If Gneisenau had returned to Prussia, Wellington would probably have had to retreat north towards Antwerp and the Channel ports and probably re-embark the British army back to the United Kingdom, as had happened on so many other equally humiliating occasions over the past quarter-century. The Royal Navy were used to shipping defeated British forces back from a Napoleondominated Continent, and this time would have been no different. Yet with the Prussians still in the field, and liaising closely, there was still the prospect that they could pull off the coup that Napoleon missed at Ligny, that of bringing a fresh force onto the battlefield at the psychologically vital moment.
The Prussian retreat northward necessitated Wellington making a similar manoeuvre, giving up the crossroads that had been so hard fought over only the previous day. He could not risk having the combined forces of Napoleon and Ney fall upon him, so Saturday, 17 June was spent retreating to a highly defensible position some miles to the north, on the slopes of Mont St Jean, which — despite the best efforts of generations of French historians — will always be generally known as the battlefield of Waterloo. Old Blücher has had a damned good licking and gone back to Wavre, eighteen miles,’ Wellington said. ‘As he has gone back, we must go too. I suppose in England they’ll say we have been licked. Well, I can’t help it.’It had happened enough in the past; whenever Wellington had made tactical retreats in the Peninsula there had never been a shortage of those he termed ‘croakers’, especially among the radical Whigs in the parliamentary opposition, keen to suggest that he had been defeated.
The French, too, were happy to argue that Wellington had been ‘licked’. Napoleon sent back a report of the battle of Ligny to be printed in the official government newspaper Le Moniteur which suggested that the united Prussian and Anglo-Allied armies had been defeated. The propaganda sheet duly obliged and there were celebrations in the French capital.
For a man responsible for several maxims about the importance of never losing a moment in wartime, Napoleon’s relative inactivity on 17 June was almost inexplicable. He spent the day dictating letters, surveying the battlefield of Ligny and then breaking another of his favoured maxims by splitting his force just before a major engagement.
Napoleon detached his most recently-created marshal, Emmanuel de Grouchy, to follow the Prussians with 30,000 infantry and cavalry and ninety-six guns, a large force that he would desperately need the following day. The bad staff work and mutual misunderstandings that had ensured that d’Erlon had spent the previous day marching between battlefields without firing a shot further conspired to keep Grouchy away from Waterloo, where he might have made a huge difference. Added to inferior staff work was the inherently unimaginative personality of Grouchy himself. Only raised to the marshalate that April, he believed that ‘inspiration in war is only appropriate to the commander-in-chief’, and that ‘lieutenants must confine themselves to executing orders’. So he interpreted Napoleon’s orders to him in their most literal possible sense, and marched off towards Gembloux in the hope of harrying the Prussian rear and preventing Blücher from joining Wellington. (Blücher had meanwhile rejoined Gneisenau, having been concussed during a fall from his dead horse in the skirmishing at the end of Ligny.)
Any opportunity that Napoleon might have had to attack Wellington as he was withdrawing from Quatre Bras after ten o’clock on the morning of the seventeenth was passed up by him and Ney, and when Napoleon rejoined Ney there he shouted: ‘You have ruined France!’ With the rain making the transport of artillery tough going, the French army followed Wellington up the Charleroi-Brussels road, hoping for the opportunity of a decisive encounter before the Prussians — of whose exact whereabouts Napoleon (and indeed Grouchy) was uncertain — could regroup. It all came down to numbers and odds: Napoleon had a larger army than either Wellington or Blücher, but not larger than both of them combined.
The French followed hard on the heels of the withdrawing British, and a compelling narrative of the day was given by Captain Cavalié Mercer of the British horse artillery, whose memoirs of the campaign are a superb historical source. ‘We galloped for our lives through the storm, straining to gain the enclosures about the houses of the hamlets,’ wrote Mercer. ‘Lord Uxbridge urging us on, crying, “Make haste! — Make haste! For God’s sake gallop, or you will be taken!”’ The thunderstorms that were developing — ‘Flash succeeded flash, and the peals of thunder were long and tremendous’— put paid to French hopes of catching up with the Anglo-Allied rearguard, although there was an occasion at Genappe where the British Life Guards had to charge French lancers to cover the withdrawal, which they did successfully, ‘sending their opponents flying in all directions’. There were a series of narrow escapes for the Anglo-Allied army retreating from Quatre Bras, which Mercer described as ‘a fox hunt’.
