Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington, the victor of Waterloo, by Goya
The French concentration for the offensive had commenced on June 6 and was practically complete by the time the Emperor reached his forward headquarters at Beaumont on the 14th. Brilliant staff work resulted in the secret concentration of five corps, the Imperial Guard and the reserve cavalry into a zone thirty kilometers square from a dispersal area of more than two hundred miles. In terms of manpower this involved moving 89,000 infantry, 22,000 cavalry, 11,000 gunners and engineers, and 366 guns* from locations as far distant as Metz, Lille and Paris. The advancing corps were divided into three powerful columns ready for the advance over the Sambre scheduled for the morning of the 15th. The left wing, consisting of d’Erlon’s Ist and Reille’s IInd Corps, moved up from Lille and Valenciennes respectively to Sohr-sur-Sambre. The reserve and part of the right wing marched on Beaumont, the site of Imperial Headquarters. The Imperial Guard—which left Paris only on June 8—bivouacked behind the town, while Lobau drew up the VIth Corps (from Laon) a mile to the front, and Vandamme, moving with the IIIrd Corps from Mezières, camped still nearer to the frontier. Between them the IIIrd and IVth Corps formed the Army of the North’s right wing, General Gérard (from Metz) concentrating his men near Philippeville. Marshal Grouchy meantime deployed the four corps of the reserve cavalry (Pajol, Exelmans, Kellermann and Milhaud) between the towns of Beaumont and Valcourt, being responsible for the sealing of the frontier on the eve of the advance which his squadrons were then to lead. L’Armée du Nord thus covered a front of thirty kilometers on the night of June 14. The brilliance of this concentration had already earned Napoleon a considerable advantage over the Allies before even a shot was fired; scattered in widespread cantonments, they remained largely ignorant of impending developments.
For all its initial advantage, the French army had cause for concern in the shortcomings of certain senior commanders. Napoleon bears the full responsibility for this as he alone made the appointments to the key posts. At the age of 46, the Emperor should have been still in his prime; his mind was as alert as ever, but physically he was out of condition following a year of soft living on Elba, and the strains of the next seventy-two hours were destined to mould and distort his judgment at crucial moments.
The very brilliance of his plan made it imperative that he should keep himself fully informed of events on all sectors, and in the days before wireless this inevitably meant many hours in the saddle. To a considerable extent, the shortcomings of his immediate subordinates aggravated this necessity. As chief of staff Napoleon had appointed Marshal Soult, an experienced army commander who had seen much service in Spain, but who had never before served in his present capacity. Berthier, the éminence grise of so many of the Grand Army’s campaigns during the previous decade, had died on June 1, reputedly by jumping to his death from the upper story of a house at Bamberg, but even before this news came through the Duke of Dalmatia had been appointed to the senior staff position. Preeminently Soult was a man of action who would have been far better employed as a commander of one of the army’s wings—especially against his old enemy Wellington. In the course of the following days, Soult was to be responsible for perpetrating several mistakes and misunderstandings in the written orders he issued, and these, taken together, account for a great deal of Napoleon’s ultimate difficulties.
Similarly, the choice of generals to command the two wings left much to be desired. Marshal Ney, “the bravest of the brave,” was only given command of the left wing on the afternoon of the 15th—a totally unsuitable appointment for a soldier who could still be relied upon for courage and élan in action, but whose brain was no longer capable of the cool strategic calculations required of a semi-independent commander. The Emperor should have been well aware of Ney’s limitations. As early as 1808, he had likened the marshal’s comprehension of Napoleonic strategy to that of “the last-joined drummer-boy”;6 and although in 1812 “the bravest of the brave” had earned the highest imperial accolade for his conduct during the retreat from Moscow, Michael Ney had never managed to throw off completely the state of “battle fatigue” engendered by the horrors and privations of that campaign. Nor had he ever filled the gap on his staff caused by the defection of Baron Jomini. His showing at Bautzen in 1813 had fully demonstrated his limitations.
