Waterloo The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles

by Bernard Cornwell

  Hippolyte and his fellow guardsmen march behind their regimental band. They pass the unburied corpses of the men killed in the previous day’s skirmishes between the Prussian rearguard and the advancing French. Hippolyte recalls that he more or less understood the Emperor’s plan, the map helped him understand it, but in truth that plan is not his business. All he needs to know is that his beloved Emperor has chosen to fight, that the enemy is in disarray, and that if the battle becomes desperate then the Imperial Guard will be thrown into the fight. That is their purpose, to win battles, and their boast is that they are undefeated. They are the Emperor’s picked men, the bravest soldiers of France, the indomitable Guard.

  The Imperial Guard would doubtless have liked to call themselves ‘the bravest of the brave’, except that soubriquet belonged to Marshal Michel Ney, who only joined the army that hot morning of June 16th. ‘Ney,’ the Emperor greeted him, ‘I am glad to see you,’ and while Hippolyte and the rest of the army marched east to deal with the Prussians, Ney was given 9,600 infantry, 4,600 cavalry and 34 cannon and ordered to seize the crossroads at Quatre-Bras. It was, truly, the simplest of tasks, and Ney possessed an overwhelming force with which to achieve it.

  Capture Quatre-Bras and the Prussians are almost certainly doomed.

  Capture Quatre-Bras and the British will be Napoleon’s next victims.

  It has all started so well for the Emperor. Then a Dutchman decided to be disobedient.

  * * *

  Major-General Baron Jean-Victor Constant-Rebecque was born in Switzerland and was to die in what is now Poland. His first military service was with the French, but after the Revolution he joined the Dutch army. He was forty-three in 1815 and knew the British well because when Slender Billy, the Crown Prince, had been made an aide-de-camp to Wellington in the Peninsula, Rebecque had accompanied the young man. Now he was Chief of Staff to Slender Billy.

  Rebecque was a level-headed, intelligent man. On 15 June he had received orders to assemble the 1st Corps, which was commanded by the Crown Prince, at Nivelles, a town which lies to the west of the Charleroi-to-Brussels highroad. The orders had come late because the Duke of Wellington had hesitated all day, still fearing that French attack through Mons, but at last the Anglo-Dutch army was moving.

  And Rebecque decided it was moving to the wrong place.

  Nivelles was not a bad place for part of Wellington’s army to assemble. A road went eastwards from the town, the Nivelles road, and led to where Blücher had decided to make his stand. Except between Nivelles and Sombreffe was that insignificant crossroads called Quatre-Bras. Napoleon had grasped the importance of that crossroads and ordered Marshal Ney to capture it. If the French held Quatre-Bras then they had come between Nivelles and Sombreffe, between Wellington and Blücher. Capture Quatre-Bras and Napoleon’s aim of dividing the allies was achieved.

  And Rebecque understood that.

  So despite the orders to assemble at Nivelles, Rebecque sent troops to Quatre-Bras. They were not many, just over 4,000 men of the Dutch army, but they were at the crossroads and, even while Wellington was dressing for the ball, they fought off the advancing French. Those Frenchmen were patrolling and, just south of Quatre-Bras, came under fire from Dutch artillery and infantry. The French did not press their attack. They probed, discovered the Dutch forces, and then retreated. It was late, the sun was almost down, and the attack on the crossroads could wait till morning. The Dutch troops who repelled the French probes were actually Germans from Nassau. They were in Dutch service because, in the same manner that the ruler of Hanover had become the King of England in Europe’s game of musical thrones, so the Prince of Nassau had become King William I of the Netherlands. The men who fought off the first French attacks were under the command of a 23-year-old Colonel, Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, and that night, as the chandeliers were being lit for the Duchess of Richmond’s ball, the young Colonel sent a report of the day’s action to his immediate superior. He reported that he had repelled French cavalry and infantry, but was worried because he had no contact with any other allied troops. He was quite alone, in the dark, without any supporting allies. There was worse:

  I need to confess to Your Excellency that I am too weak to hold here long. The Second Battalion of Orange Nassau still have French muskets and are down to 10 cartridges per man … every man is likewise down to 10 cartridges. I will defend the post entrusted to me as long as possible. I expect to be attacked at daybreak.