The torrential downpour of 17 June continued until long after the Anglo-Allied rearguard had halted on the slopes of Mont St Jean, a few miles south of Waterloo. Those soldiers who did not have tents slept in their greatcoats, soaking wet. A British infantry private (later sergeant) named William Wheeler of the 51st Regiment recalled how ‘We sat on our knapsacks until daylight without fires. The water ran in streams from the cuffs of our jackets, in short we were wet as if we were plunged overhead in a river. We had one consolation, we knew the enemy [was] in the same plight. The morning of the 18th June broke upon us and found us drenched with rain, benumbed and shaking with cold.’An officer later wrote that it seemed as if the water was being tumbled out of heaven in tubs.13
Charles O’Neil, a private in the 28th Regiment of Foot who had survived the terrible storming of Badajoz in the Peninsular War, recorded his memories of the night before the battle. A thief, deserter, fugitive and conman, O’Neil was not much given to sentimentality, but his account of the emotions of the night rings profoundly true:
I was just endeavouring to compose myself to sleep when my comrade spoke to me, saying that it was deeply impressed on his mind that he should not survive the morrow; and that he wished to make an arrangement with me, that if he should die and I should survive, I should inform his friends of the circumstances of his death, and that he would do the same for me, in case he should be the survivor. We then exchanged the last letters we had received from home, so that each should have the address of the other’s parents. I endeavoured to conceal my own feelings, and cheer his, by reminding him that it was far better to die on the field of glory than from fear; but he turned away from me, and with a burst of tears, that spoke the deep feelings of his heart, he said, ‘My mother!’ The familiar sound of this precious name, and the sight of his sorrow, completely overcame my attempts at concealment, and we wept together.14
(Sure enough, although O’Neil himself was wounded at Waterloo, his comrade was killed twenty-five minutes into the action, and O’Neil duly informed the parents of the circumstances.)
Before daybreak, Wellington received a message that would make the gruelling night undergone by the British army wholly worthwhile. Blücher sent word that as soon as it was light enough to march, he would be sending not only Bülow’s corps (which had not taken part in Ligny) to Wellington’s aid, but two whole corps — virtually the entire Prussian army — leaving only one corps to guard Wavre against Grouchy coming up from Gembloux. This was about treble the numbers Wellington had been expecting and hoping for, and it completely altered his thinking about the battle that was clearly to be joined the next day.
Instead of merely a holding action in front of the large Forest of Soignes to his rear, through which there was only one road to Brussels, Wellington could now envisage doing to Napoleon what Napoleon had hoped to do to the Prussians at Ligny: crush the enemy with a surprise eruption of extra troops onto its flank in the course of the battle.
For Napoleon had not the first hint of a suspicion that the Prussians, largely through the superhuman efforts of their commander, had been transformed in less than forty-eight hours from a defeated force fleeing the battlefield of Ligny into a discipl
ined army ready to take the offensive against the French once again. Meanwhile Grouchy, despite the large force at his disposal, had failed to make significant contact with the Prussian rearguard. He had also taken seven hours to march the six miles to Gembloux, which even in the torrential rain was a tortoise-like speed.
Napoleon desperately needed that force to be commanded by a marshal of dash and verve, but instead he had given the job to Grouchy. The most impressive cavalry commander in Europe, Napoleon’s brother-in-law Joachim Murat, King of Naples, had fled Italy and offered his services, but the Emperor had turned him down. Marshal Davout was holding down the job of minister of war back in Paris, while Marshal Suchet was commanding the divisions guarding France’s eastern approaches. Most of the other twenty-six marshals were either dead, had declared for the Bourbons, or were refusing to commit themselves to either side.
