by Tim Clayton
The Duke spent a great deal of time with the attractive Lady Frances, whose husband had given her ample reason to seek solace elsewhere. On another occasion Basil Jackson of the Staff Corps saw them in the park, disappearing into the bushes together. She had a taste for dangerous celebrities: the poet Lord Byron had ‘dallied with’ but then ‘spared’ her in 1813. Lady Frances was pregnant, but that doesn’t seem to have impeded her social life or Wellington’s affection for her. Wellington’s own womanising was notorious, and he had a marked taste for those whose behaviour other women considered scandalous, as Caroline Capel wrote to her mother in June:
The Duke of W – has not improved the morality of our Society, as he has given several things and makes a point of asking all the Ladies of Loose Character. Everyone was surprised at seeing Lady John Campbell at his House, and one of his Staff told me that it had been represented to him her not bein [sic] received for that her Character was more than suspicious.
‘Is it, by—,’ said he, ‘then I will go and ask her Myself. On which he immediately took his Hat and went out for the purpose.8
Two days after his ball, the Duke reviewed the British cavalry and horse artillery. The Welshman Thomas Jeremiah was employed filling in holes and levelling hillocks in the meadow by the river Dender in which the review took place. For once, the weather was fine, and his battalion watched as ‘about from 10 to 11 o’clock the troops were streaming from every direction until by ½ past 11 the plains seemed literally choked up, by ¼ to 12 the whole of the artillery and cavalry were drawn up in three lines which extended nearly an English mile’. The first line was composed of hussars in flashy uniforms; the second consisted of the two brigades of heavy cavalry, big men on big horses, blacks for the Horse Guards and Life Guards, whites for the Scots Greys. The Greys belonged to the Union Brigade, so called because one of its regiments was Scottish, one Irish and one English. The third line was light dragoons, and together they amounted to about five thousand men. The horse artillery was posted at intervals between the lines.9
The men, dismounted, were brushing the last dust off their finery when the Duke and his huge cortège, including Blücher who had arrived the previous night for another summit meeting, came galloping down the hill. Jeremiah remembered how people had been talking and greeting old friends and relations in other regiments when ‘all of a sudden we could see a dense column of smoke and dust … the advanced squadrons of Prince Blucher’s Cossacks entered the area followed closely by all the Allied generals and a large concourse of people’.10
Jeremiah caught the mood as ‘the British trumpet sounded to prepare to mount, in a moment all was silent as the grave, not a word; we could hear a pin fall when in an instant 18 thousand men [sic] were in their saddles and steady.’ A cavalry officer wrote that ‘the Duke was accompanied by the Hereditary Prince of Orange, & his brother; the Duke de Berri, Marshal Blucher, and an immence [sic] train of big wigs, & staff people. The heat of the day was very great, not a cloud in the sky, or a breath of air stirring, all of which added to the brilliancy & beauty of the scene though it roasted us all to death.’ The ‘big wigs’ rode along the lines and then the cavalry ‘marched past by half squadrons and filed to our quarters where we did not arrive till between 7 & 8 in the evening. It being King Charles’s Restoration day all the troops wore a sprig of oak in their caps which had a very good effect as we had no feathers with us.’11 One of the ‘staff people’ overheard Blücher compliment Wellington on his horsemen, ‘When the English cavalry gets to Paris each soldier must make a child in order to regenerate France.’12 Afterwards, the cavalry commander Lord Uxbridge invited all his commanding officers to meet his illustrious guests at dinner in the monastery at Ninove.