  So as night fell on Belgium the Emperor’s plan seemed to be working. His army had crossed the Sambre and pushed northwards. The Prussians had retreated north and east, but had stopped close to the village of Ligny, where they planned to make a fight of it. Blücher was depending on Wellington coming to his aid, but the British had been slow in concentrating their forces, and were still a long way from their Prussian allies. They could still reach Ligny, but only if the Nivelles road was open, and that meant holding the crossroads at Quatre-Bras where a small force of Germans in Dutch service was now isolated and almost out of ammunition. Those 4,000 Germans expected to be attacked in the morning, and that attack would come from Marshal Ney, ‘bravest of the brave’.

  Thus as the sun rose early on 16 June the allies could expect two battles, one at Ligny and the other at the vital crossroads of Quatre-Bras. And Napoleon understood the importance of that crossroads. Capture Quatre-Bras and he would have divided his enemies. Yet the fog of war was thickening. While Wellington danced the Emperor was under the illusion that Ney had already captured Quatre-Bras. On the morning of the 16th he sent even more troops to reinforce Ney, who would now command over 40,000 men. Those extra troops were not sent to help Ney capture the crossroads, so far as Napoleon was aware Ney had already done that; instead their task was to hold the crossroads and so stop Wellington’s troops from joining Blücher’s. There was more: ‘You will march for Brussels this evening, arriving there at seven o’clock tomorrow morning. I shall support you with the Imperial Guard.’

  So Napoleon believed he could shove the Prussians further away, then switch his attack to the British. It was all going to plan and the Emperor would take breakfast in Brussels’s Laeken Palace on Saturday morning.

  Except Ney had still not captured Quatre-Bras.

  ‘The Duchess of Richmond’s Ball, 15 June 1815’, by Robert Alexander Hillingford. Virtually every senior officer in his army was at the ball, making it easy for Wellington to find and direct them – the ball, in truth, served as an orders group.

  Major-General Baron Jean-Victor Constant-Rebecque, by J. B. Van Der Hulst: ‘Then a Dutchman decided to be disobedient.’

  Field-Marshal August Neidhart, Count of Gneisenau, by George Dawe. Gneisenau complained that Wellington was slow in assembling his army and added snidely: ‘I still do not know why’.

  The formidable 71-year-old Prince Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher – nicknamed ‘Marschall Vorwärts’ … Marshal Forwards. Wood engraving after a drawing by Adolph Menzel.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The fate of France is in your hands!

  THE 16TH OF JUNE was a Friday. It dawned hot and sweltering. The Prussians were assembling their army close to the small town of Sombreffe, the French were advancing towards them, while the British–Dutch army was desperately trying to regain that lost day’s march. Wellington, realizing the importance of that insignificant crossroads at Quatre-Bras, had ordered his army to march there, but he had left the order late. Too late? Some troops marched from Brussels by moonlight, leaving the city at two in the morning, but most waited until dawn. The city was close to panic. Captain Johnny Kincaid, an officer of the 95th Rifles, slept on a pavement, or rather he tried to sleep:

  But we were every instant disturbed by ladies as well as gentlemen; some stumbling over us in the dark, some shaking us out of our sleep, to be told the news … All those who applied for the benefit of my advice I recommended to go home to bed, to keep themselves perfectly cool and to rest assured that, if their departure from the city beca
me necessary (which I very much doubted) they would have at least one whole day to prepare for it as we were leaving some beef and potatoes behind us, for which, I was sure, we would fight rather than abandon!

  Few did sleep that night, though the Duke snatched a couple of hours before leaving for Quatre-Bras. English visitors to Brussels, and there were many, said their goodbyes to the soldiers. One of those visitors, Miss Charlotte Waldie, recalled ‘the tumult and confusion of martial preparation’:

  Officers looking in vain for their servants, servants running in pursuit of their masters, baggage waggons were loading, trains of artillery harnessing … As the dawn broke the soldiers were seen assembling from all parts of the town, in marching order, with their knapsacks on their backs, loaded with three days’ provisions … Numbers were taking leave of their wives and children, perhaps for the last time, and many a veteran’s rough cheek was wet with the tears of sorrow. One poor fellow, immediately under our windows, turned back again and again to bid his wife farewell, and take his baby once more in his arms; and I saw him hastily brush away a tear with the sleeve of his coat as he gave her back the child for the last time, wrung her hand, and ran off to join his company which was drawn up on the other side of the Place Royale.

