To understand the battle of Waterloo it is necessary, more perhaps
than in the case of any other great decisive action, to read it
strategically: that is, to regard the final struggle of Sunday the 18th
of June as only the climax of certain general movements, the first
phase of which was the concentration of the French Army of the North,
and the second the passage of the Sambre river and the attack. This
second phase covered four days in time, and in space an advance of
nearly forty miles.
There is a sense, of course, in which it is true of every battle
that its result is closely connected with the strategy which led up to
its tactical features: how the opposing forces arrived upon the field,
in what condition, and in what disposition and at what time, with what
advantage or disadvantage, is always necessarily connected with the
history of the campaign rather than of the individual action; but, as
we saw in the case of Blenheim, and as might be exemplified from a
hundred other cases, the greater part of battles can be understood by
following the tactical dispositions upon the field. They are won or
lost, in the main, according to those dispositions.
With Waterloo it was not so. Waterloo was lost by Napoleon, won by
the Allies, not mainly on account of tactical movements upon the
field itself, but mainly on account of what had happened in the course
of the advance of the French army to that field. In other words, the
military character of that great decisive action is always missed by
those who have read it isolated from the movements immediately
preceding it.
Napoleon, determining to strike at Belgium under the political
circumstances we have already seen, was attacking forces about double
his own.
He was like one man coming up rapidly and almost unexpectedly to
attack two: but hoping if possible to deal successively and singly with
either opponent.
His doubtful chance of success in such a hazard obviously lay in his
being able to attack each enemy separately: that is, to engage first
one before the second came to his aid; then the second; and thus to
defeat each in turn. The chance of victory under such circumstances is
slight. It presupposes the surprise of the two allied adversaries by
their single opponent, and the defeat of one so quickly that the other
cannot come to his aid till all is over. But no other avenue of victory
is open to a man fighting enemies of double his numerical strength; at
least under conditions where armament, material, and racial type are
much the same upon either side.
The possibility of dealing thus with his enemy Napoleon thought
possible, and thought it possible from two factors in the situation
before him.
The first factor was that the allied army, seeing its great numbers,
the comparatively small accumulation of supplies which it could yet
command, the great length of frontier which it had to watch, was spread
out in a great number of cantonments, the whole stretch of which was no
less than one hundred miles in length, from Liège upon the east or left
to Tournay upon the west or right.
The second factor which gave Napoleon his chance was that this long
line depended for its supply, its orders, its line of retreat upon two
separate and opposite bases.
The left or eastern half, formed mainly of Prussian subjects, and
acting under BLUCHER, had arrived from the east, looked for safety in
case of defeat to a retreat towards the Rhine, obtained its supplies
from that direction, and in general was fed from the east along
those communications, continual activity along which are as necessary
to the life of an army as the uninterrupted working of the air-tube is
necessary to the life of a diver.
The western or right-hand part of the line, Dutch, German, Belgian,
and British, acting under WELLINGTON, depended, upon the contrary, upon
the North Sea, and upon communication across that sea with England.
That is, it drew its supplies and the necessaries of its existence from
the west, the opposite and contrary direction from that to which
the Prussian half of the Allies were looking for theirs. The effect of
this upon the campaign is at once simple to perceive and of capital
importance in Napoleon's plan.
Wellington and Blucher did not, under the circumstances, oppose to
Napoleon a single body drawing its life from one stream of
communications. They did not in combination command a force defending
one goal; they commanded two forces defending two goals. The thorough
defeat of one would throw it back away from the other if the attack
were delivered at the point where the two just joined hands; and the
English[1] or western half under Wellington was bound to movements
actually contrary to the Prussian or eastern half under Blucher in case
either were defeated before the other could come to its aid.
Napoleon, then, in his rapid advance upon Belgium, was a man
conducting a column against a line. He was conducting that column
against one special point, the point of junction between two disparate
halves of an opposing line. He advanced therefore upon a narrow front
perpendicular to, and aimed at the centre of, the long scattered cordon
of his double enemy, which cordon it was his business if possible to
divide just where the western end of one half touched the eastern end
of the other. He designed to fight in detail the first portion he could
engage, then to turn upon the other, and thus to defeat both singly and
in turn.
I will put this strategical position before the reader in the shape
of an English parallel in order to make it the plainer, and I will
then, by the aid of sketch maps, show how the Allies actually lay upon
the Belgian frontier at the moment when Napoleon delivered his attack
upon it.
Imagine near a quarter million of men spread out in a line of
separate cantonments from Windsor at one extremity to Bristol at the
other; and suppose that the eastern half of this line from Windsor to
as far west as Wallingford is depending for its supplies and its
communications upon the river Thames and its road system, and is
prepared in case of defeat to fall back, down the valley of that stream
towards London.
On the other hand, imagine that the western half from Swindon to
Bristol is receiving its supplies from the Severn and the Bristol
Channel, and must in case of defeat fall back westward upon that line.
Now, suppose an invading column rather more than 120,000 strong to
be advancing from the south against this line, but prepared to strike
up from almost any point on the Channel. It strikes, as a fact, from
Southampton, and marches rapidly north by Winchester and Newbury. By
the time it has reached Newbury, the eastern half of the opposing line,
that between Wallingford and Windsor, has concentrated to meet it, but
is defeated in the neighbourhood of that town.
