by Tim Clayton
At this stage the two generals resolved their concerns and anxieties. Both wrote in French, which introduced potential for misunderstanding, but they did their best to be honest with each other. Gneisenau said that he intended to commit his whole army, not just a part of it, but stated plainly that his real worry was that if he marched the Prussian army to Brussels and they suffered a defeat, Wellington would find it necessary to retreat towards the sea leaving the Prussians exposed to annihilation. He was determined to share the fate of Wellington’s army, and if Wellington was prepared to retreat towards Germany all difficulties were removed. He then explained his own plans. Wellington replied to the effect that although he might normally retreat towards the sea and look to the defence of Holland, current circumstances dictated that his army should remain in theatre; if he retreated owing to local enemy superiority it would only be in order to combine British and Prussian forces elsewhere. So long as they stuck together they were too strong to be defeated. This clear exchange of views established a vital understanding between the British and Prussians: both were determined to cooperate in close mutual support and this was to prove crucial to the success of the campaign.9
One reason for Gneisenau’s caution was that, like Wellington, he was worried about untrustworthy troops, having 16,000 Rhinelanders and 14,000 Saxons who had fought with France until 1813 and might change sides at the slightest reverse. The Saxon problem soon came to a head in a way that confirmed all Wellington’s suspicions and Gneisenau’s fears. The experienced Saxons were in Liège, anxiously awaiting the outcome of discussions in Vienna about the fate of Saxony. Blücher had been doing his best to charm them, but they were understandably averse to the notion that within each regiment some soldiers might soon become Prussian while others remained Saxon. Then Blücher received blunt orders from Vienna to divide the Saxon force into those who remained Saxon and those who became Prussian.
On 1 and 2 May he attempted to implement his instructions. A correspondent reported candidly on 2 May to a London newspaper on the result:
The Saxon regiments in garrison here were ordered to appear in the square this morning, in order to be incorporated with the Prussians. They did not come to the appointed place until the afternoon, and when the incorporation was announced to them they left their ranks in the greatest disorder, crying, Live the King of Saxony! and the Emperor of the French! Most of the officers followed the example of the soldiers, and the confusion is complete. The Saxons are now running through the streets with their swords drawn in quest of the Prussians. We fear for what may pass at night. The people of Liège are disposed to favour the Saxons.10
That night Blücher was chased from his headquarters by a mob of Saxon grenadiers hurling stones through the windows and fighting hand to hand with Prussian officers. The next day, 3 May, the Prussian general had an appointment for a summit meeting with Wellington at Tirlemont, a town situated halfway between their respective headquarters. Intelligence sent by Bathurst, the Secretary of State for War, and confirmed by other sources, had revealed that Napoleon was heading for the northern border with the stated intention of inspecting the frontiers and fortresses. He had just ordered the concentration of four army corps and it was quite possible that the ‘sudden stroke’ might be imminent. Before Wellington left for the meeting, he advised King Willem to flood the water defences of his border fortresses.11
At Tirlemont, both Blücher and the Prince of Orange argued for an immediate attack to take the war to the enemy before he strengthened his borders, but Wellington counselled waiting until their own forces were stronger and the Austrians and Russians were ready to lend support. At this stage the Prussians had two corps of about 66,000 men around Charleroi and Namur, along with the 14,000 Saxons at Liège, while Wellington could field about 70,000 men.12 They agreed to attack Napoleon together on 12 July if possible.
Little is known about the detail of discussions at this meeting, but the generals probably defined the areas for which they would be responsible, either side of the Brussels to Charleroi highway, and agreed mutual support in the event of a French assault. To speculate from the evidence of what eventually transpired, it seems likely that each command called the tune in its own area, and selected a position in which they would fight were they to be attacked. Wellington’s favoured battlefield was at Hal, ten miles south-west of Brussels on the direct route from Paris, whereas the Prussians’ chosen position was closer to the frontier.13 Wellington still wanted more Prussians nearer Brussels. The Prussians had been unwilling to cross the border because they could not afford to pay cash to feed so many of their troops, but Wellington obtained a promise that the king of the Netherlands would supply them with food. Two days later Blücher summoned 60,000 men from Luxembourg and Cologne, moving another army to cover the German border with France.14
Blücher also offered Wellington the Saxons, but the Duke turned them down saying that he already had enough mutinous troops on his hands with the Belgians.15 He had assumed that the Saxons had mutinied in support of Napoleon, rather than for reasons of national pride, and reckoned that troops that had changed sides once, as the Saxons had at Leipzig, might well do so again. He continued, too, to reject requests from the Saxons themselves to join his army, for as he afterwards wrote to Hardinge, ‘it is very obvious that they will be of no use to any body during the war; and our object must be to prevent them doing mischief … the most fatal of all measures will be to have 14,000 men in the field who cannot be trusted.’16
Wellington’s words probably reduced Blücher’s trust in the Saxons, with whom he was already thoroughly angry, and a final incident on his way back from the conference pushed him over the edge. Blücher passed a Saxon light regiment who, to his utter fury, refused to salute him. Having ordered the Prussian commander of II Corps to make sure that the Saxons didn’t march off to France, the field marshal disarmed the Saxon Grenadier Guards, ordered them to hand over ten men, had these executed by firing squad, and had the regimental flag, which the Queen of Saxony had embroidered personally, publicly burned. When the corps commander protested he was relieved of his command. The whole Saxon contingent was then sent back to Germany in disgrace.