Nevertheless, Napoleon’s decision to appoint Ney to high command in 1815 was an act of considerable cunning. Not only was Ney the hero of the French army, he was also an invaluable figure of propaganda for use against the Bourbon cause. On the one hand it was a calculated blow against King Louis XVIII’s prestige to re-employ the former Bourbon commander in chief; on the other, Ney’s preferment might serve to persuade other servants of the Bourbons that their acts of desertion in 1814 could be overlooked in return for new tokens of devoted service to Napoleon’s cause. Thus on political grounds there was quite a lot to recommend Ney’s appointment in 1815, but there can be equally no doubt that he proved a decided military liability in the days that lay ahead. In any case the late timing of his arrival at the front to take up his appointment made it impossible for him to get to know his officers and men before leading them into action—a fatal disadvantage.
Equally inexplicably, the Emperor gave command of the right wing to Marshal Grouchy—a talented cavalry general with little experience of infantry soldiering—and he, too, was to find his new responsibilities beyond the range of his capabilities when faced by as wily a foe as the veteran Blücher.
Ultimately, then, Napoleon proved mistaken in the selection of his three key subordinates, and this is all the more inexplicable as so much good talent was overlooked. Marshal Suchet would have made a far better chief of staff than Soult, but the Emperor insisted on sending him to command the Army of the Alps, charged with the defense of Lyons. This was an important, but in June, a secondary duty: the crisis of the campaign would take place on the northern front. Even more difficult to understand was the failure to employ Marshal Davout in any active capacity. “I can entrust Paris to no one but you,”7 wrote the Emperor, but by appointing possibly his ablest marshal as minister of war and governor of the capital, Napoleon sacrificed the talents of an experienced and gifted soldier. No doubt he fulfilled a vital political role in rear of the army, but Davout would have been the ideal match for Blücher at Ligny. A final blunder on the part of the Emperor was his failure to use the services of King Joachim Murat, the finest cavalry leader in Europe. Admittedly the unfortunate King of Naples had earned his brother-in-law’s severest displeasure by his treacherous conduct the previous year, and had not improved Napoleon’s opinion of him by launching a premature and strategically useless Neapolitan offensive against the Austrian forces of General Bianchi on March 15, 1815. The result was his being subsequently totally routed at the battle of Tolentino on May 2, thus releasing all the Austrian forces in Italy for the forthcoming onslaught against France. But this in no way affected his brilliance as a cavalryman. Nevertheless his proferred saber was abruptly rejected by his old master. Grouchy was probably the best available replacement for Murat—but as already noticed he was inexplicably transferred from his cavalry appointment at the very outset of the campaign.
Doubtless Napoleon had his reasons for the unsuitable appointments he made, but responsibility for their shortcomings must rest squarely on his shoulders.
In other respects, too, L’Armée du Nord was beset with dangerous difficulties. A disconcerting degree of suspicion and mistrust dogged the relationships between the soldiers who had remained loyal to the Emperor throughout his fall and exile and those who had compromised their military oath and taken service under the Bourbons. This atmosphere pervaded all ranks, from the highest to the lowest, and to some extent made the morale of the Army of the North brittle. As the historian Houssaye describes it, the army of 1815 was “impressionable, critical, without discipline and without confidence in its leaders, haunted by the dread of treason, and on that account, perhaps, liable to s
udden fits of panic; it was nevertheless inspired with warlike aspirations and loving war for its own sake, fired with a thirst for vengeance; it was capable of heroic efforts and furious impulses; it was more impetuous, more excited, more eager for the fray than any other Republican or Imperial Army after or before it. Napoleon had never before handled an instrument of war that was at once so formidable and so fragile.”8 Indeed, it can be argued with considerable justice that Napoleon miscalculated the caliber of his army, regarding its quality with, if anything, misplaced optimism. But by June the time had come for action; the path was chosen and had to be followed to the end.
