The Campaigns of Napoleon

by David G Chandler

P.M. Napoleon’s gravest apprehensions had been relieved. A returning aide was able to announce that the threatening column was indeed part of d’Erlon’s corps. Why its commander had not followed the standard practice and sent orderly officers on ahead to announce his approach has never been explained. The Emperor at once dispatched another aide to order d’Erlon to alter course and head for Wagnelée—that is to say, back on to his correct axis of advance to take up the desired outflanking position— but a short time later, to his consternation, this officer returned to report that the bulk of d’Erlon’s corps was already on its way back to Quatre Bras, and that only a single division (General Durutte’s) was now anywhere near the Ligny battlefield. Completely baffled by these inexplicable maneuvers, the Emperor shrugged his shoulders and returned all his attention to the immediate problem to his front. This was grave enough. The master stroke had already been delayed for more than an hour, darkness was coming dangerously close, Vandamme’s corps had still not recovered its balance, and to top it all, Blücher chose this very moment to launch a desperate counterattack with six battalions and a mass of stragglers. This onslaught, led by the Field Marshal in person, caught the French somewhat by surprise, and the Prussians profited from their advantage to retake part of St. Amand. However, their success was shortlived. The French troops rallied with an effort and the Prussians had no supports available to exploit the situation. Accordingly the Young Guard swept forward to retake St. Amand, arriving just in time to sustain the morale of the shaken IIIrd Corps, which was again wavering on the verge of flight.

  By 7:30

  P.M., as the shades of evening gathered, the situation had been stabilized, and the time had at last come for the grand assault. The order was given. The drums beat the pas de charge; the serried ranks of bearskins moved inexorably forward. The Imperial Guard advanced in two columns of double companies, half toward western Ligny, half against the eastern part of the village. The attacking infantry was supported by 60 guns on the right, and massed squadrons of heavy cavalry followed close behind. A heavy downpour of rain developed, still further darkening the scene, which was already obscure enough, owing to the dense clouds of powder smoke and the growing darkness. The rain had no effect on the élite veterans of the French Guard, however; the “Immortals” swept into Ligny with the bayonet. Under the tremendous impact the Prussian line wavered, recoiled and broke. It was eight o’clock. The battle of Ligny was almost won.

  But there was one last effort to be made by the enemy commander. Desperately seeking some means of covering the retreat of his shattered infantry, 72-year-old Field Marshal Blücher—nicknamed “Alt Vorwärts” (“Old Forward”) by his adoring men—placed himself at the head of 32 squadrons of Röder’s cavalry and hurled them at the Imperial Guard. It was a fine if rash gesture, but its effect was only temporary. With well-drilled precision the columns and deployed lines of the Guard became fire-fringed and bayonet-bristling squares, and after a brief fight at nine o’clock near the mill of Bussy the Prussian cavalry were driven off.

  Not so Field Marshal “Alt Vorwärts”; at the height of the engagement his horse was shot beneath him and he was thrown to the ground, pinned beneath his mount. The tide of battle swept by, and only a single aide remained near the stricken field marshal. Twice squadrons of French cuirassiers rode over the prostrate Prussian commander in chief without realizing in the gloom how important a prize was within their grasp, but in the end the devoted aide succeeded in finding help and freed the aged and semiconscious veteran from his horse; soon Blücher (still unrecognized) was being borne northward amid a column of his disorganized troops, whose retreat his rash charge had to some extent made possible.

  Napoleon had achieved a great victory—but it was not complete. Although the Prussian center had been shattered, both wings remained relatively intact and, thanks to the covering darkness, were proceeding to extricate themselves from the stricken field. If only d’Erlon had materialized as envisaged, Lobau brought up in time to take his place, or two more hours of daylight had remained, the havoc could have been completed, and the Prussian army would inevitably have suffered a far higher proportion of casualties. As it was, they lost 21 guns and more than 16,000 men during the battle, and over the following night some 9,000 more deserted and fled towards Liège. Wellington’s prophecy to Hardinge that “If they fight here they will be damnably mauled” had been all too convincingly proved correct.