Once his 60,000 reinforcements arrived, Blücher was more or less at full strength to fight, with four corps amounting to about 126,000 troops, but this was an underfunded, half-trained force and, like Wellington, Blücher was doubtful of the loyalty and attitude of a good number of his men.
6
Honneur aux Braves
By the beginning of May any Frenchman could see that war was inevitable. Napoleon blamed the failure of the letters stating his peaceful intentions on his brother-in-law Joachim Murat, king of Naples, who had attacked the Austrians in Italy. Murat had been Napoleon’s best cavalry commander and, since 1795, one of his closest associates. He had deserted the Emperor on an Austro-British promise that he could keep his Neapolitan throne, but it now looked as if they wished to depose him. Napoleon’s version of events was that he desired to maintain the existing friendship between France and Austria and was enormously irritated when on 15 March King Joachim declared war on Austria; Murat’s that he had declared war on Napoleon’s instructions, since Bonaparte fondly expected Italy to rise in his favour.1 Whoever was to blame, Napoleon did not lift a finger to help his erstwhile lieutenant. Joachim was finally defeated on 2 May, deserted by most of his troops and obliged to flee to France, where Napoleon not only refused to employ him – he refused even to see him.
Napoleon now began pondering his options thoroughly. The first was to fight a defensive campaign, similar to the one that he had undertaken the previous year, but with 200,000 men instead of 90,000 and with Paris fortified and defended by a further 80,000 men under the redoubtable Marshal Davout. He would mass his troops near Paris and Lyons and by the time the allies could reach him – towards the end of July – he would be strong while they would have had to detach troops to protect their lines of supply from the garrisons of his fortresses. Militarily
speaking, this was a sound and attractive plan, but politically it was fraught with risk. He would have to cede large parts of France before fighting his battles and the French people would suffer the ravages inflicted by invading armies. They might not stand for it.
The second option was riskier militarily but offered a better prospect of unifying the nation and yielding political dividends. The plan was to make an attack on the enemy armies in Belgium before the Austrians and Russians were ready to fight. The difficulty was to ensure that he fought one army before the other, for the Anglo-Dutch and Prussian armies combined much outnumbered the Armée du Nord and the Guard. If he could but win two battles, all the old confidence would surge back into the French soldiers and the people would back him. The Belgians would join him and eject the king of the Netherlands from Brussels and Louis XVIII from Ghent. This would bring down the hostile Tory government in London, the Whigs would make peace, and without British finance the other allies would lose their enthusiasm for war. In any case, his reinforcements would be ready before he had to face the Austrians and Russians. If, on the other hand, he failed to break the allies in Belgium, he could simply retire on his reinforcements at Paris and resort to the defensive plan. There was a lot of wishful thinking in the offensive plan and, at best, it was a desperate gamble. But Napoleon had always been a gambler and he decided that this was the option to take.
In so doing, he was reliant on the army that loved him, on his ‘braves’. So Napoleon threw his energy into the task of raising and arming men. He recalled the conscripts of 1814 and from some regions, at least, recruits flocked in to defend France against foreign tyrants. He employed deserters, officers on half pay, men in retirement, the gendarmerie, the National Guard, aiming to have 500,000 men in arms by September. Soon he would recreate the old mighty machine.
There were three types of soldier in Napoleon’s armies, as in his rivals’: infantry, cavalry and artillery. Infantrymen fought on foot armed with a musket and a bayonet. They were grouped into companies, commanded by captains and lieutenants with the help of sergeants and corporals. A number of companies made a battalion – six in the French army. Battalions were the basic tactical unit, varying greatly in strength, but averaging 500–800 men. In the French army two or three battalions made a regiment and two regiments formed a brigade. Two brigades combined to make a division, led by a general. A division contained between 4000 and 8000 men and had its own artillery. Four infantry divisions, one cavalry division and their artillery, engineers and staff made a corps.
Cavalry fought on horseback in squadrons, of which an average of three made a regiment. Two regiments made a brigade, two brigades a division and two divisions a cavalry corps. One division of cavalry served with each infantry corps but there was also a central reserve of cavalry.
Artillery fought in horse batteries of six cannon or foot batteries of eight. Each gun also had a limber or carriage and an ammunition wagon, and the battery had spare ammunition wagons. Each wagon and gun was pulled by a number of horses, so a battery on the move consisted of some twenty vehicles, pulled by around 200 horses and maintained by about 200 men.
These basic elements were supported by specialist engineering units, transport and staff. The staff was responsible for planning, supply and communication and there were staff officers attached to brigades and divisions, and more at corps and army level.
