The Battle of Waterloo: Europe in the Balance

by Rupert Matthews

  A quick victory in northern Italy could be achieved and at little cost – and it might turn the entire tide of the war. Frimont was right to be worried.

  Frimont had two objectives in moving forward. First he wanted to seize the mountain passes, which would be easier to defend than the open plains of northern Italy. Second, he determined to probe the French positions to get some idea of how strong the French armies in the area actually were.

  Frimont split his army into two. The I Corps under Field Marshal Radivojevich was to advance into France over the mountains close to the Swiss frontier. The II Corps under Count Bubna was to advance over the Mount Cenis Pass further south. The advance began late on 14 June. At first the Austro-Italian army encountered no resistance at all. For the next five days, while the entire Waterloo Campaign was being fought, Frimont’s forces advanced slowly along the difficult roads to get into southern France.

  News of Napoleon’s move into the Netherlands reached Engelhardt and the German Corps on 16 June. Engelhardt got his men moving that afternoon, marching towards Arlon in the southern Netherlands. He was intending to threaten the right flank and rear of Napoleon’s advancing army. This might disrupt the French supply lines, or might persuade Napoleon to detach units from his main army to block the German advance. In the event, Napoleon did not receive news of Engelhardt’s advance until after the Battle of Waterloo was over.

  British army in confusion

  Back in the Netherlands, Wellington’s army had been reduced to a state of utter confusion. Three sets of orders had been sent out between 5 pm and 2 am during the night. In most cases, units had received their first orders during the evening. These had instructed units to gather at a divisional meeting place over night and to be ready to move at dawn. The second set of orders had told units to concentrate at Nivelles, or in some cases nearby. Most units had received these orders by the early hours of the morning, but some had not – since they had moved from their original locations in accordance with the first orders. The third orders had told all units to go to Quatre Bras as quickly as possible. Only a few units had received these orders by dawn since in most cases the messengers could not find them – either because they had moved, or because the messengers got lost in the dark or simply due to the confusion caused by so many units being on the move at once.

  The result was that by dawn many units were without orders, many had not reached where they thought they were meant to be and others had no idea what they were supposed to be doing.

  For instance, Captain Mercer of the Royal Horse Artillery had as his second set of orders to go to Braine-le-Comte and there to await Major MacDonald of the RHA, who would give him further orders when and if necessary. Mercer got to the rendezvous, though not without having lost his ammunition wagons. They turned up three hours later having taken a different road, but there was no sign of MacDonald. By lunchtime Mercer was still without orders, though thousands of men were streaming past him heading east. When he spotted General Vandeleur of the Dutch dragoons, Mercer rode over to ask advice. ‘I know nothing about you, sir,’ came the brusque reply and Vandeleur rode on.

  At 3 pm another battery of the RHA came clattering by, led by Major Bull. Again Mercer asked advice. Bull said that Mercer should follow him, even though he had no orders either and was instead following a regiment of dragoons who did have firm orders. Mercer set off with his guns and an hour later was overtaken by the errant Major MacDonald who handed him orders to accompany the Household Brigade of cavalry. Unfortunately neither Mercer nor MacDonald knew where the Household Brigade was, so Mercer carried on with Major Bull and the dragoons. He eventually ended up at Quatre Bras after nightfall.

  The sheer scale of the confusion was not appreciated by Wellington, nor by his staff led by de Lancey. The British army had standard tables that gave times that should be allowed for messengers to travel cross-country and deliver orders and for the unit receiving the orders to get underway. De Lancey applied these standardized times to the third set of orders and worked out where each unit should be. The vast majority of them were not there, of course. However Wellington would base his actions that day on de Lancey’s estimates.

  Commanders at Brye

  At about 10 am Wellington arrived at Quatre Bras to find the crossroads defended by some 8,000 men with more arriving by the minute. The French, he was told, had launched some small-scale probing attacks about two hours earlier but had been quiet since. Assuming all was well, Wellington rode on to the east to try to find Blücher. The two men and their staffs met at the windmill at Brye.