Meanwhile, more serious business proceeded. Blücher’s new representative on Wellington’s staff, Karl von Müffling, laid out the Prussian agenda for Blücher’s summit meeting with Wellington. The Prussians were almost ready, and eager to start fighting: ‘The first four corps of the Prussian Army will be up to full strength in a few days. Indeed, they will be stronger than required by treaty. As the Belgians are causing us so many problems with supplies, it would be desirable to commence the war as soon as possible. Would your Grace kindly give me his opinion as to when this would be likely?’13
Blücher was under pressure to obtain a quick resolution. His government, close to bankruptcy, could not afford a long war, and his militiamen wanted to get back in time for the harvest. In addition, the promised supplies at the expense of the king of the Netherlands had not always been forthcoming and relations between the Prussians and the local population were deteriorating. Gneisenau complained to his friend Dörnberg that the Dutch king’s ‘hostility to the Prussians causes ill will towards us, not to speak of his minister with his background in administering for the French and his sympathy towards them. Day by day, relations are getting more bitter. The delays in opening hostilities are causing more harm than a defeat.’14 Wellington tried to mediate, but the king of the Netherlands was equally anxious to start in order to get rid of the Prussians. Wellington himself was still waiting for reinforcements of seasoned troops and personnel under orders to join him from America and did not want to attack until the Austrians were ready. However, when Blücher dined with him on 28 May and reiterated his desire to recover his old pipe from Paris, Wellington agreed, reluctantly, that they could take the offensive on 1 July.
The decision made no difference to army life in Belgium. A few days later, the hussars held a race meeting at Ninove. The racing was halted by yet another downpour, but the Mayor provided ‘an excellent cold dinner, liberally lubricated with champagne’. As one of the 18th Hussar officers dimly recalled, they then behaved like true English heroes:
Two hours sufficed the company to eat and get slaughtered together: I believe I remember that a bad boy from the 10th Hussars, standing on one of the tables, began to use a large stick to break all the crockery, all the bottles and all the glasses; that the remainder of the company took part in this facetious entertainment, and that, throwing themselves onto their horses, they returned to the racecourse, half of them falling off on the way, and many of the horses galloping to the stables without their riders. The most drunk hurtled off in a race to the bell tower, across the fields, at night, and gave the peasants some idea of the independent-mindedness of the English hussars by shouting through the village streets ‘Long live Napoleon!’ Finally – and I must not forget to mention the fact, because this thing happened or I was dreaming – they pushed over two carriages and terrified the ladies who were in them into fits of nerves, while charging their husbands and chaperones in the true Cossack manner.
The following day they got the bill: 979 francs for wine, 730 for food and 90 for service, amounting to a charge of 50 francs for each officer of the brigade. A number of complaints had been made to the general, and they expected that they would also face a bill for the damage they had caused; the mayor of Ninove declared that he would never have anything more to do with such a band of English Cossacks. One officer suffered an ‘apoplexy’ from which he never recovered.15
It was not the only jape of its kind. At Grammont, where weekly race meetings were held in May and early June, ‘a few of our officers one night in a drunken frolic gave cause for offence’ by interfering with the town’s Manneken Pis:
a naked boy, apparently about four years old, his left hand rested on his hip, and with his right he held his little c— out of which the water flowed into the bason or more properly the well, for it is some twelve feet deep. One night some of our officers had been indulging themselves rather too much, they sallied out in quest of adventures, they managed to get a rope round the neck of the little urchin and pull him off his pirch. He being made of lead, down he sank to the bottom of the well.
Fortunately, he was restored undamaged to his perch and the incident was forgotten.16
As May turned to June Brussels continued to be lively, although the son of staff officer Sir George Scovell
’s groom recalled that they were now working towards a deadline:
The town was very gay and bustling, all day long soldiers were parading, music playing and the streets continually full of all sorts of uniforms. There were balls every night and plenty of amusement for those who wanted it. It appeared more like troops assembling to be reviewed than to fight, for no one seemed to think of fighting, though towards the 13th or 14th it was said they were going to prepare for hostilities on the 25th and soldiers were to be seen in various parts with their swords taking to be ground, and linen drapers shops were full of them, purchasing cloth to make themselves bandages, but in a general way things were going on as if nothing was the matter.17
Wellington’s spies had told him that he was safe from attack until 1 July, and according to Napoleon’s Minister of Police, Joseph Fouché, the Duke had been convinced by false reports that no French offensive would start before the Anglo-Prussian invasion.18 Despite the air of normality, however, the allied army was now in the last stages of preparation for a concerted attack on France.