The final element in Napoleon’s army was the Imperial Guard, effectively an elite corps with its own infantry, cavalry and artillery, all of which was the best of its kind. The Imperial Guard had been 112,000 men strong in 1814, but only 7390 soldiers remained on 20 March. By mid-June the Guard was 28,328 strong. The Emperor enlarged the cavalry regiments and recreated the artillery of the Guard, gendarmes (policemen), sailors and sappers (both engineering units). The Old Guard, Napoleon’s personal bodyguard of selected veterans, the elite of the elite, traditionally contained two regiments of grenadiers – assault troops chosen from the strongest and largest – and two of chasseurs – marksmen expert in manoeuvre at speed. In 1815 Napoleon added two more regiments of each – the ‘Middle Guard’ – together with eight regiments of voltigeurs and eight of tirailleurs – elite light infantry skirmishers – which constituted the Young Guard. The Guard had traditionally recruited on merit and experience and an invitation to join it was a reward for long and distinguished service, but many of those who returned to its ranks in 1815 were short of the standard to which the Guard had once aspired.
There being nothing like enough weapons to equip the new recruits, Napoleon launched a massive effort to get more. French manufacturers had the capacity to make only 20,000 muskets a month, so he bought guns from England (40,000 according to his minister of police),2 smuggled them from Holland and Germany, repaired old ones and offered rewards for handing guns in. The arsenal at Vincennes made twelve million cartridges in two months. With the need to make bayonets a priority, only grenadier companies were given swords. Cuirasses – breastplates – were made as fast as possible, but at least one regiment of Napoleon’s famous heavy cavalry, the cuirassiers, had to take the field without the armour plating that gave them their name. Workshops were created in Paris to make 1250 uniforms a day but, there being insufficient blue cloth, greatcoats were produced in various shades, chiefly grey. Since the cavalry and artillery had only 35,600 horses, of which 5000 had been lent to farmers, Napoleon requisitioned 4250 fine horses from the gendarmerie, and within three months the cavalry had 40,000 horses and the artillery 16,500.
What Napoleon saw during his reviews must generally have pleased him. This new army was his best since 1809. Whereas the armies with which he had fought in 1813 and 1814 were largely comprised of young and inexperienced conscripts, this one was much more experienced. The surviving conscripts of 1813 were now battle-hardened, while the influx of a huge number of prisoners of war provided a backbone of troops with long experience of campaigning, old revolutionary principles and a hatred of the enemy. Like veteran Roman legionaries the army was almost all they knew and their allegiance to the eagles was surpassed only by their loyalty to their emperor, their adored petit caporal who went around in a shabby grey greatcoat and a characteristic black hat, conspicuously drab amidst his gorgeously plumed entourage.
The British sergeant Tom Morris felt that the French soldier’s devotion to Napoleon was easily explained by the manner in which he ran his army. While this was a rose-tinted view of how the French system really worked in practice, it remained preferable to the British system, which Morris came to regard with disillusioned contempt:
If we seek a reason for such extraordinary attachment, we shall find it in that constant attention of Napoleon, to the wants and wishes of his men; his identity with them in all their dangers; his prompt, profuse, but impartial distribution of rewards, his throwing open to the meanest soldier, the road of promotion to the highest honours; so that every man had a strong incentive to good conduct. When officers were killed or disabled, the vacancies were filled up from among the men who had been serving, who could sympathise with their comrades, in their dangers and privations; and while they had no difficulty in maintaining their authority, their conduct towards the men was kind and affectionate. No man, however elevated in rank or connexion, had any chance of promotion, but by passing through the various grades, commencing with the lowest.3
A man like Tom Morris might well have earned the advancement of which he dreamed had he been serving with the enemy. One of the former prisoners of war released in 1814 was André Ravard, a thirty-eight-year-old from the Charente. His peasant family welcomed the Revolution and his brother volunteered in 1793 but André remained at home until he was conscripted in 1799 as a barely literate private in the 13th Light Infantry. He campaigned in Italy in 1800 and Switzerland in 1801, becoming a corporal. Fighting with the Grande Armée his regiment figured bloodily at Auerstädt in 1806 and Eylau in 1807 and Ravard was promoted to sergeant and enrolled in the Légion d’honneur. He fought at Wagram in 1809 a
nd became a sous-lieutenant. Having been wounded at Smolensk and promoted to lieutenant, he was wounded again at Borodino in 1812, and was dangerously ill in hospital at Moscow and still weak when the retreat began. He was shot in the head in a rearguard action in November but survived the winter by eating the flesh of the horses that had died.4 Promoted to captain, he fought at Dresden in 1813, and was wounded and captured at Kulm on 30 August when his regiment took very heavy casualties. He then spent a year as a prisoner in Romania. When he returned to France in September 1814 he wrote to his brother that he reckoned he had covered 9000 miles in the last two and a half years and it was a miracle that he had survived so many dangers. He had been hoping to enjoy the sweets of a long peace in tranquillity but still welcomed Bonaparte back.5
