by Tim Clayton
At about two Gaspard Gourgaud found Napoleon at Belle Vue and reported a concentration of Prussians defending the town of Gosselies three or four miles up the Brussels road. Napoleon sent him with an order to Reille to hasten his crossing of the Sambre and to attack Gosselies. He sent the light cavalry of the Guard, about 2000 strong, in the same direction, and posted one regiment of the Young Guard in reserve a mile up the Brussels road. Soult ordered d’Erlon’s corps to follow Reille’s towards Gosselies.
Around this time, Marshal Ney appeared at Belle Vue with his aide, Pierre Heymès. The red-headed Ney had ridden along the columns, marching cheerfully to fifes and drums and bands, to the cheers of soldiers who regarded the appearance of the great hero as a good omen. ‘Voilà le rougeaud! (There’s the redhead!)’ they cried.8
To Ney the Emperor revealed the next stage of his plan. Having crossed the river they were only thirty miles from Brussels with a good cobbled road ahead of them, but there was evidently a substantial force of Prussians to the north and east and they were not yet physically out of the woods that encompassed Charleroi. Napoleon intended to lead the bulk of his army north-eastward in an attempt to roll up and destroy the Prussians, while deploying a substantial force to his left to prevent intervention from Wellington to the north or west. He gave Ney verbal instructions to take command of I and II Corps and press ahead along the highway to Brussels.
Until now, Napoleon had given orders directly to each of his five corps commanders and to Marshal Grouchy, who commanded the cavalry. Now, the Emperor was creating a viceroy in Ney, who was to take control of a detached force destined to prevent British interference in the Emperor’s manoeuvres for the destruction of the Prussians.
Ney’s first task was to drive out whatever Prussians were holding the town of Gosselies, about four miles north; his next target would have been the crossroads with the old Roman road, another important east–west route, that lay about three miles north of Gosselies.9 Napoleon gave Ney the light cavalry of the Guard and promised that tomorrow he would receive General François Kellermann’s corps of heavy cavalry. Bonaparte kept the bulk of his abundant cavalry with his own force, still hoping, no doubt, to create and exploit opportunities to turn the orderly Prussian retreat into an uncontrolled rout.
To give Ney such a command at such a moment courted danger. On one hand, Napoleon had to put someone in command since this detached force might have to fight on its own if, as was likely enough, Wellington or some large Prussian force chose to deny him an easy march to Brussels. But it placed the popular, talismanic marshal under enormous pressure. Ney knew nothing about the officers or the units under his command and they did not yet know that he was in charge of them. Moreover, he had no staff to advise, organise, aid, and carry messages for him – which was unfortunate, since Ney was not so clever or coolly precise as he was brave. In his great days he had had a brilliant young Swiss military theorist called Antoine Jomini to advise him, but in 1813 Jomini had fallen out with the Emperor’s own chief of staff, Marshal Berthier, and, being Swiss, had joined the Russian army instead. Since his other aides and equipment had not yet caught up with him, but for Heymès Ney was now on his own.
While Ney was still receiving his instructions and having the strategic situation explained to him, a messenger from Grouchy arrived at Belle Vue and reported that there were 20,000 Prussians three miles ahead towards Fleurus, blocking the road on the heights above the little village of Gilly. Napoleon wrote to General Gérard to suggest that his corps cross the river at Châtelet to avoid the congestion at Charleroi. From there they would be in a position to outflank this blocking force, although Napoleon probably realised that they would arrive too late to be useful that day.
When he received this order, Gérard was in the woods just to the east of where Napoleon had stopped for breakfast, trudging very slowly through deep mud in the traffic jam on what passed for a road. He turned off to his right along boggy tracks through the woods, but did not reach Châtelet until the evening. Meanwhile, realising that he needed to assess the situation at the front for himself, the Emperor rode forward to see what was happening at Gilly.