  Miss Waldie does not say what nationality that poor soldier was, though it is very possible he was British. A small number of wives and children were allowed to accompany a battalion on foreign service. They were chosen by lottery on the eve of departure and the women were expected to be launderers and cooks, but the families had been instructed to stay in Brussels as the troops marched south. Lieutenant Basil Jackson of the Royal Staff Corps watched the exodus:

  First came a battalion of the 95th Rifles, dressed in dark green, and with black accoutrements. The 28th Regiment followed, then the 42nd Highlanders, marching so steadily that the sable plumes of their bonnets scarcely quivered.

  Lieutenant Jackson had been awake most of the night, delivering a message eastwards, and now he had a moment to rest before mounting his tired horse and following those steady Highlanders towards the crisis.

  And it was a crisis. Quatre-Bras marked the last place where the allies had easy access to each other. Lose Quatre-Bras and the only connecting roads would be country lanes which twisted through hilly country and were obstructed by narrow bridges, so if Napoleon could thrust the British away from the crossroads then communication between the British–Dutch and the Prussians would become far more difficult. All the French needed to do was push, and the Emperor had massively reinforced Ney’s force. Indeed, by the morning of the 16th, the French had over 40,000 troops with which to overwhelm the small Dutch contingent under Saxe-Weimar. Those Nassauers had little ammunition left, just ten rounds a man. ‘I will defend the post entrusted to me as long as possible,’ Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar had promised, but how long could 4,000 men who were short of ammunition hold out against Ney’s overwhelming force?

  But Marshal Ney, astonishingly, did nothing. He could have captured the crossroads any time that morning with little effort. He had an overwhelming advantage in numbers, yet still ‘the bravest of the brave’ hesitated. He claimed later to be waiting for further orders from Napoleon, yet he had not even obeyed the Emperor’s previous orders, which were clear enough, capture Quatre-Bras, and while he waited the British–Dutch reinforcements were marching from Nivelles and from Brussels. Many explanations have been offered for Ney’s inactivity: that he really was confused and waiting for orders, or that he misunderstood the Emperor’s intentions, or, perhaps, that he was being extremely cautious.

  Ney knew he was facing the British–Dutch army that was commanded by the Duke of Wellington, and Ney had faced Wellington before. He had been at Busaco in 1810 when 65,000 French troops had attacked Wellington’s 50,000 and been bloodily repulsed. Ney had commanded an army Corps that had attacked the centre of the British line, and all seemed to be going well as the French troops advanced uphill against a fairly scattered skirmish line of British and Portuguese troops, but just as the Corps reached the heights of Busaco the British sprang their trap and two concealed battalions of redcoats stood and fired a tremendous volley at close range and followed it with a bayonet charge that sent Ney’s men reeling in panic down the hill.

  Wellington was a master of the ‘reverse slope’. Very simply, that means he liked to conceal his troops behind a hill. At Busaco the British objective was to hold the high hill, but if Wellington had positioned his men on the crest, or on the forward slope, then they would have become targets for the deadly efficient French artillery. By placing them just behind the crest, on the reverse slope, he kept them safe from most artillery fire and concealed his dispositions from the enemy. One biographer of Napoleon called this a ‘tired old dodge’, which is a remarkably stupid comment. It was, perhaps, an obvious tactic, but concealing and protecting troops is neither a ‘dodge’ nor ‘tired’, and the surprising thing is how rarely other commanders used the tactic.

  Ney, south of the crossroads, could not see what awaited him at Quatre-Bras. His view northwards was obstructed by thick woods, by some gentle undulations in the ground and, especially, by those tall crops of rye and other cereals. His experience in Spain, and his knowledge that he faced Wellington, could well have convinced him that the innocent-looking landscape actually concealed the whole of the British–Dutch army. This was a moment when Wellington’s reputation served him well. In truth the British–Dutch army was still marching on dusty roads under a sweltering sun and the crossroads was there for the taking, but Ney hesitated.

