Masters of the Battlefield

by Davis, Paul K.

  In spite of the impressive numbers, however, the French had to be spread thin to protect the frontiers. The large force also required a vast amount of resources to train and equip. Two hundred National Guard battalions were mobilized for manning fortresses; twenty battalions of veterans were assigned to train them. Civil officials were recalled to military posts and old regiments resurrected.83 By early June the number reached over half a million, with a projected number of 800,000 by October. Plenty of weaponry remained from the previous two decades of war, and Napoleon was quick to get the armaments factories back into production. The main problem was not manpower but horses, the losses of which in the previous two decades had been proportionately larger than those of the soldiers. Thus, cavalry would be in somewhat short supply.84

  Where Wellington was strong in experienced, dependable British subordinates, Napoleon had problems. Impressive as his total numbers may have been, his high-ranking officers proved to have been lower quality than they had once been.85 His longtime chief of staff, Berthier, did not return to service and died from a fall (perhaps suicide) on 1 June. Marshals Soult and Ney had served Napoleon long and well, but had abandoned him after his expulsion to Elba. Napoleon forgave them and placed them second and third in command of his field army, but they were barely on speaking terms with each other. Soult took himself too seriously and could not be bothered with giving precise orders when battle came. Ney was given command in the field, but the years had worn on him and he may have been suffering from battle fatigue. He has been described as almost demented at times during the upcoming battle.86 Other marshals had died. Murat, an outstanding cavalry commander, was both Napoleon’s brother-in-law and king of Naples, but had infuriated Napoleon by rising up against the Austrians during his return to power. Murat was beaten, and the loss kept Naples from aiding Napoleon’s return by securing France’s southern front and diverting Austrian attention. Napoleon’s anger overrode his judgment, and he refused to forgive Murat. Davout, another capable general, was made minister of war and left behind to maintain order in Paris.

  The entire situation is reminiscent of one of Napoleon’s aphorisms: Better an army of rabbits led by a lion than an army of lions led by a rabbit. Napoleon was not the lion he used to be. Many defeats since 1809 had robbed him of his mystique, and neither Wellington nor Blücher feared him. Some of the charisma was there, but it was not enough to cover some apparent weaknesses. One of his staff officers, Colonel Pétiet, had already noticed that the emperor was unable to spend as much time in the saddle as he used to: “His corpulence, his dull, pallid complexion, and his stiff gait made him seem quite different from the General Bonaparte I had known at the beginning of my career.”87 Given that in 1815 both Napoleon and Wellington were forty-six years old, their respective stars were on opposite paths.

  The Battle of Waterloo

  NAPOLEON, SUMMONING WHAT WAS LEFT of his leonine nature, made the first move. A quick victory was necessary, if there was to be any hope of awing the other nations into negotiations. With garrisons stationed in his frontier forts, Napoleon took the offensive. He surprised the allies by gathering and moving 89,000 infantry, 22,000 cavalry, and 366 cannons from various places around France on 6 June and having them ready to cross the Sambre River into Belgium nine days later. The old Napoleon seemed to be alive and well.88

  That he would make the first move was not a surprise, but his target proved to be. Wellington assumed that his opponent would want to seize, or at least threaten, the Channel ports, which were vital for the British army’s supply. Thus, he posted his army southwest of his headquarters in Brussels, placing them at Menin, Tournai, Ath, and Mons. Napoleon was famous for two maneuvers, and Wellington predicted the wrong one: the manouevre sur les derrières. Using this strategy, Napoleon would hold an enemy’s attention to its front while moving the bulk of his force to its rear, threatening its lines of communication. However, finding himself outnumbered and facing superior enemy forces, Napoleon turned instead to the strategy of the central position. As David Chandler describes this strategy, “The traditional central position would then enable the French army to pin or mask each Allied army and destroy them one by one. Each wing would engage the attention of the enemy in its vicinity while the Emperor maneuvered the reserve and any other disengaged troops to fall on each force in turn.”89

  Thus, Napoleon aimed his army at Charleroi, splitting the 45-mile gap between Wellington in Brussels and Blücher in Namur. Blücher learned of Napoleon’s intentions from a deserter, General Louis-Auguste-Victor Bourmont, on 14 July, and ordered his divided forces to come together for battle. He was working on the assumption that Wellington would move to his aid, as had been agreed between the two allies on 3 May. Chandler comments, “Although the Prussian concentration was going ahead as previously planned, it was nevertheless placing Blücher’s army in increasing peril—for in warfare few movements are more dangerous than a forward concentration of troops in close proximity to a powerful and advancing enemy.”90 The first report of gunfire came from south of Charleroi at 4:30 on 15 June, with a message to headquarters arriving in Namur arriving at 9:00. Blücher had already begun concentrating his troops for an advance while alerting Wellington to the situation.