The knowledge that his left flank would be protected by the Prussians encouraged Wellington to strengthen the right and centre of his line. He also left over 17,000 men (3,000 British and 14,000 Dutch and Hanoverian) off the battlefield altogether, stationing them nine miles to the west at a village named Hal, under the joint commands of Prince Frederick of the Netherlands and Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Colville, who were both under the overall command of General Lord Hill. These troops would, Wellington hoped, be able to prevent any extravagant outflanking movement on the right flank, since he suspected that Napoleon might only be feinting at the Charleroi—Brussels road and really intended to march on Brussels via Mons.
Many historians — and not only historians: Napoleon himself fastened upon it — have criticised Wellington for leaving so large a force a two-or three-hour march away from the battlefield and for not recalling them the moment it became clear that Napoleon intended no large-scale manoeuvre but only a ‘hard pounding’ attack up the centre. They have even likened Wellington’s detachment at Hal to Napoleon sending off Marshal Grouchy, thereby deliberately absenting a large body of men who could have been invaluable at the battle. In Wellington’s defence the historian Jac Weller has argued that:
On the morning of the eighteenth Wellington did not know the exact position of all French forces. He could see by personal observation that Napoleon had detached a considerable portion of his entire army. There were about 39,000 Frenchmen unaccounted for; he knew of Grouchy’s movements in general, but not his strength. If Grouchy had only half this force, the other half could have been moving to turn the Duke’s right flank. Wellington did not underrate Napoleon, he wanted to prevent the Emperor from winning by really doing the unexpected.15
On the all-important question of the numbers present at the battle, I propose to take those quoted in Mark Adkin’s excellent book The Waterloo Companion, which as well as their innate scholarly worth are close to those of most of the other experts. After their losses of 17,500 men at Ligny and Quatre Bras, and Grouchy’s detaching with 30,000 men, the French army under Napoleon comprised 53,400 infantry, 15,600 cavalry and 6,500 artillerymen servicing 246 guns, along with 2,000 support staff from medics to engineers, making a total of 77,500. After losing 4,500 at Quatre Bras, and stationing 17,000 at Hal, the Anglo-Allied army under Wellington comprised 53,800 infantry, 13,350 cavalry, 5,000 artillerymen servicing 157 guns and one rocket section, and 1,000 support staff, totalling 73,150 men. The Prussian troops available to assist Wellington if Blücher’s plan was properly implemented consisted of 38,000 infantry, 7,000 cavalry, 2,500 artillerymen servicing 134 guns, and 1,500 support staff, totalling 49,000 men. Of the Prussian forces, IV Corps would arrive on the battlefield at about 4.30 p.m. with 31,000 men and eighty-six guns, II Corps would get there at about 6.30 p.m. with 12,800 men, and I Corps at around 7.30 p.m. with 5,000 men.
By the time the sun rose on the undulating plateau of Mont St Jean on Sunday, 18 June it was clear to everyone that there was going to be a major engagement that day — a battle on the scale of any of the great clashes of the Napoleonic Wars, such as Marengo, Friedland, Austerlitz, Borodino or Leipzig. ‘Ah! Now I’ve got them, those English!’ Napoleon is said to have exclaimed when he was certain that the Anglo-Allied army had not filed away down the road through the Forest of Soignes during the night. He later expressed incredulity that Wellington had fought with an impassable forest to his rear, but in fact Wellington did this on purpose. ‘It is not true that I could not have retreated,’he told his friend Harriet Arbuthnot eight years later. ‘I could have got into the wood and I would have defied the Devil to drive me out.’16
Napoleon underlined his extreme optimism at a breakfast meeting with his senior commanders held in the farmhouse of Le Caillou, on the Charleroi—Brussels road, where he had spent the previous night. ‘We have ninety chances in our favour,’he crowed, ‘and not ten against.’ General Maximilien Foy tried to warn the Emperor of the likely steadfastness of the British line, saying: ‘The time has come when an old soldier feels it is his duty to remind Your Majesty that while the Duke of Wellington’s position is one that he cannot contemplate for permanent occupation, you are now in front of an infantry which, during the whole of the Spanish war, I never saw give way.’ Marshal Soult, who had also spent years in the Peninsula, supported Foy, but Napoleon was quick to pooh-pooh them. ‘Just because you have been beaten by Wellington,’he told them, ‘you think he’s a good general. But I tell you that Wellington is a bad general and the English are bad troops.’ The whole business would be, he assured them, ‘l’affaire d’un déjeuner’ (a picnic).17 Instead it turned out to be perhaps the most famous battle of world history.
