Then, about nine o’clock, a Prussian officer arrived to confirm the gist of Gordon’s earlier tidings. This finally made up the duke’s mind; the warning order for a general withdrawal became operational. A message was also sent off to Blücher to say that Wellington would stand and fight at Mont-St.-Jean if Blücher could provide the assistance of two Prussian corps. Now the importance of the Prussian retreat toward Wavre becomes clear. Instead of retreating away from Wellington, Blücher’s men had begun to regroup within reasonable range of Mont-St.-Jean, with the waters of the River Dyle to protect their left and reasonable lateral roads to assist their march. Thus the ultimate outcome of Napoleon’s slackness after Ligny was to increase the likelihood of an Anglo-Prussian concentration on the ultimate battlefield rather than to prevent this.
From midday onward, the British line began to thin out, and formation after formation set out to march back to Mont-St.-Jean. Some officers—particularly Picton—were extremely loth to go, but Wellington’s orders had to be obeyed.
Absolutely inexplicably, there was no sign of activity from Ney’s legions all morning of the 17th. It was as if the entire French army, from the Emperor downward, was under a spell. Had Ney attacked, even at midday, he could have made Wellington’s withdrawal all but impossible—but he attempted nothing. Instead, his men settled down to prepare their midday meal, and a hundred columns of smoke rose from the French bivouacs.
Shortly after one o’clock, a spurring Napoleon reached Marbais. Pushing on immediately for Quatre Bras—he found the absence of any sound of a cannonade distinctly worrying—he suddenly came upon the troops of Ney’s command blithely sitting about on the road verges enjoying their rations. In a burst of fury he immediately ordered them to their feet and to form their ranks, but it was only at 2:00
P.M. that the troops were ready to advance. Napoleon now realized that his golden opportunity was already fast slipping him by. Turning to d’Erlon, he said: “France has been ruined. Go, my dear general, and place yourself at the head of the cavalry and pursue the rear guard vigorously.”32 D’Erlon at once rode off at full speed for Genappe.
Fate however, had turned its face away from Napoleon. It is possible—even probable—that Napoleon would have succeeded in catching up with Wellington and forced him to fight there and then, but for an adverse turn in the weather. At this juncture a colossal thunderstorm burst overhead, and within minutes the ground was turned into a quagmire. This ruled out any moves across country, and the French pursuit was consequently confined to the roads. Even so, it was a close-run thing. Wellington had entrusted the rear guard to Lord Uxbridge’s cavalry and the horse artillery, and Mercer recalls in a famous passage how close Napoleon came to catching them up. After quitting a low ridge, Mercer had just drawn up his guns a few hundred yards further back, “when a single horseman, immediately followed by several others, mounted the plateau I had left at a gallop, their dark figures thrown forward in strong relief from the illuminated distance, making them appear much nearer to us than they really were.”33 Mercer was looking at Napoleon himself, no less, leading the pursuing French. In the confused action that followed, Mercer experienced the greatest difficulty in extricating his guns; but the severity of the storm that then broke contributed to aid the rear guard’s escape.
Not even Napoleon, filled with new-found energy, could beat the elements. “The tracks were so deep in mud after the rain that we found it impossible to maintain any sort of order in our columns,” noted Sergeant Mauduit of the Imperial Guard.34 The pursuit straggled on after Wellington, but by 6:30
P.M. it had become clear that the “Iron Duke” had effected his escape to a position just beyond the ridge of Mont-St.-Jean. “What would I not have given to have had Joshua’s power to slow down the sun’s movement by two hours,” 35 reminisced Napoleon in his Commentaires. But as at Ligny the previous evening, time ran out before the day’s task was fully accomplished. Napoleon’s old boast that “I may lose battles but I shall never lose a minute”36 had not been borne out by his conduct over the last two crucial days.