  Just when Wellington received this communication is a matter of some debate.91 Most sources record that it arrived at British headquarters at 3:00 on the 15th, making Wellington’s reaction seem to have been very leisurely. He gave greater credence to reports of French demonstrations toward Lille and Dunkirk. Chandler notes that this interpretation of events “has indubitably harmed Wellington’s reputation as a strategist. The Allies were fortunate to survive so blatant an error; normally only a single mistake was sufficient to deliver an enemy into Napoleon’s hand, and by 3:00 p.m. on the 15th the Allied generals had already made two critical blunders.”92 Wellington did not really grasp the gravity of the situation until the night of the 15th, when word of fighting at Charleroi disturbed his dancing at a ball in Brussels. Realizing that Napoleon had “humbugged” him, he ordered his troops to prepare for a move to the southeast to assist the Prussians. Wellington met with his generals and ordered the army to Quatre Bras. The orders were quickly disseminated and the units began to march. He continued to dine and dance until 2:00, supposedly to convey a sense of calm to the crowd.

  Wellington managed to get his army on the road early on 16 June, and reached the town of Quatre Bras, held by the young Prince of Orange, at 10:00. He then rode off to confer with the Prussians, who were about to be attacked at Ligny. Napoleon had to this point employed his plans perfectly. He sent his left wing northeast from Charleroi toward Quatre Bras under Ney, with orders to drive away the enemy along the Brussels road.93 The right wing, under recently promoted marshal Emmanuel Grouchy, was to march northeast to defeat or drive Blücher back. The reserve under d’Erlon, who had fought at Vittoria, remained in Charleroi to assist whichever attack needed it most. With the orders given, Napoleon was on the move at dawn on the 16th with Brussels as his goal. A victory over Wellington and capture of a capital city would do much to frighten other monarchs.94

  Unfortunately for Napoleon, everything that had been going so right began to go wrong. Ney did not capture Quatre Bras as ordered. Grouchy ran into the Prussians farther forward than expected. Napoleon rode to investigate and decided on the spot to fight the Prussians first. He ordered the troops to deploy near the village of Ligny and sent word to Ney to bring his forces east and strike the Prussian flank. It took time for all of the French troops to march forward and into their deployments; meanwhile, Blücher’s forces were also coming up in force. By the time Napoleon had sufficient men to launch his attack, the Prussians outnumbered him. Napoleon also ordered d’Erlon to bring up the reserves. The fighting went on throughout the afternoon of the 16th, and the French artillery seemed to have the best of it. As night was falling, however, rain began falling as well and the reserves had not arrived. Instead, they had been seen by the commander of the French re
ar guard and identified as enemy troops. Left with few options, Napoleon finally committed his Guard and managed to drive the Prussians from the field. The Prussians took a serious beating from the French artillery. Starting the day with 84,000 men and 224 guns on a front of seven miles, Blücher ended the day with a loss of 21 cannons and 25,000 killed, wounded, and captured. A further 9,000 fled eastward toward Liege.95

  D’Erlon had not arrived in time because he had received conflicting orders, to join both Napoleon and Ney. He had first marched his men toward Quatre Bras, but found Ney unwilling to launch a major assault at what he wrongly assumed were superior numbers. He then marched his men to Ligny, arriving too late to take part in the battle. Had d’Erlon’s force been committed at Quatre Bras the British would almost certainly have been badly beaten. The same can be said if they had been used against the Prussians. As it turned out, the lack of a reserve resulted in two indecisive battles instead of one overwhelming French victory. Still, Napoleon thought that the Prussians were sufficiently beaten to be shadowed by a relatively small force under Grouchy. The first intelligence reports had the Prussians withdrawing toward their base at Namur. He would take the rest of the army to reinforce Ney and defeat Wellington.