10
The French in Motion
Before dawn on 12 June, a bell summoned Louis Marchand, the Emperor’s principal valet, to Napoleon’s office. ‘I leave at four,’ the Emperor announced.
Imperial journeys always began this way: the staff had known for some time that they would move, but nobody knew precisely when until the Emperor told Marchand. Now the palace sprang into action as secretaries packed papers, grooms prepared horses and valets loaded boxes into carriages. Marchand himself packed the Emperor’s mahogany and ebony nécessaire de voyage. At first light the Emperor climbed into his green carriage followed by the Grand-Maréchal, General Bertrand, and his brother Prince Jérôme. Louis-Etienne Saint-Denis, known as Ali, the Emperor’s Mameluke, dressed in his exotic oriental costume, took his place on the front box and the vermilion wheels of the deep blue imperial carriage rattled over the cobbles northward out of Paris.
Most of the French army was already in place. The Guard had left unit by unit, beginning on 5 June, the senior regiments remaining until last to escort the Emperor to the opening of the Corps Législatif, the new legislative body whose name deliberately harked back to the Revolution.1 Then they carefully folded their dress uniforms away in their packs, put on the wide blue trousers, blue greatcoats and bearskins that they wore on campaign and at 4 a.m. on 8 June left their barracks to march northward to the hill fortress of Laon at a pace that only the Old Guard could sustain, covering 135 miles in six days.
On 10 June Napoleon had issued an order telling his generals where their troops should be three days later. The following day Marshal Davout wrote to Marshal Ney instructing him to be at Avesnes-sur-Helpe, just short of the border fortress at Maubeuge, by the 14th. Ney set off as soon as he received his summons, posting ahead with his principal aide, while other aides followed with the marshal’s horses and equipment.2
On the border II Corps was already gathered opposite the British at Mons, the last of General Honoré Reille’s troops having marched twenty miles east from the fortress city of Valenciennes on 11 June for the villages behind Maubeuge. Lieutenant Jacques Martin kissed his girlfriend farewell and the 45th Line cheerfully marched seven miles south from the fortress of Condé to Valenciennes, as soon as II Corps had marched out, for reviews on 12 and 13 June by their corps commander General Jean-Baptiste Drouet, comte d’Erlon. Corporal Canler’s 28th Regiment reached Valenciennes on 13 June, having lost their royalist colonel en route when he suddenly rode off to join Louis XVIII at Ghent.3
The regiments that had been stationed in the north were presented with the eagles received by their colonels from the hand of Napoleon at the Champ de Mai. Jacques Martin was astonished by what he witnessed on the vast plain outside Valenciennes. He had seen larger gatherings of men, but never
anything so striking as these sixteen regiments of infantry of the finest quality, showing admirable precision in their manoeuvres, full of enthusiasm and receiving with emotion those eagles under which they had fought for so long. The plain was entirely covered by men, for apart from the infantry the corps contained 3000 cavalry and artillerymen. At the moment of the presentation of the standards, the silence was shattered by the voices of 20,000 men swearing to conquer or die…. Never did an army set out with such certainty of victory. What did the number of the enemy matter? We had men in our ranks who had grown up with victory. Chance had made them prisoners for a few years but this had only made them more fearsome. The desire to avenge their suffering added anger to their natural bravery. These faces, tanned by the sun of Spain or the snows of Russia, lit up at the thought of a battle.4
After the review I Corps also marched to Maubeuge, south of the British at Mons.