  Yet so much more might have resulted. As Becke describes it, the possible repercussions of a complete French triumph at Ligny would have been barely calculable, “The news of such a victory would have shaken Europe to its foundations, and at the same time raised France to a pitch of enthusiasm that must have carried Napoleon on to ultimate victory.”22 But the success had not been complete, and through a series of chance decisions and fortuitous events—including the near-miraculous rescue of Blücher, without whose determination and leadership the battle of Waterloo two days later could hardly have been won—the Prussian Army was to recover from the near debacle with amazing speed and resilience.

  As for the French, they too had suffered grievously; between eleven and twelve thousand lay dead or wounded on the battlefield. The strains of the day had also told on the Emperor. Since the opening of the campaign, Napoleon had spent long hours in the saddle, even more on foot beside his troops; and although probably too much stress has been laid on the supposedly poor health of Napoleon at this time there is no doubt that he was unwell when he returned to his headquarters at Fleurus at 11:00

  P.M. on the 16th. Perhaps the months of exile in Elba had softened him; perhaps the long-established disease of acromegaly* had reached an aggravated stage. Whatever the real reason, some of the old dash and energy were lacking, and now, on the late evening of June 16, a lethargic and ailing Emperor decided not to order an immediate large-scale pursuit of the defeated Prussians. As it turned out, this was a fatal error, for during the hours that followed the French lost contact with their enemy, and the results of this were to prove dire two days later. It is clear that Napoleon believed the Prussian main body incapable of further large-scale resistance; it is also probable that he was anxious lest Bülow’s fresh corps—which still had not materialized—might come up overnight to cause havoc with the French pursuit during the difficult hours of darkness. Above all, he had heard no news from Marshal Ney since mid-afternoon, and it appeared prudent to delay the follow-up on the right until the left wing’s fortunes had been determined. And so caution won the day, and the Emperor retired to rest ordering Grouchy to commence the pursuit at daybreak.

  Although a great opportunity was thus thrown away, the events of the 16th on the French right wing had been satisfactory enough: the Allies had been kept separated, and Blücher heavily defeated. All being well, this meant that Napoleon would be in a position to switch his whole reserve against Wellington the next day. Two complete army corps—d’Erlon’s and Lobau’s—were still untouched by battle, and the Guard had suffered only 1,000 casualties. Thus the possibilities of a complete victory over the Allied forces in Belgium were still strong on the night of the 16th.

  A disease of the pituitary gland, among whose symptoms are fits of lassitude and spasms of overoptimism.

  90

  THE ERRORS OF MARSHAL NEY

  If the events around the Ligny brook had developed into a set-piece battle of grinding attrition through a combination of Napoleon’s choice and sheer force of circumstances, Ney’s battle against Wellington at Quatre Bras was far more of an encounter engagement—a story of escalation and wildly fluctuating odds, of great mistakes and greater misunderstandings, relieved by acts of great heroism and self-sacrifice.

  On returning from his late-night visit to Napoleon in the early hours of the 16th, Marshal Ney retired for the night at Gosselies without seeing fit to issue any preliminary orders to his subordinates. Now Napoleon must have made it clear without any doubt that the early capture of Quatre Bras on the 16th was of great importance to his plan, an
d that this move would in all probability be followed by an advance on Brussels, once the reserve had moved up and made contact with Ney’s wing. In other words, Ney must have been left clearly under the impression that his wing of l’ Armée du Nord was destined to fulfil the most important role during the 16th. He never subsequently appreciated (at least not until 6:30

  P.M., by which time it was too late) that circumstances had entirely reversed the Emperor’s list of priorities by the early afternoon—and this misunderstanding accounts for much of the muddle and chaos of the battle, which compromised success at Ligny as well as at Quatre Bras. However, this in no way excuses Ney for failing to order Reille to prepare for an early morning attack on the 16th, nor for neglecting to instruct d’Erlon to move up his corps ready to support it; he can be accused of pure negligence over both these issues. Indeed, almost unbelievably, it was not until 11:00

  A.M. that Ney issued any orders at all.