15
The Skirmishes at Gilly, Gosselies and Frasnes
15 June, 3–10 p.m.
Lieutenant-General Claude Pajol had been riding with nearly 3000 horsemen towards Fleurus when, after two miles, they reached the village of Gilly. Here the road became a bottleneck lined with houses. Anticipating an ambush, Pajol sent the 5th Hussars forward to reconnoitre, but at the far end of the village they rode into Prussian artillery fire and quickly withdrew. Pajol spread his men to scout and sent a message back to Marshal Grouchy, while a company of Guard sappers began to fortify the village.
Grouchy galloped to the front. Studying the position at Gilly, he decided the Prussians were far too strong to attack without infantry, and sent an aide to find Napoleon. Having raced to Charleroi, the Guard infantry was now halted at the far end of the town, which puzzled them, since speed appeared to be of the essence.1 Napoleon was presumably waiting for news of what was happening up the Brussels road before deciding which way to send them.
At 1.30, from the heights above Gilly, General Ziethen reported to Blücher that Otto von Pirch’s brigade was with him, Karl von Steinmetz was retreating towards Gosselies covered by the reserve cavalry, and his other two brigades were at Fleurus. He informed Blücher that the French general de Bourmont had deserted and had revealed that Napoleon was present with 120,000 men.2 In fact de Bourmont had surrendered himself to the Prussian outposts before receiving movement orders; he had then been interrogated by Ludwig von Reiche, but according to Reiche had told them little, beyond confirming that they were facing a major attack in which Napoleon and his Guard were participating.3 Ziethen sent de Bourmont on to Blücher, who disdained to speak to him but allowed him to proceed to Ghent. It is said that when it was pointed out to Blücher that de Bourmont was sporting a white Bourbon cockade, the old man replied, ‘A shit stays a shit, whatever colour cockade he wears!’4
When Napoleon arrived at Gilly around 4 p.m., he studied the Prussian positions. Estimating their strength to be no more than 10,000, he prescribed a frontal attack by infantry backed up by light cavalry, together with a flanking march by Grouchy’s dragoons in order to force them to retreat. Although the Prussians were in a strong position on a wooded hill above a stream, Napoleon judged that what he could see was very thinly spread and so probably not numerous, though it was possible that a larger force was hidden by the trees. The Prussian brigade in fact numbered 7000 at most – far fewer than Grouchy’s estimate of 20,000.
Nevertheless, it was a good place to set a trap, and Napoleon had to be cautious in case that was what the Prussians were up to. For that reason, he was reluctant to use the infantry of the Guard to make the initial frontal attack, in case the Prussians suddenly enveloped them with hidden hordes emerging from the woods. To make such a mistake would be disastrous, so – presumably feeling that time was still on his side – he preferred to wait until Vandamme’s men came up. He returned to Charleroi to chivvy the infantry along.
The delay proved to be an error, for it took at least another hour for III Corps’ leading units to reach Gilly. Moreover, there proved to be no trap and as soon as the French infantry finally advanced, the Prussians began to withdraw. Had he risked his Guard immediately, Napoleon might yet have turned into chaos what was in fact a steady Prussian retreat.
About 6 p.m. Vandamme’s men finally advanced. The moment the French waded across the brook that separated the forces, however, Pirch withdrew, with his fusilier battalions acting as rearguard. Furious to see the Prussian infantry escaping towards the woods, Napoleon launched the four duty squadrons of Guard cavalry at them, led by a favourite aide, General Louis-Michel Letort, who caught the two fusilier battalions in open ground and destroyed one,5 before – to the Emperor’s grief and dismay – being shot in the stomach and mortally wounded. The Prussian rearguard then took heavy los
ses from French infantry fire and was captured by Grouchy’s cavalry when it reached the far side of the wood.
The main body of Prussian infantry were nevertheless able to retreat through an advancing screen of Ziethen’s reserve cavalry and horse artillery. These then protected the retreat, skirmishing with the pursuing French until the fighting died down about seven or eight o’clock and the two sides made camp for the night.
On the western flank, having heard Gourgaud’s report of Prussian troops defending the town of Gosselies, Napoleon had sent Marshal Ney with the light cavalry of the Guard to take control, and ordered General Reille to march there as fast as possible. Gosselies was at the northern edge of the forests surrounding Charleroi, and from there a vast plain of rich agricultural fields dotted with woodland stretched away northward until the Forest of Soignes provided a final barrier before Brussels. From Gosselies the ground rose and fell in a series of slight ridges, essentially flat and easy, and a wide cobbled road, much used by coal wagons, led all the way to the capital, twenty-six miles further north.
The 3000 Prussians discovered by Gourgaud at Gosselies had been ordered to hold the village until Karl von Steinmetz arrived with the 9000 men of his retreating brigade. General Steinmetz arrived around 1.30 to see French cavalry ahead of him and others visibly approaching to his right; realising that his brigade was in danger of being cut off, he prepared to fight his way through. Lacking infantry, however, the French fell back in the face of such numbers, and Steinmetz was able to march into Gosselies unchallenged.
Ney arrived around 4 p.m. and launched an attack with the Guard horse artillery, whereupon Steinmetz pulled out, using his fusiliers and Silesian Hussars as rearguard. During the skirmishing a party of forty hussars was cut off and rode towards Nivelles, where the next morning they joined the Netherlanders. About half an hour later Maigrot’s light infantry occupied the abandoned town and took a number of stragglers prisoner, while both sides suffered a few casualties from shooting and half-hearted charges. At this time most of Reille’s corps was still marching towards Gosselies in a vast dusty column that stretched from Jumet to Marchiennes.6 Ney sent Piré’s cavalry to shadow and harry Steinmetz’s retreating column east towards Fleurus and ordered the Guard light cavalry to explore the main road north towards Brussels with the aim of occupying Quatre Bras if possible. They trotted off towards Frasnes, four and a half miles further north up the Brussels road, followed eventually by Maigrot’s light infantry and the rest of General Gilbert Bachelu’s division, which was leading Reille’s corps. Gilbert Bachelu was the son of a lawyer from Franche-Comté on the German border, and trained as an engineer. A hightly experienced officer, he had been promoted to command a division for his conduct with the rearguard in the retreat from Russia and his defence of Danzig in 1813. His chief of staff was devoted to his energetic, tenacious, frank, loyal and generous commander.
By abandoning Gosselies and retreating towards Fleurus, the Prussians had left the cobbled highway to Brussels open and exposed the nearest elements of Wellington’s army to the French attack.
At Frasnes, a battalion of green-coated Nassau light infantry was the most advanced unit of Wellington’s army. These Germans from Wiesbaden, who were fighting with the Netherlands army, had been on the alert for some days, gathering on the parade ground during daylight hours before dispersing to their cantonments at night. They were already aware that something was up, for around noon heavily laden peasants seeking refuge, with children driving their cattle before them, had warned them of a French invasion.
In charge were Major Philipp von Normann commanding the light battalion and Adriaan Bijleveld with a battery of Dutch horse artillery, both with long experience in the French army.7 Normann was on the drill ground that morning when he was surprised to hear gunfire. Headquarters told him this was a Prussian exercise, but by the time their reply reached him in the afternoon the noise was unmistakably closer. With panicky refugees speaking of invasion, the distant rattle of musketry and no orders, he became agitated. He sent a mounted artilleryman to his regimental headquarters and, without waiting for orders, assembled his men.
At 3.30 the artilleryman found Johann Sattler, who had taken command of the regiment that morning after the colonel had had his shin broken by a kick from a horse.8 Sattler immediately sent warnings to his divisional commander, Hendrik de Perponcher, four miles further west at Nivelles and to Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar commanding the Orange-Nassau Regiment three miles further north along the road at the town of Genappe. He ordered his own regiment to march the short distance to the prearranged assembly point for the brigade at Quatre Bras, the strategically important crossroads of the Brussels–Charleroi highway with the main road between Nivelles and Namur.
The twenty-three-year-old Prince Bernhard had also been alarmed by the fugitive peasants on the Brussels road and was nervous because he had no orders. Thanks to the Nassau colonel’s broken leg, Bernhard had been left as the senior officer in the brigade but without an appointment to command it. Not that he was without experience: born in Weimar, he had fought as a boy for the Prussians at Jena before joining the Saxon army on the French side. As an aide to Marshal Bernadotte he had distinguished himself in 1809 in the victory of Wagram over the Austrians before changing sides again in 1813. Bernhard was immensely tall, a conspicuous figure on the big black arabian stallion that the Tsar of Russia had given him.9 When the head of the military police of Charleroi arrived at Genappe and told him of the French attack, he too decided to march to Quatre Bras.10
Hendrik de Perponcher-Sedlnitzky was an Orangist courtier, like Netherlands chief of staff Constant, and had fought with the British until Napoleon threatened to seize his lands unless he resigned his commission. Soon after sending his aide to investigate Sattler’s report of gunfire, he received orders from Constant to assemble his brigades. By then Prince Bernhard had already left for Quatre Bras on his own initiative.
About 6 p.m. a wounded Prussian hussar burst into Frasnes, shouting that the French were close behind. Then the Dutch commissariat convoy of provision wagons from Charleroi came in, having also been ambushed by French lancers who had been driven off by its escort of Prussian lancers. Normann pulled back to the high ground above the village, leaving a token outpost below. When more French lancers appeared and began to slip round his flank, he ordered a retreat towards the woods near Quatre Bras. Saxe-Weimar was already at the crossroads with the other two Nassau battalions, minus three hundred men detached by Sattler to occupy the end of the Bossu wood nearest Frasnes. Hearing cannon shots and musketry coming from Frasnes, Bernhard set light to the alarm beacon at Quatre Bras.11 The Germans watched French lancers rein in just out of musket shot and then disappear again.
From the allied point of view it was important that they had some troops blocking the road towards Brussels and that through them they had become aware that French troops were moving in that direction.
Marshal Ney has received a great deal of abuse over the years for his failure to seize Quatre Bras. Close examination of the evening’s events, however, would seem to suggest that this is unfair. There is no documentary evidence as to what exactly Ney was ordered to do that evening. According to Gaspard Gourgaud’s account, written during the Emperor’s exile on Saint Helena and claiming to express Napoleon’s views, Ney was to attack anything he found on the Brussels road and take position at the hamlet of Quatre Bras about ten miles ahead:
After giving these orders to him, the Emperor added, ‘Monsieur le Maréchal, you are familiar with Quatre Bras?’
‘Yes, Sire,’ replied the Marshal; ‘how could I not know it? I fought in this region twenty years ago; that position is the key to everything.’
‘Well then,’ the Emperor said to him, ‘collect your two corps, and if necessary, build some field defences there. Hurry d’Erlon along and have him call in all the detachments that he will have left at the Sambre bridges: everything must be together before midnight.’
Ney replied imme
diately, ‘You can rely on me: in two hours we shall be there unless the whole enemy army is there.’12
Ney denied that he was ordered to take Quatre Bras that night and it is likely that he wasn’t: Napoleon probably named the strategically important but distant crossroads as an objective, but it is unlikely that he demanded its capture that evening at all costs, since neither of them knew what lay ahead and it was important that the two columns should proceed at a similar pace to maintain mutual support and communication. There is evidence that Charles Lefèbvre-Desnouëttes had been hoping to seize the crossroads, however. An aide to Napoleon at his great victory at Marengo in 1800, Lefèbvre-Desnouëttes had always since then been a loyal follower and a trusted cavalry general, and had commanded Bonaparte’s favourite chasseurs-à-cheval of the Guard since 1808. He had made his way towards the crossroads but, seeing that there was significant opposition ahead and that the light was fading, he decided to halt for the night at Frasnes. He was reinforced between half past eight and nine o’clock, when a very tired and dusty battalion of the 2nd Light, the vanguard of Reille’s column, marched into the village. These men had been up since the early hours if they had ever slept, had covered about twenty-nine miles during the day and had fought in several sharp skirmish actions. They were very tired, ready to eat and sleep.