In the afternoon of 12 June, to the ecstatic pealing of the city’s bells, Napoleon’s coach rattled up the steep hill into the great French fortress city of Laon. There, more than halfway to the border, his Guard awaited him. Napoleon stopped at the Prefecture where his staff had already installed his ‘palace’, but was unpleasantly surprised on his arrival to find that Emmanuel de Grouchy’s 13,000 cavalry were still in the area, the order to leave having somehow not reached their commander. Now the cavalry had to ride sixty miles north in two days with no time to rest before the fighting began.5
Napoleon left Laon before dawn, worked in his coach during the forty-five-mile journey, and was shown into the ‘palace’ his maréchal des logis had prepared in the sub-prefecture within the fortress at Avesnes. Wherever Napoleon spent the night was always the ‘palace’ even if it was a small farm or a tent, and his staff always went ahead to choose the best accommodation and prepare it for him. Within, Simon Bernard had the operations map ready, spread out on a huge table, with pins marking the present position of all the units they knew about.
The map Napoleon was using was based on a highly detailed survey undertaken between 1771 and 1775 by Joseph, comte de Ferraris, commander of the artillery of the Austrian Netherlands and head of its mathematical school. Published in 1777–8, the survey was engraved on twenty-five sheets at a scale of 1:86,000, to match the great map of France by Cassini, then also in process of publication. Ferraris used the same scale and the same innovative topographical symbols as Cassini, whose map had introduced a new sophistication to mapmaking, distinguishing between eight different sizes of settlement, five different religious buildings, three kinds of mill and nine different types of terrain, and grading six qualities of road.
When the French invaded the Netherlands in 1792–3 they had seized 400 copies of Ferraris’ map from a Brussels printseller and in 1794 they confiscated the copper plates and carried them away to France, so that they could print further examples when required for their own military purposes. Having stolen the enemy’s map, the French engineer Louis Capitaine made a copy of it, engraved on sixty-nine smaller, more manageable sheets, as well as a small-scale version on six sheets. These maps were commercially available in peacetime and so the Duke of Wellington was armed with one, while the Prussian general staff probably also had one. The French printed copies for their generals in April, marking the present frontier and other updates. When the historian Henry Houssaye saw the Capitaine map used by Napoleon and the Ferraris map belonging to his First Orderly Officer, Gourgaud, he was able to observe that there was little significant difference between the two; although extremely detailed and useful, both were nearly forty years out of date. For instance, they marked none of the coal mines that had since been developed near Charleroi.6
These maps were neither cheap nor easily portable and junior officers, who had to provide their own maps, bought single sheets engraved on a much smaller scale. The information contained in the Ferraris survey soon got into the hands of other mapmakers in other nations, and they produced their own versions in a multiplicity of different formats, suitable for every purse and every purpose. An English mapmaker issued a single-sheet version in 1789, while a four-sheet version published in Vienna circulated wide
ly in Europe. The Prussian staff officer Ludwig von Reiche was using the Nouvelle Carte des Pays-Bas réduite d’après celle de Ferraris, a sheet of only 20½ × 28 inches (520 × 720mm), recently published at Brussels.7 Most officers were probably armed with a map based on Ferraris, but on a much reduced scale, so that many names of smaller places were missing and the road network was less than complete.
Napoleon pored over the map while Bernard, using all the information gathered by his topographical office, explained the terrain that lay ahead and the options available. Then Napoleon dictated his orders and messages. Next he drafted an inspiring order of the day and sent it to Soult’s nearby Quartier Général to have it printed by the topographical department printers on their portable printing press. The Emperor had a long meeting with Jean-Baptiste Drouet d’Erlon, commander of I Corps, at which they discussed plans for the coming campaign and for the provisioning of the border fortresses.8 Finally in the late afternoon he toured Avesnes and its fortifications, designed by Vauban. The Guard and VI Corps gathered there that day and Napoleon closed the frontier on pain of death. Almost all the army was now close by: only Maurice Gérard’s IV Corps was still on the road, a day’s march from Philippeville, twenty-five miles to the east, having left Metz, 115 miles away, on 6 June.
Napoleon ordered II Corps to march on 14 June to a bivouac on the border near the Sambre with I Corps behind them, these two forming a left wing alongside the river. The Guard was to spend the night in and around Beaumont, a little town on a hill twelve miles east, dominating the approaches to the Ardennes forest. Dominique Vandamme’s III Corps camped three miles ahead with George Mouton’s VI Corps behind them.