At half past two on the morning of June 15, the first French troops were roused from their bivouacs. Headed by the twelve regiments of the cavalry screen, three great columns began to converge systematically on the River Sambre: Reille and d’Erlon toward Marchienne and Thuin respectively; Vandamme, Gérard, Lobau and the Guard on Charleroi. The timetable was carefully regulated in an attempt to avoid congestion and confusion on the crowded roads. Every thirty minutes a new formation was to be set in motion toward the front; the last units were to be on their way by eight o’clock. All surplus transport—including the coaches of the senior officers—was ordered to be left behind, and the sappers were stationed behind the leading regiment of each column to ensure that the road surfaces and bridges could take the heavy traffic. The marching plans of the various corps were timed to ensure that the heads of the columns reached the Sambre simultaneously on a narrow front of barely five kilometers. Once the crossing had been safely accomplished, the two wings were under orders to push ahead for Fleurus and Frasnes respectively, while the reserve concentrated in and around Charleroi itself. It is important to note that no specific mention was made in the Movement Order (June 14) of the need physically to occupy either Quatre Bras or Sombreffe on the vital lateral road.9 Doubtless the Emperor would have been quite happy to see his adversaries concentrate still further forward, should they be so foolhardy.
The Campaign of the Hundred Days, 1815
Almost at once, however, the imperfections of the improvised French staff and the shortcomings of certain commanders and their units began to be revealed. A series of regrettable delays developed which in due course ruined the day’s timetable. General Vandamme’s corps was guilty of the first irregularity, owing to mischance rather than incompetence. The general received his orders from Soult only after a considerable delay. When they arrived the corps commander was absent from his headquarters, and an aide-de-camp was immediately sent out to find his superior officer. This envoy suffered a severe fall from his horse, and this meant that Vandamme was later than ever in receiving his instructions. In consequence, the leading formations of Lobau’s corps, advancing up the road on schedule, ran into the rear of Vandamme’s halted troops, many of whom were still in their bivouacs. The upshot was a further delay while the two corps disentangled themselves—and the result of this series of accidents was that IIIrd Corps reached Charleroi at three in the afternoon of the 15th instead of 10:00
A.M. This in turn meant that Pajol’s cavalry screen was unsupported at Charleroi for the greater part of the early morning, and it needed the Emperor’s personal intervention at 11:00 o’clock with a detachment of the Guard to drive Ziethen’s Prussians out of the town and secure safe control of the vital bridges over the Sambre; it was indeed fortunate for the French that no Allied officer thought to destroy the crossings.
Gerard, meanwhile, had been diverted to the bridges at Châtelet to avoid the involvement of IVth Corps in the confusion of wrecked timetables and converging columns at Charleroi. He too, however, ran into an unforeseen complication when the general commanding his leading division—Bourmont—decided to choose this moment to desert to the Allies. Suddenly deprived of their commander the leading regiments of IVth Corps were thrown into confusion for some considerable time, and their morale suffered accordingly. Indeed, it was only on the extreme left that a French column reached its appointed crossing place precisely on schedule when Reille entered Marchienne at nine in the morning; but even there an unanticipated delay ensued, for the detachments of Ziethen’s Corps holding the crossings proved so strongly placed that it was not until midday that the Prussians were forced to relinquish their positions. All aspects considered, therefore, the initial débouchement of l’Armée du Nord got off to a shaky start, and had the Allies chosen to leave a stronger covering force well forward to dispute the Sambre crossings, the success of the whole French campaign might well have been jeopardized from its very first hour.