Eventually Napoleon and the cavalry reached the wayside inn of La Belle Alliance, and shortly afterward selected the farm of Le Caillou for his headquarters. Anxious to ascertain that he had in fact run Wellington to ground behind Mont-St.-Jean, the Emperor ordered Milhaud’s horsemen to ride forward up the road, supported by several batteries of horse artillery, to make Wellington reveal his presence. The trick worked; a roar of shot and shell from 60 Allied cannon put the Emperor’s mind at rest on that score, but it was clearly too late to do anything that evening. “Have all the troops take up positions and we will see what happens tomorrow,”37 Napoleon ordered d’Erlon and his staff. And so the exhausted French troops were allowed to drop on to the sodden earth to rest and make what preparations they might for the morrow.
Later that evening, Napoleon learned from a returning patrol of Milhaud’s horsemen that a column of Prussians had been spotted moving toward Wavre. But the Emperor, confident of Grouchy’s ability to keep Blücher busily engaged on the 18th, discounted the news and ignored the warning.
The night passed slowly for both armies. Natural apprehensions about what the next dawn might bring were accentuated by the pouring rain which soon had everyone soaked to the skin, except for the fortunate few who found themselves able to shelter among the farms and cottages. Fences and doors were smashed to provide firewood for those caught in the open; and the garrison of La Haie Sainte to the fore of Wellington’s main position were ill-advised enough to destroy the main gates of the farm courtyard for this purpose.
Napoleon was still afraid that Wellington might attempt to slip away, covered by the darkness and the downpour, and thus deprive the French of the opportunity of final victory on the 18th. One in the morning saw the Emperor prowling along the outpost line, staring toward Wellington’s positions. The number of campfires he could see partially alleviated his apprehensions. “The rain fell in torrents,” noted the Emperor. “Several officers who had been out on reconnaissance and some secret agents returning at half past three confirmed that the Anglo-Dutch troops were not making a move…. The enemy commander could do nothing more contrary to the interests of his cause and his country, to the whole mood of this campaign, and even to the most elementary rules of war, than to stay in the position he occupied. He had behind him the defiles of the Forest of Soignies, and if he were beaten any retreat would be out of the question.”38 The minutes and the hours slowly slipped away, but the first light of dawn revealed Wellington still in the previous evening’s position. “Fe les tiens donc, ces Anglais” exclaimed a relieved Napoleon.
On his return to headquarters (shortly after 4:00
A.M.), he found a dispatch from Grouchy awaiting his attention. Written at 10:00
P.M. on the 17th, this important missive had been waiting for attention since two in the morning. It was rather an indecisive document, but in it Grouchy did surmise that the bulk of Blücher’s army might in fact be falling back toward Wavre. In that case, the commander of the French right wing concluded, “I shall follow them so as to prevent them gaining Brussels and to separate them from Wellington.”39 Although this report confirmed Milhaud’s impressions of the previous evening, the Emperor neglected to send off an immediate reply; indeed, he saw fit to repair this glaring omission only at ten o’clock. This constituted his first great error of the 18th; for had he reacted with even reasonable promptitude and caution and ordered Grouchy to head for Wahain, only a single corps of Blücher’s army at the very most would have been able to intervene at Waterloo.
“Alt Vorwärts” meantime, had informed Wellington that at least two of his corps (IInd and IVth) would be on the road to his aid by dawn on the 18th, and that the remaining two would follow if circumstances permitted. Napoleon, however, was clearly discounting the possibility of any effective Prussian intervention at Mont-St.-Jean. He was overoptimistically certain of the ability of the forces presently in his hand to destroy Welling
ton’s army without the direct involvement of Grouchy; he was also convinced that the Prussian army was a broken reed.
It is important to note that a considerable part of Grouchy’s cavalry was in fact detached from his command during June 17-18 and attached to the central reserve under the Emperor’s command. This fact clearly affected the efficiency of the French right wing’s shadowing of Blücher’s retreat.