  The following conversation was only slightly hindered by the fact that Wellington spoke no German while Blücher and Gneisenau spoke no English. Müffling acted as interpreter. When the pleasantries were over, Wellington asked a question that appeared to be simple, but was not. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  Blücher and Gneisenau knew exactly what they wanted Wellington to do and were delighted by his co-operative attitude. After all, they both had lingering doubts about British commitment to the cause and all three knew of the diplomatic disputes that had taken place in Vienna and that might break out again at any time.

  Blücher’s plan of campaign envisaged his army standing on the defensive at Ligny to halt the French advance, while Wellington marched from Quatre Bras to take the French in the left flank and ensure their destruction. It seemed a simple enough plan, but there were problems. For a start, Blücher had only part of his army with him at Ligny. The I Corps of Zieten was there, but had been disordered and weakened by its fighting retreat of the previous day. The II Corps of Georg von Pirch was present in full, as was von Thielmann’s III Corps. However, Bülow’s IV Corps was still miles away and was unlikely to arrive that day. Nevertheless, Blücher had 84,000 men at Ligny.

  The second problem was not known to the commanders. De Lancey’s estimates had it that Wellington’s army would be concentrated at Quatre Bras by mid afternoon. Once gathered, they would then march to Ligny and arrive at perhaps 5 pm. In fact, the army was so scattered and disorganized that it would not reach Quatre Bras before nightfall.

  Wellington turned to the map and pointed out his reservations about Blücher’s plan. He indicated the two main roads to Brussels from Quatre Bras and Nivelles. By marching to Ligny, Wellington would be leaving these roads undefended. Napoleon was famous for his quick manoeuvring and might opt to change direction suddenly and march up one of these roads to seize Brussels. Wellington did not mention his secret orders to keep the line of retreat open to the Royal Navy in the Scheldt, but this was his real objection to leaving the roads unguarded.

  Blücher and Gneisenau could not understand Wellington’s objections, and said so. At this point Müffling reminded Wellington that the Netherlands army under the Prince of Orange was much closer to Quatre Bras than the British troops. Wellington nodded, concluding that he could send the Dutch to help the Prussians while keeping some of his British troops back to guard the retreat route to the Scheldt. He turned to Blücher, said he expected his army to be gathered at Quatre Bras by 4 pm and said ‘Well then, I will come – provided I am not attacked myself.’ With that, Wellington and Müffling mounted their horses and rode off, while Gneisenau and Blücher returned to Ligny to finish arranging their army for a defensive battle.

  Deployments at Ligny

  The position at Ligny was undoubtedly a strong one and well suited to defence. From where the French were, near Fleurus, the main road to Sombreffe and on to Gembloux and Germany appeared to run over a gently undulating plain. In fact the plain was cut by the Ligny stream, which ran through a small, steep-sided valley. The stream itself was relatively small, but its banks were a tangle of woodlands with dense undergrowth that would be a real obstacle to any troops seeking to get through them. Along the stream were to be found the village of Ligny itself, plus the hamlets of Wagnelée, Saint-Amand-la-Haye, Saint-Amand, Tongrinelle, Boignée and Balâtre, plus a ruin
ed castle and a handful of farms. All this was invisible to Napoleon.

  The battlefield of Ligny as seen from Blücher’s initial command post at the windmill at Brye. The undulating nature of the ground is clear, though the depth of the river and its steep banks are not apparent.

  In order to make the hidden stream even more of an obstacle, Blücher had his troops hack loopholes in any buildings facing the stream and build barricades where the stream’s banks were not blocked by undergrowth. Into these defences Blücher put a force of infantry with some artillery support. Most of his army was positioned on the higher ground behind the valley so that troops could be moved down to support any threatened sector as the French attack developed. Expecting Wellington to arrive on his right flank in the later afternoon, Blücher had left that flank relatively weak.