  There were communication problems between allied forces as well. Blücher had taken a fall from his horse late in the battle and was out of action for several hours. His chief of staff, Gneisenau, assumed command in the meantime. Although the deserters and the wounded were retreating toward Namur to the northeast, Gneisenau took the bulk of the Prussian army north to Wavre. Neither the extent of the Prussian defeat at Ligny nor their destination were relayed to Wellington, however. Not until the following morning did a British patrol find Ligny in French hands. Wellington thus had little choice but to leave a rear guard in Quatre Bras while he gathered the remainder of his forces at Mont St. Jean, just south of the village of Waterloo on the road to Brussels. As the British began this move, they were aided by two strokes of luck. First, Napoleon’s recurring illness struck him, and he was slow to issue orders, not sending the French out until noon on 17 June. That bought time for Wellington, as did torrential rains that fell that afternoon and evening as he settled in at Mont St. Jean.96

  Adding to his good fortune, Wellington also heard from the Prussians, who informed him that they had reached Wavre at dark on the 17th and were within range of the proposed battlefield. Alistair Horne describes how “[o]ld Blücher, too, aided by liberal doses of his favorite medicine, garlic and gin, had recovered and was under way.… He dictated a letter to the British Field-Marshal assuring him that, ‘ill as I am, [I will] put myself at the head of my troops and attack the right flank of the enemy immediately Napoleon makes any move against the Duke.’”97 After stormy weather through the afternoon of the 17th and well into the night, the morning of the 18th saw Wellington and Napoleon facing each on two parallel ridges divided by waterlogged ground.

  The area in which the battle took place is relatively small, some 5,000 yards wide and 1,500 yards across. The rains had turned the fields into a sticky mud, making life miserable for the soldiers, most of whom had camped in the open. As a result, the ground was not conducive to maneuvers and rapid marches, but instead favored the defense.98 There are debates about how far in advance Wellington surveyed the ground. He may have seen it as early as his school days in Brussels. It is widely reported he pointed to the village on the map just before he left the ball in the early hours of the 16th. It is more likely, however, to have been a position almost forced on him by circumstance. Once he knew that the French were at Ligny and Quatre Bras, the road from the latter location to Brussels became the axis of movement. Given the nature of his grand tactics, to employ the reverse slope of a hill, the ground before Mont St. Jean was the only location Wellington could have profitably chosen. With armies facing each other on two ridges, somebody had to be on the defense, and the attacker was going to be at a disadvantage.99

  Whether carefully chosen or the product of circumstance, the valley was perfect for Wellington’s style of battle, which had become apparent in his days in the peninsula.100 He deployed his font lines east-west along the crest of a ridge just north of the village of La Haye Sainte. These men were not as exposed as it may seem, however; the center of the battlefield was the north-south road to Brussels, and to Wellington’s left for about a half to two-thirds of a mile, the Ohain road was not sunken but was bracketed by high, thick hedges that formed an obstacle to cavalry. To the duke’s right of the crossroads, where the ground rises sharply, the road was sunken for about 400 yards, passing between embankments five to seven feet high before emerging level with the ground and descending gradually to Braine-d’Alleud.101

  The remainder of Wellington’s force was in dead ground on the north side of the ridge. Instead of sending out skirmishers, he placed units in three farmsteads: Hougoumont to the west, La Haye Sainte in the center, and Papelotte to the east. Papelotte was held by the Saxe-Weimar units that had seen the most difficult fighting at Quatre Bras and would be the first units to receive aid from the Prussians when they arrived. La Haye Sainte was held by the 2nd Light Battalion of the King’s German Legion (500 men) supported by the British 95th Rifles in a sandpit just to the north. Hougoumont was garrisoned by the light companies of the Scots Guards and Coldstream Guards plus some 700 Hanoverians and men of the 2nd Nassau Regiment. The bulk of the British artillery and almost all the cavalry were on or behind the ridge. To the far western flank were 7,000 men of the Dutch-Belgian army at Braine-l’Alleud to cover a flanking attack to that side. Altogether there were some 30,000 men along the front and in the forward positions with another 22,000 in reserve. Still fearing a Napoleonic move to cut his lines of supply, Wellington unnecessarily placed another 17,000 men some ten miles farther west, well out of the battle zone.