  This is partly Napoleon’s fault; as we have seen, the Emperor did not issue his first orders of the 16th until 8:30

  A.M. (his customary practice on earlier campaigns had been to give them about two in the morning so that they could reach the recipients by six or eight), and perhaps Ney wished to wait for written confirmation of the verbal instructions he had received from Napoleon in the early hours. Even if this is the truth of the matter, Ney is still revealed as lacking in any form of initiative or drive; there was no reason for failing to issue preliminary concentration orders to the corps under his command. His utter inaction and lack of initiative contrasts very forcibly, as General Fuller has pointed out, with the bold actions of General Perponcher the previous evening in occupying Quatre Bras in direct contravention of Wellington’s written orders!

  As a result, six precious hours were allowed to slip past. Only at 11:45

  A.M. did Reille begin to stir his men and put them on the road, moving slowly through Frasnes in a long column, General Piré in the lead, followed by Bachelu and Foy, with Prince Jerome Bonaparte’s troops bringing up the rear. Throughout the entire morning, the only force available to face Ney was Perponcher’s isolated division; and even as late as 2:00

  P.M. the Allies had still only collected 8,000 men and 16 guns at the vital crossroads, while Reille’s corps alone numbered some 20,000 troops and almost 60 guns. Clearly, any determined French attack at this time would have been decisive, but this failed to materialize. Of course, Ney’s dilatoriness can be compared to Wellington’s slowness in realizing the significance of the Quatre Bras position; but at least the “Iron Duke” was by this time doing everything in his power to reinforce Perponcher from the west, and by 11:00

  A.M. the reserve was also moving toward Quatre Bras from Mont-St.-Jean.

  From the Allied point of view, therefore, the battle of Quatre Bras remained a vital race against time until five in the evening, by which hour the reinforcement contest had been decisively won in Wellington’s favor, thanks to the purposeless peregrinations of Count d’Erlon.

  At long last, shortly after 2:00

  P.M., a battery of 14 French guns opened fire and engaged the Allied artillery drawn up across the Brussels road. Almost simultaneously, General Reille gingerly commenced an advance to contact. The Allied position was potentially a strong one from the point of view of defense; numerous farms dotted the undulating landscape; thick woodland—most especially the Bois de Bossu—offered further concealment and cover while many of the fields were filled with head-high corn. Moreover the vital crossroads was situated atop a low ridge. However, under the military conventions of the day, 8,000 men were impossibly few to hold a position no less than two miles in extent, and their left or inner flank was particularly vulnerable.

  Reille was ordered initially to clear the wooded areas to the south of Quatre Bras, but he moved with extreme caution. A veteran of the Peninsular War, Reille was afraid of running bald-headed into “a Spanish battle”; so effective had been Wellington’s Peninsular tactics of hiding troops behind reverse slopes until the last moment, that many French commanders became conditioned to suspect the worst from-the most innocent-looking positions. Both Ney and Reille feared that Wellington might already be present in unknown force, and the height of the corn did nothing to make the accurate calculation of the enemy strength any easier. In this way, thanks to Wellington’s redoubtable reputation, an Allied force of precisely 7,800 infantry, 50 cavalrymen and 16 guns proved capable of keeping at bay no less than 19,000 veteran French infantry, supported by 3,000 cavalry and 60 guns, with d’Erlon’s 20,000 men moving up in rear. Nevertheless, cautious step by cautious step, the French steamroller moved inexorably forward. Before three o’clock Bachelu’s division had captured Piramount, driving in Perponcher’s left, and this was soon followed by Foy’s capture of Gemioncourt. However, when Foy’s second brigade attempted to seize Pierrepoint Farm on the flank of Bossu Wood, it received a sharp check, and it was only when Prince Jerome came up with 8,000 more men and 8 guns that this strongpoint passed into French hands and the tiresome process of clearing the Nassauers out of Bossu Wood could commence.

  All the same, by the time Wellington returned in person to the scene (3:00

  P.M.), Perponcher’s line was on the point of cracking under the weight of sustained attacks by three French divisions. But then, when the battle seemed already hopeless, there arrived the first of a stream of much-needed reinforcements in the form of van Merlen’s Belgo-Dutch cavalry brigade from Nivelles. The wavering morale of Perponcher’s tiring men rallied. A short time later, and Picton’s 8,000-strong division appeared up the Brussels road, together with 12 more guns. These reinforcements reduced the odds to approximately two to one in Ney’s immediate favor, for Wellington now commanded some 17,000 men in the field against 25,000 French troops actually engaged.

  However, when the Prince of Orange attempted to counterattack with his cavalry about 3:30

  P.M., he was driven back with heavy losses, and six cannon fell into the French hands. This setback led to a renewed threat to the thin Allied line, but now Picton’s men were formed up in rear of the vulnerable left flank, and the resumed French advance was repulsed once more. At much the same time the Duke of Brunswick materialized at the head of yet more men, and Wellington’s strength rose to 21,000 men; the immediate crisis was thus over for the Allies, at least until Ney could bring the 20,000 fresh troops of d’Erlon into action in support of Reille. The French had already missed their best chance of victory.

  Shortly after 4:00

  P.M. Ney received Soult’s 2:00

  P.M. message—and for the first time came to appreciate the real importance of capturing the crossroads ahead of him. He still did not appreciate, of course, that his sphere of action was definitely relegated to second position in terms of strategic importance. The Prince of the Moskowa’s reaction, therefore, was to send a spurring aide to hasten d’Erlon up the road to join in the attack on Quatre Bras and to fling the tiring troops of Reille’s divisions forward in another all-out assault. At first all went well on the left, and the French captured all but the northeast corner of Bossu Wood; however, to the east of the main road they met with less success, and Picton’s well-directed volleys sent the attacking columns and lines reeling back in considerable disorder toward Piraumont.

  This was the moment when a malicious fate deepened the “fog of war” by ordaining the arrival on the scene of Napoleon’s aide, General de la Bedoyère. This zealous officer, carrying Napoleon’s verbal or pencil message to Ney, discovered d’Erlon’s corps on the road moving north toward Quatre Bras instead of east toward Ligny. Knowing as he did the critical situation facing the Emperor and Grouchy, and hoping to avoid any further loss of time in setting d’Erlon’s men off on their outflanking march, de la Bedoyère halted the leading division and sent it off on its new course in the name of the Emperor. However, through a misunderstanding, the leading troops headed for St. Amand instead of Wagnelée (as intended by Napoleon)—in other words, toward the French r
ather than the Prussian flank; either the writing on the note was illegible, or, if this document was in fact fabricated by de la Bedoyère, as some suggest, he misunderstood Napoleon’s true intention. This error was in due course to lead to the near panic of Vandamme’s corps and the suspension of the Guard’s critical attack at Ligny for the space of more than an hour, as we have already seen. His well-intentioned havoc done, de la Bedoyère then rode on to find d’Erlon who was temporarily absent from his corps, having gone forward to reconnoiter the Quatre Bras position prior to committing his formations. In due course the commander of Ist Corps received Napoleon’s messenger, approved rather apprehensively the fact that his men were already executing the prescribed change of plan, and sent off his chief of staff, General Delacambre, to show the note to Ney and inform him of what was happening.

  So it was that Marshal Ney, impatiently awaiting the arrival of Ist Corps to clinch the capture of Quatre Bras, suddenly learned that every man of his sorely-needed reinforcements were marching away from the scene of action. Not unnaturally, the fiery redheaded Gascon lost his temper. At that very moment who should ride up but Colonel Forbin-Janson, another Imperial aide, bearing the original text of Napoleon’s 3:15

  P.M. order and a verbal message from the Emperor urging Ney to take Quatre Bras without further delay. This was too much; Ney vented his wrath on the unfortunate staff officer, who became so flustered that he completely forgot to hand over the written dispatch with which he was entrusted. Consequently Ney never received the Emperor’s 3:15

  P.M. order until much later on in the evening. As his wrath subsided, Ney turned to Forbin-Janson and said: “Tell the Emperor what you have seen. I am opposed by the whole of Wellington’s army. I will hold on where I am; but, as d’Erlon has not arrived, I cannot promise any more.”23 Having sent the colonel on his way back to Napoleon, Ney returned his attention to the battle. At that very moment, General Alten’s division launched an attack on the French from Quatre Bras, and this made up Ney’s mind for him. It was bad enough that d’Erlon had marched off without his prior approval; now it seemed that defeat instead of victory might be the outcome. D’Erlon must be recalled, heedless of the Emperor’s decision.