  It was these dispositions that Napoleon saw when he arrived at 11 am. Unaware of the fortified stream, he saw only the Prussian forces on the high ground and concluded that Blücher was in a weak position, especially on his right. Blücher would only adopt a position like this if he were expecting help from Wellington, but it did lay his army open to utter defeat if it were attacked before Wellington arrived.

  Napoleon quickly issued his orders. Ney was to block the road from Nivelles to Ligny at Quatre Bras to stop Wellington from reaching the Prussians. He was to do this with Reille’s II Corps and Kellerman’s heavy cavalry. D’Erlon’s I Corps was to stand behind Ney to act as a mobile reserve able to go to help Ney or Napoleon as circumstances demanded. D’Erlon was, however, some miles to the south and it would take hours for him to come up.

  Meanwhile Napoleon and Grouchy would attack the Prussians at Ligny with Grouchy’s command of the III Corps under Vandamme, the IV Corps under Gérard plus the I, II and IV Cavalry Corps. Napoleon’s central reserve of Lobau’s VI Corps and the Imperial Guard would also move on Ligny, though like d’Erlon they would take some time to arrive. His plan was to engage the Prussians all along their front to probe for a weak point. Having found one, he would then launch a massed attack to smash the weak point and burst through the Prussian army and destroy it.

  French launch assault

  Napoleon waited until he heard a distant rumble of cannon coming from the north-west at a little after 2 pm. That signalled that Ney was in action at Quatre Bras and was blocking Wellington’s advance to Ligny. Confident that his left was now secure, Napoleon sent Vandamme and Gérard forward with their corps to begin assaults on the Prussian army. It was only at this point that the French discovered the Ligny stream and the way the Prussians had fortified both it and the hamlets along its length. For the next hour or more the French probed forward, but found themselves confronted by a well positioned enemy and made little progress despite taking heavy casualties.

  At 3.30 pm, realizing that the task ahead of him was tougher than he had thought, Napoleon sent Count de la Bédoyère to find Ney and order him to send d’Erlon’s I Corps down the main Nivelles-Sombreffe road. This would bring d’Erlon and his 21,000 men on to the right rear flank of the Prussians near Wagnelée. From there d’Erlon would be able to roll up the Prussian army. Combined with a frontal assault by Napoleon this would trap the Prussian army and destroy it utterly. Rapid calculations told Napoleon that d’Erlon would arrive at about 6 pm.

  At 4 pm Napoleon concentrated his 12-pounder guns in front of Ligny itself and unleashed a heavy bombardment on the village. Before long the village was a mass of burning rubble. Gérard sent his infantry in and drove the Prussians out of the southern half of the village. Before Gérard’s men could get over the bridge to take the rest of the village, Blücher sent in heavy reinforcements. The two sides found themselves facing each other over the narrow stream, firing away from crumbling houses, many of which were on fire. Casualties began to mount alarmingly on both sides as the murderous struggle dragged on beyond 5 pm.

  The fighting on both flanks had been less intense, but just as inconclusive. The French had captured Saint-Amand-la-Haye, Boignée and Tongrinelle but were unable to get over the stream in any real strength.

  Blücher believed that the battle was going well. He was holding the French attack all along the line and it was approaching the time when he was expecting Wellington’s advance units to arrive. He began mustering his reserves to deliver an attack on his right wing. This, he hoped, would turn the French left wing and drive them west towards Wellington’s advancing army. The Prussian hammer would smash the French army against Wellington’s anvil.

  Napoleon, meanwhile, was expecting d’Erlon to arrive. He, too, was mustering forces for a major offensive. He hoped to smash through the Prussian centre, crush the Prussian right between his own troops and those of d’Erlon, then drive the surviving Prussians off towards Germany. That would leave Wellington isolated and vulnerable.