  ‘In three hours the campaign will be decided,’ Napoleon claimed that day, but Ney was wasting those hours. Napoleon had decided on his tactics for the day. He divided his army. One of the rules of war is never to divide an army, but Napoleon only meant the division to be temporary. He would attack the Prussians around the village of Ligny and fully expected that Ney would throw back any British attack at Quatre-Bras and then march eastwards from the crossroads to assault the flank of the Prussians. Napoleon, by attacking the Prussians from their front, would hold them in place until Ney’s strong force fell on their right flank to destroy them. Then, with the Prussians defeated and his army reunited, Napoleon would turn on the British–Dutch.

  Blücher’s hopes for the day were almost a mirror-image of Napoleon’s. The Prussians would hold their position about the village of Ligny and wait for the British to arrive from Quatre-Bras, then the British–Dutch forces would fall on the left flank of the French army and so give the allies a famous victory.

  Wellington, meanwhile, just hoped to hold Quatre-Bras. He was fully aware of Blücher’s hopes and doubtless wished he could join the battle that was to develop at Ligny, but his first priority was to keep the French from capturing the vital crossroads. He arrived at Quatre-Bras at about ten in the morning to discover that the enemy was inexplicably supine. The French were in force to the south of the crossroads, but showed no signs of attacking, and so Wellington rode three miles west to meet Blücher at a windmill in the village of Brye, which is close to Ligny.

  Blücher explained that he meant to fight, and requested that Wellington send him troops. Wellington, meanwhile, was inspecting the Prussian deployment and, perhaps tactlessly, criticized it. Many of Blücher’s men were arrayed on open ground, dangerously exposed to artillery fire. ‘I said that if I were in Blücher’s place,’ the Duke of Wellington recalled, ‘I should withdraw all the columns I saw scattered about the front, and get more of the troops under shelter of the rising ground.’ In other words to use the reverse slopes of the gently undulating fields that lay between the villages. The advice was not welcome, ‘they seemed to think they knew best, so I came away very shortly.’

  The Prussians asked that he bring his army to their aid, but to do that Wellington needed to hold Quatre-Bras and he knew that, despite Ney’s somnolence, the crossroads must soon be under severe attack. ‘Well,’ he told them, ‘I will come, provided I am not attacked myself.’
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  Much has been made of this meeting. The Duke of Wellington’s critics claim that he made a solemn promise to come to the aid of the Prussians, and that he broke the promise. It has even been suggested that the Duke deliberately lied about his intentions because he wanted the Prussians to fight and so give him time to concentrate his army, though there is not the slightest evidence to back up that contention. Wellington certainly did not want the Prussians to be routed, because then his smaller army would have to face Napoleon’s larger army alone, so why would he risk a Prussian disaster? The evidence suggests that he was being realistic. He could not march to Ligny until he had fought off the expected French attack at Quatre-Bras. If there was no attack, then he would send men, but if he was defending the crossroads against Ney’s considerable force then he would probably have no men to spare.

  Which meant the Prussians would almost certainly have to face Napoleon on their own, but by early afternoon Blücher had assembled 76,000 infantry, 8,000 cavalry and 224 guns to oppose the Emperor’s 58,000 infantry, 12,500 cavalry and 210 cannon.

  Napoleon had not reckoned on facing such a large force. He had thought the Prussians were still retreating and would leave around 40,000 men as a rearguard, but he was not dismayed at the disparity of numbers. In the first place the Prussians had decided against using the ‘tired old dodge’ of sheltering their troops, and that refusal left many of Blücher’s regiments vulnerable to Napoleon’s efficient artillery. More importantly, the Emperor had troops in reserve, primarily a very strong Corps of 22,000 men under the command of Count d’Erlon, who, in expectation that the Prussians would assemble a much smaller force, had been sent to reinforce Ney. Napoleon also fully expected that Ney’s massive force would fall like a hammer blow on the Prussian right. So although the Emperor would begin the battle with inferior numbers, he was confident that by nightfall his army would be reunited and the Prussians defeated. At 2 p.m. that afternoon the Emperor sent Ney more instructions: