewitz, who went on to become one of the most celebrated writers on war. He had endured the retreat towards Wavre, an horrific journey in a darkness made dangerous by the torrential rain. He described in a letter to his wife how the troops had to struggle along a sunken road, always fearing a French pursuit: ‘I believe my hair turned grey that night.’

  Yet the French pursuit did not materialize. Grouchy had 33,000 men and 96 cannon with which to pursue the Prussians, but he did not know where to look; indeed there was so little evidence of French activity by dawn on 18 June that Blücher assumed Napoleon had detached no men to follow him. Despite the weather, despite the darkness and despite the defeat they had suffered at Ligny, the Prussian army was now just 12 miles from Wellington’s. They were difficult miles, across streams and through steep hills, but Blücher had promised Wellington he would march, and so he would. ‘I shall once again lead you against the enemy,’ the old Marshal declared in his Order of the Day, ‘and we shall defeat him, because we must!’

  At Ligny the Emperor had set a trap for Blücher, hoping that Ney or d’Erlon would fall like a thunderbolt on the Prussian right flank. The trap had failed.

  Blücher had hoped that Wellington would come to Ligny and so attack the French left flank, but that trap had also failed.

  Now a third trap was set. Wellington was the bait, Nap
oleon the intended victim and Blücher the executioner.

  It was dawn on Sunday, 18 June 1815.

  ‘The Duke of Wellington’, by Sir Thomas Lawrence: dressed in plain dark blue tailcoat, white breeches and half-boots … with his usual cocked hat. The Duke always dressed plainly for battle – his men knew who he was, he needed no gilded frippery.

  The village of Genappe, where Wellington bivouacked the night after Quatre-Bras ... it was also where Napoleon’s carriage was captured by a Prussian detachment after the final defeat at Waterloo.

  ‘Study for a Portrait of Baron Dominique Larrey’, by Paulin Jean Baptiste Guérin. Chief Surgeon to the Imperial Guard, Larrey realized that treating men as soon as possible after they were wounded produced far better results, and so he invented the ‘flying ambulance’, a lightweight vehicle, manoeuvrable on a battlefield crowded with corpses.

  Larrey attending a wounded soldier at the battle of Hanau, October 1813.

  William Paget, Lord Uxbridge, by Sir William Beechey. Paget was Wellington’s second-in-command who, awkwardly, had previously run off with the wife of Wellington’s youngest brother. He was to lose his leg with almost the last cannon shot of the battle of Waterloo.

  Portrait of Marechal Soult, Duc de Dalmatie, by Joseph Desire Court. Marshal Soult told Napoleon: ‘Sire, in a straight fight the English infantry are the very devil.’