  The approach of d’Erlon

  At 5.30 pm both French and Prussian scouting cavalry out beyond the western edge of the battlefield sighted large columns of infantry accompanied by cavalry marching towards Ligny. The columns were coming from the direction of Frasnes, just south of Quatre Bras, and were heading towards Wagnelée so as to arrive on the French left flank from behind. The French scouts identified the distant columns as being Dutch and numbering around 20,000 men. The Prussian scouts also counted 20,000 men but identified them as being French.

  This confusion as to who was marching toward Ligny was understandable. Although states dressed their armies in brightly coloured uniforms to make identification easier, the Dutch army had until a few months earlier been allied to the French. They wore short, dark-blue jackets with grey trousers and shako hat that was more or less cylindrical, but higher at the front than the back. The French wore a long, dark-blue jacket with buff trousers and a shako that was wider at the top than the bottom. At close quarters the uniforms were easy to tell apart by the detailing, but at a distance one dark blue jacket could easily be mistaken for the other.

  Vandamme, commanding the III Corps on the French left, was first to receive the reports of the advancing Dutch force. He called off his attack on the Prussians, pulling one division out of the line and turning them to face west to meet the expected attack. Vandamme did some quick calculations regarding his own and the opposing forces and then sent a message to Napoleon saying that unless he was sent reinforcements he would be forced to pull back as soon as the Dutch attack began.

  Napoleon received the reports of the approaching Dutch at a little after 5.30 pm, together with Vandamme’s request for reinforcements. He responded by calling off his planned attack on the Prussian centre. He moved two divisions of the Guard toward his left, ready to support Vandamme if they were needed. Napoleon was, however, puzzled. According to his latest information the Dutch should be engaged fighting Ney at Quatre Bras. He sent his own scouts off to get a good look at the approaching column and to report back as soon as possible.

  Gneisenau and Blücher had by this time also got their reports that a French army was approaching. From where they stood on high ground behind the Prussian army they could not see the advancing troops. They could, however, see Vandamme move troops out of the attack to face west. They concluded that the approaching troops must be those of Wellington, not French after all. Vandamme was a lot closer to the oncoming army than they were and they thought that he was in a better position to identify them.

  When Blücher saw Napoleon move divisions of his Imperial Guard to face west and move toward Vandamme it convinced him that Wellington was approaching in force. He gave orders that the Prussian attack was to go ahead at once.

  As the Prussians were gathering for the assault, Napoleon’s personal scouts came back to report that the approaching troops were, in fact, those of d’Erlon. Napoleon was both relieved and annoyed – relieved to find the new arrivals were French, not Dutch, but annoyed that d’Erlon was arriving on the French flank not on that of the Prussians. D’Erlon’s attack would therefore be less destructi
ve than Napoleon had hoped, but nonetheless useful. He sent orders to d’Erlon to veer to his left, so heading more directly toward the Prussians. Napoleon then began moving his Imperial Guard back into position to launch his planned assault.

  Mass attacks

  Suddenly, at 6 pm, the Prussian attack surged forward. Leading the way were heavy cavalry, supported by dense columns of infantry and horse artillery. They surged over the stream and into the French positions held by Vandamme. Vandamme was caught reorganizing his defences – having realized it was d’Erlon, not Wellington, coming up on his left. The Prussians, expecting the French to be trapped between two fires, attacked with reckless courage. Vandamme’s men were pushed back and for a while it looked as if they were about to break. Then Vandamme got his reserve division into action and the Prussian attack ground to a halt.

  A little after 7.30 pm, Napoleon unleashed his own mass attack. He moved his artillery to face the Prussian centre and opened up a furious barrage that inflicted heavy casualties. As the cannon pounded away, Napoleon formed up two massive attack columns, both spearheaded by the Imperial Guard and supported by dense masses of heavy cavalry. The French guns fell silent to avoid hitting their own men just as the columns reached the Prussian lines. With barely a delay, the French Imperial Guard smashed its way through the first line of Prussian defences and began to mount the slope beyond. Blücher had no reserves left and it was clear that the few Prussian infantry on the crest of the hill would break and run as soon as the Imperial Guard reached them.