  Napoleon deployed his 1st Corps with 16,000 infantry, 1,500 cavalry, and 46 guns to his right under d’Erlon, who had spent the 15th marching between the two battles; thus, his men were the freshest. To his left, the 2nd Corps of 13,000 infantry, 1,300 cavalry, and 36 guns, all under Rielle, were positioned opposite Hougoumont. The remainder of his 72,000 men he held in the center, behind the mass of his artillery. His plan was to attack Hougoumont and draw Wellington’s reserves there, then break through what would be the resulting weakened center after a massive cannonade. There would have been nothing wrong with this plan, had Napoleon had all day to implement it. Unfortunately for him, the rain had made the ground so muddy the cavalry could not operate effectively; more importantly, neither could the artillery. The cannons could not maneuver until the ground dried out and the mud would greatly nullify the effect of the cannonballs to tear through formations. He had little choice but to delay the attack until almost midday. He was ignorant of the fact that the Prussians were marching and that their shadow, Grouchy’s 32,000 men, was not going to hinder them in any way.

  So while waiting for the ground to harden somewhat, Napoleon inspected the troops. This was intended to raise the morale of his men and dishearten the enemy as well. Since so many British troops could not see the display, its effect on them was questionable; they could, however, hear the cries of “Vive l’Empereur!” as he rode along the lines. Wellington, who watched from his position, commented that Napoleon would soon learn what a “sepoy general” could do. He had no plan other to defend his chosen ground and react to Napoleon’s moves. He had given a short-tempered response to the cavalry commander, the Earl of Uxbridge, the evening before: “Bonaparte has not given me any idea of his projects, and as my plans depend on his, how can you expect me to tell you what mine are?”102

  Napoleon apparently wanted to press forward first with his 1st Corps on the right, to advance in oblique order with the leftmost unit in the lead. The order, however, seems to have been misinterpreted to mean that the left of the French line, 2nd Corps, would lead the attack. The attack began just before noon as Rielle’s corps began to advance on the orchards around Hougomont farm. The Nass
au and Guards light infantry held them at bay for some time, but were finally pressed back into the farmhouse complex. There the French made little headway against the extremely stout defense. With more of the Guards sent in after about an hour’s fighting, the British force at this point ultimately numbered some 3,500; they drew into them some 7,000 French in what proved to be a battle within the larger battle. Rielle sent in more and more men, the “diversionary” attack taking on a life of its own. Wellington did not shift manpower to either flank as Napoleon had hoped.

  At about noon the main batteries in the center of the French line opened up. This had been the key to breaking the Prussians at Ligny as it had been key to breaking the Austrians at Wagram. The French gunners, however, had little at which to aim if their intent was to break the British line. They lobbed shells over the ridge crest with no idea what effect they were having. To the veteran infantry in front, it appeared to be firing merely for intimidation, but to the units in the rear it was doing serious damage. British counterbattery fire from the sunken road on the ridge line did some serious damage as well, but Napoleon’s 250-plus cannons outnumbered those of the British by 100. “With mounting uneasiness,” Allessandro Barbero recounts, “the officers of the Allied infantry watched artillery caissons struck by enemy cannonballs blow up before their eyes; … Les belles filles de l’Empereur, ‘the Emperor’s beautiful daughters’—as the French gunners affectionately called their 12-pounders—were doing their job well.”103 They needed to perform well, for off in the eastern distance trouble was approaching for the French army.

  The French first spotted the oncoming force at about 1:30; Napoleon could not determine if the advancing troops were Blücher’s or Grouchy’s. He had sent word for Grouchy to march to the sounds of the guns (which he had indeed heard when they opened up at noon). Had the message arrived in time? Had Grouchy actually driven the Prussians away? In reality, it would have been a physical impossibility for Grouchy’s men to be approaching the battle so soon, as they had actually begun the day marching to the northeast away from Waterloo. Whatever columns were approaching, they would enter the battlefield around Papelotte in about three hours.104 Assuming the worst, Napoleon shifted his 6th Corps to the right flank to deal with the Prussians.