92
WATERLOO
At first light on the 18th both armies gratefully stretched themselves and shrugged off the miseries of the previous night. At long last it had stopped raining, although the ground underfoot remained sodden. The soldiers of both sides were hungry, for the supply arrangements were far from satisfactory, but the British 95th made the most of their limited resources, as Captain Kincaid related. “We made a fire … and boiled a huge camp kettle full of tea, mixed up with a suitable quantity of milk and sugar, for breakfast; and, as it stood on the edge of the high road, where all the bigwigs of the army had occasion to pass, in the early part of the morning, I believe almost every one of them, from the Duke downward, claimed a cupful.”40
The battlefield of Waterloo is extremely small in area. The opposing armies occupied two low ridges, separated by a gentle valley extending over a distance of some 1,500 yards. In width, the battle zone barely extended over 5,000 yards stretching from the Château of Hougoumont in the west to the town of Papelotte in the east. From the center of the French position around the small hamlet of La Belle Alliance the Brussels-to-Charleroi highway traversed the area of ground separating the two armies. This entered Wellington’s forward positions at La Haie Sainte before breasting the crest and running down the reverse slope toward Mont-St.-Jean beyond. This road, in fact, neatly bisected the battlefield and provided the French with their main axis of advance.
Into this narrow area barely three square miles were crowded almost 140,000 troops and more than 400 guns. In due course, the French drew themselves up in an imposing array, almost every man being deliberately placed in full view of the Allied army so as to gain the maximum psychological effect. To the east of the Brussels road stood d’Erlon’s corps, four divisions strong, while to the west Reille formed up the three divisions of his command. Some little way to the rear of these advanced formations was massed the bulk of the French cavalry—Kellermann’s corps and Guyot’s division of the Guard reserve cavalry taking post behind Reille, Milhaud’s cuirassiers and the Guard light cavalry (Lefebvre-Desnouëttes) forming up behind d’Erlon. Centrally placed behind these masses of infantry and cavalry were the 10,000 men of Lobau’s VIth Corps and two further divisions of cavalry (detached from Grouchy’s wing the previous day), while in the rear stood the divisions of the Imperial Guard. In all this represented (to quote Siborne’s figures) 48,950 infantry, 15,765 cavalry and 7,232 gunners serving a total of 246 guns—a total of 71,947 men.
On the further side of the valley Wellington was also deploying his formations ready to meet the impending fury. The “Iron Duke” had not selected his position in an off-hand moment; it was a carefully considered choice, based upon a minute examination of the ground and a detailed consideration of the advantages it could afford. The general dispositions of Wellington’s men reveals the reliance he was placing on Blücher’s arrival to reinforce the Allied left, for the general shape of his battle position resembled a large wedge, the bulk of the troops being massed on his right while the left (to the east of the Brussels road) was comparatively lightly held. For the most part the main Allied position lay immediately to the north of the Chemin d’Ohain, a narrow road running between high banks and generally following the line of the Mont-St.-Jean crest. As was his normal custom, the duke drew up the bulk of his forces on the reverse slope behind this road, out of sight and at the same time considerably protected from the fire of the French artillery. A considerable number of Lord Hill’s men were positioned between the village of Merbraine and the Nivelles road, but with a strong detachment (General Chassé’s division) holding Braine l’Alleud about a mile to the west.* Just below the crest and to the north of the Chemin d’Ohain stood five brigades of the First Corps, commanded by the ill-fated Prince of Orange who was also in overall charge of the center. To the east of the main Brussels highway stood the reserve division of General Picton and the two brigades of 6th Division, one of the latter being set a little way behind the main line. On the extreme left of the Allied line stood the troops of Prince Bernard of Saxe-Weimar (actually part of First Corps) and the cavalry brigades of Vandeleur and Vivian. The mass of Lord Uxbridge’s horsemen were drawn up in rear of the right center, with the exceptions of Ponsonby’s and Ghigny’s brigades, which took post to the east of the Brussels road close by the farm of Mont-St.-Jean. The greater number of these troops were thus under cover.
To the south of the Chemin d’Ohain, however, Wellington had placed certain formations in key advanced posts. On the right, Nassauers and Hanoverians (destined to be reinforced by the Coldstream Guards soon after the opening of the battle) were occupying the wood and Château of Hougoumont—a strong position with many well-built barns and farm buildings and a stout encircling wall. In front of his center, Wellington similarly caused a detachment of the King’s German Legion to occupy the farm and garden of La Haie Sainte, standing immediately to the west of the Brussels road. A little further north, on the opposite side of the highway, lay a sandpit, garrisoned by a force drawn from the 95th Regiment. A little further east stood the exposed troops of Bylandt’s brigade, left out in the open in full sight of the French guns—whether by design or error has never been fully established. To complete this line of outposts—which Wellington intended to use as breakwaters to intercept and diminish the full force of the French attacks—detachments were sent forward to occupy the farms of Papelotte, Frischermont and La Haie on the extreme left. Present on the field were 49,608 Allied infantry, 12,408 cavalry and 5,645 artillerymen serving 156 guns—a grand total of 67,661 men.
However, mention should also be made here of a further substantial Allied force—no less than 17,000 men and 30 guns under Prince Frederick—stationed almost ten miles to the west at Hal, out of range of the battlefield. If Napoleon can be censured for failing to recall Grouchy in time to share in the conflict at Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington must also stand accused of wasting invaluable men. It was not wholly a careless oversight, however. Wellington was for some considerable time convinced that Napoleon would strike him from the west, hoping to lure the Allied army away from Blücher, and the Hal armament was designed to meet any such French move and hold it until Wellington could move up his main detachments. Nevertheless, this force should have been recalled posthaste to the battlefield once it became evident that this possibility had been overruled by events at Mont-St.-Jean. This waste of invaluable troops might have cost Wellington dear but for the splendid fighting powers of his men already in position and the timely arrival of Blücher’s advance guard on his left.
According to a local peasant, Decoster, forced to serve Napoleon as a guide on June 18, the Emperor was greatly impressed with the bearing of such Allied troops as he could see from near La Belle Alliance. “How steadily those troops take the ground! How beautifully those cavalry form! Look at those grey horses! Who are those fine horsemen? These are fine troops, but in half an hour I shall cut them to pieces.”41
Some little time earlier, Napoleon had held a conference with key members of his staff at Le Caillou. Soult’s cautious suggestion that Grouchy should instantly be recalled was contemptuously rejected. Similarly, Prince Jerome’s report of a conversation between two British officers, overheard by an inn servant the previous day, which purported to reveal that Wellington and Blücher were planning to join forces during the coming battle, was also dismissed as trivial “nonsense.” However, when General Drouot pointed out that the ground was still far too wet to allow the guns to maneuver easily or to employ ricochet fire against the enemy, and suggested that the opening of the battle should be postponed for some
hours to let the ground dry out, Napoleon immediately agreed, and ordained that the main action should commence only at 1:00
P.M. This decision proved the most fatal one of the day for the French. For had even an inadequately supported infantry attack been launched against Wellington during the morning, the French must surely have won; for Blücher would have been too late arriving on the field to affect the issue. In his supreme self-confidence, however, the Emperor was convinced that “we have ninety chances in our favor, and not ten against us.”42
Nevertheless, Soult’s mention of Grouchy must have reminded Napoleon of an earlier omission, for at ten o’clock, after moving to Ronsommé farm, he at long last dictated a reply to Grouchy’s dispatch of the previous evening. It was hardly an incisive document. “His Majesty desires that you will head for Wavre in order to draw near to us, and to place yourself in touch with our operations, and to keep up your communications with us, pushing before you those portions of the Prussian army which have taken this direction and which have halted at Wavre; this place you ought to reach as soon as possible.”43 It was neither a clear order of recall, nor a definite order to continue independent action; above all, it was at least six hours late in being sent off.
After a triumphant inspection tour of his army, the Emperor at length (about 11:00
A.M.) dictated his general order of attack. This in its turn was a remarkably concise plan, revealing that the Emperor was determined not to waste any time in fancy maneuvers. Wellington was to be crushed by a series of unsophisticated sledgehammer frontal blows.
The Campaigns of Napoleon Page 130