Nevertheless, there is not the least doubt that both Blücher and Wellington—and more especially the latter—were taken by surprise at this abrupt launching of a major French offensive in the general direction of Brussels. It should be remembered, however, that Blücher received earlier warning than his colleague; not only had Ziethen reported seeing many campfires toward Beaumont on the night of the 13th-14th, but General Bourmont’s defection placed at his disposal certain knowledge of Napoleon’s intentions, at least as regards the crossings then in progress. Although their first reactions on the 14th were slow, next day the Prussian staff ordered the implementation of the contingency plan agreed to with Wellington on May 3—namely the concentration of the Prussian IInd, IIIrd and IVth Corps at Sombreffe behind the screen provided by Ziethen’s retiring formations. So it was that while Ziethen, in compliance with his orders, was falling back from the Sambre—two divisions toward Fleurus, one in the direction of Gosselies—the remainder of the Prussian army began to hasten up the roads from Namur to meet them; and by 4:00
P.M. on the 15th “the old war horse” in person had reached Sombreffe. Although the Prussian concentration was going ahead as previously planned, it was nevertheless placing Blücher’s army in increasing peril—:for in warfare few movements are more dangerous than a forward concentration of troops in close proximity to a powerful and advancing enemy. But even Bourmont’s revelations failed to convince Blücher of the foolhardiness of his intentions.
Blücher’s danger was also considerably increased by the fact that Wellington had been caught even more off guard than his Prussian ally, and indeed did not even immediately attempt to implement the agreements of May 3 (which called for a British concentration toward the Prussians) when at last he slowly became aware that great events were impending. The greater part of the 13th was spent attending a cricket match with a fair companion, and the possibility of imminent operations seems to have been far from the “Iron Duke’s” mind. Nothing more substantial than rumors reached him on the 14th, and it was not until 3 :00
P.M. on the 15th—when Napoleon’s offensive had already been progressing for close on nine hours—that Wellington received definite news that certain Prussian outposts near Thuin (eight miles southwest of Charleroi) had been subjected to serious attack. At that time there had still been no formal news from Blücher. Partly on account of this lack of tidings from his ally, and partly owing to an exaggerated sense of anxiety regarding his own lines of communications, running from Brussels towards Mons and thence to the Channel coast, Wellington jumped to the conclusion that “Boney” was attempting to perform a strategic envelopment of his usual type, aiming to cut the British off from the Channel coast. News of certain sorties by French troops from Dunkirk and Lille served to strengthen this belief. This grave misrepresentation of the true situation has indubitably harmed Wellington’s reputation as a strategist. The Allies were fortunate to survive so blatant an error; normally, only a single mistake was sufficient to deliver an enemy into Napoleon’s hand, and by 3:00
P.M. on the 15th the Allied generals had already made two critical blunders—one apiece.
Laboring under this serious error of deduction, Wellington issued his first set of operational orders. The two corps that constituted the bulk of his command were instructed to concentrate at predesignated positions to the west and south of Brussels: a screen of cavalry and infantry was to be thrown out toward Oudenarde from Ghe
nt to watch the approaches to Mons while Hill’s 2nd Corps concentrated near the River Dendre, and the Prince of Orange (1st Corps) marched his three divisions to Enghien, Soignies and Nivelles respectively. Lord Uxbridge was at the same time to mass his cavalry near Ninove in the rear, and the reserve (stationed in Brussels) received instructions to hold itself in readiness for an immediate march.
A study of the map will show the way in which the center of gravity of Wellington’s army was thus being deliberately placed to the west of the Belgian capital—that is to say, a concentration was proceeding towards the outer flank—while the vital link with the Prussians to the eastward (and most particularly the key position of Quatre Bras) received no provision of troops whatsoever. In other words, instead of concentrating on the inner flank as agreed with Blücher well in advance, Wellington was ordering movements which would actually increase the distance between their two armies, and thus play straight into Napoleon’s hands. It is difficult to find any convincing excuse for Wellington’s miscalculation; an appreciation of French interests should have convinced the Duke that Napoleon was hardly likely to attack the open British flank, for the net result of such a move would be to drive the British in upon the Prussians, and thus cause a decidedly unfavorable preponderance of Allied strength against l’Armée du Nord. Nevertheless, such were the orders issued by Wellington on the afternoon of the 15th, and throughout the evening and night the troops set out to execute his commands.
The Campaigns of Napoleon Page 125