THE BATTLE
1
The First Phase
WELLINGTON HAD CHOSEN his ground well. As he looked southwards from his vantage point under an elm tree at the crossroads of the Ohain road towards the French army on the morning of the battle he would have seen two buildings, each of which was to play a key role in the coming events. To his centre-right in an advanced position were the château and outbuildings of Hougoumont, well protected with walls, ditches, hedges and surrounded by a wood, which the Duke had invested with his best troops of all, the British Foot Guards (along with some Nassauers, Hanoverians and Lüneburgers), with orders to hold the place come what might. That they succeeded in this, despite heavy and repeated attacks by the French infantry, was one of the keys to Wellington’s victory at Waterloo.
Over to his centre-left was La Haye Sainte, another well-defended farmhouse with stables, a barn and a piggery, all enclosed by high walls, which Wellington filled with the King’s German Legion, the émigré unit loyal to King George III which had demonstrated its first-class fighting abilities during the Peninsular War. The possession of these two strongholds, with their high brick walls, would prove invaluable in disrupting the French line of advance, because, as one historian put it, ‘no enemy could pass without being assailed in flank by musketry’.1
The two armies — separated by a shallow valley — were only a thousand yards or so apart as they cooked their breakfasts on the morning of the battle (Hougoumont was much closer, only 400 yards from the enemy front line). In the distance, behind the French lines, Wellington could make out the red-tiled, whitewalled farmhouse of La Belle Alliance, the appositely named inn that was to play a romantic role in the battle’s epilogue. On his far left were three more walled and well-defended buildings, the farms of Papelotte and La Haye and the château of Frischermont.
Howell Rees Gronow, a Welsh Old Etonian ensign who was on duty with the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards at St James’s Palace when the Waterloo campaign began, skipped his guard duty there hoping to see action at Waterloo and to return before anyone noticed he was missing. On the morning of the battle, he recalled:
We had not proceeded a quarter of a mile when we heard the trampling of horses’ feet, and on looking round perceived a large cavalcade of officers coming at full speed. In a moment we recognised the Duke himself at their head … The entire staff of the army was close at hand … They all seemed as gay and unconcerned as i
f they were riding to meet the hounds in some quiet English county.2
They had good reason to be confident, if not quite ‘gay and unconcerned’, because the topography across which Wellington had chosen to receive Napoleon’s attacks could hardly have been better suited for infantry, complete with folds and dips in the ground that could shelter defenders against the artillery bombardment of a far larger force of cannon — Napoleon had 246 to Wellington’s 157. Sergeant-Major Edward Cotton of the 7th Hussars discoursed upon ‘the principal advantages’of Wellington’s position, which had much to recommend it besides the two defensible buildings, including factors that — due to the lie of the ground — would not have been visible to Napoleon:
The juncture of the two high-roads immediately in rear of our centre, from which branched off the paved road to Brussels, our main line of communication … added to the facility of communication, and enabled us to move ammunition, guns, troops, the wounded, etc, to or from any part of our main front line, as circumstances demanded … the continuous ridge from flank to flank towards which no hostile force could advance undiscovered, within range of our artillery upon the crest. Behind this ridge our troops could manoeuvre, or lie concealed from the enemy’s view, while they were in great measure protected from the fire of the hostile batteries … Our extreme left was strong by nature. The buildings, hollow-ways, enclosures, trees and brushwood, along the valley from Papelotte to Ohain, thickly peopled with light infantry, would have kept a strong force long at bay … Our extreme right was secured by numerous patches of brushwood, trees and ravines, and further protected by hamlets.3
Waterloo: June 18, 1815: The Battle for Modern Europe Page 3