Such a battle at Newbury would correspond to the battle at Ligny
(let it be fought upon a Friday). Meanwhile, the western half, hurrying
up in aid, has failed to effect a junction before the eastern half was
defeated, comes up too late above Newbury, and finding it is too late,
retires upon Abingdon. The victorious invader pursues them, and at noon
on the second day engages them in a long line which they hold in front
of Abingdon.
If he has only to deal in front of Abingdon with this second or
western half, which hurried up too late to help the defeated eastern
half, he has very fair chances of success. He is slightly superior
numerically; he has, upon the whole, better troops and he has more
guns. But the eastern half of the defending army, which has been beaten
at Newbury, though beaten, was neither destroyed nor dispersed, nor
thrust very far back from the line of operations. It has retreated to
Wallingford, that is towards the north, parallel to the retreat of the
western half; and a few hours after this western half is engaged in
battle with the invader in front of Abingdon, the eastern half appears
upon that invader's right flank, joins forces with the line of the
defenders at Abingdon, and thus brings not only a crushing superiority
of numbers upon the field against the invader, but also brings it up in
such a manner that he is compelled to fight upon two fronts at once. He
is, of course, destroyed by such a combination, and his army routed and
dispersed. An action of this sort fought at Abingdon would correspond
to the action which was fought upon the field of Waterloo, supposing,
of course, for the purpose of this rough parallel, an open countryside
without the obstacle of the river.
The actual positions of the two combined commands, the command of
Blucher and the command of Wellington, which between them held the long
line between Tournay and Liège, will be grasped from the sketch map
upon the next page.
The reader who would grasp the campaign in the short compass of such
an essay as this had best consider the numbers and the positions in a
form not too detailed, and busy himself with a picture which, though
accurate, shall be general.
Let him, then, consider the whole line between Liège and Tournay to
consist of the two halves already presented: a western half, which we
will call the Duke of Wellington's, and an eastern half, which we will
call Blucher's: of these two the Duke of Wellington was
Commander-in-chief.
[Illustration]
Next, note the numbers of each and their disposition. The mixed
force under the Duke of Wellington was somewhat over 100,000 men, with
just over 200 guns.[2] They consisted in two corps and a reserve. The
first corps was under the Prince of Orange, and was mainly composed of
men from the Netherlands. Its headquarters were at Braine le Comte. The
second corps was under Lord Hill, and contained the mass of the British
troops present. Its headquarters were at Ath. These two between them
amounted to about half of Wellington's command, and we find them
scattered in cantonments at Oudenarde, at Ath, at Enghien, at Soignies,
at Nivelles, at Roeulx, at Braine le Comte, at Hal. A reserve corps
under the Duke's own command was stationed at Brussels, and amounted to
more than one-fifth, but less than one-quarter, of the whole force. The
remaining quarter and a little more is accounted for by scattered
cavalry (mainly in posts upon the river Dender), by the learned arms,
gunners and sappers, distributed throughout the army, and by troops
which were occupying garrisons—in numbers amounting to rather more
than ten per cent. of the force.
The eastern Prussian or left half of the line was, as is apparent in
the preceding map, somewhat larger. It had a quarter more men and half
as many guns again as that under the Duke of Wellington, and it was
organised into four army corps, whose headquarters were respectively
Charleroi, Namur, Ciney, and Liège.
The whole line, therefore, which was waiting the advance of
Napoleon, was not quite two and a third hundred thousand men, with
rather more than 500 guns. Of this grand total of the two halves,
Wellington's and Blucher's combined, about eighteen per cent. came from
the British Islands, and of that eighteen per cent., again, a very
large proportion—exactly how large it is impossible to determine—were
Irish.
Now let us turn to the army which Napoleon was leading against this
line of Wellington and Blucher. It was just under one hundred and a
quarter thousand men strong, that is, just over half the total number
of its opponents. It had, however, a heavier proportion of guns, which
were two-thirds as numerous as those it had to meet.
This “Army of the North” was organised in seven great bodies,
unequal in size, but each a unit averaging seventeen odd thousand men.
These seven great bodies were the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th Army Corps, the
6th Army Corps, the Imperial Guard, and the reserve cavalry under
Grouchy.
The concentration of this army began, as I said in a previous
section, upon the 5th of June, and was effected with a rapidity and
order which are rightly regarded as a model by all writers upon
military science.
The French troops, when the order for concentration was given,
stretched westward as far as Lille, eastward as far as Metz, southward
as far as Paris, in the neighbourhood of which town was the Imperial
Guard. The actual marching of the various units occupied a week.
Napoleon was at the front on the night of the 13th of June; the whole
army was upon the 14th drawn up upon a line stretched from Maubeuge to
Philippeville, and the attack was ready to begin.
The concentration had been effected with singular secrecy, as well
as with the promptitude and accuracy we have noted; and though the
common opinion of Wellington and Blucher, that Napoleon had no
intention of attacking, reposed upon sound general judgment—for the
hazard Napoleon was playing in this game of one against two was
extreme,—nevertheless it is remarkable that both of these great
commanders should have been so singularly ignorant of the impending
blow. Napoleon himself was actually over the frontier at the moment
when Wellington was writing at his ease that he intended to take the
offensive at the end of the month, and Blucher, a few days earlier, had
expressed the opinion that he might be kept inactive for a whole year,
since Bonaparte had no intention of attacking.
By the evening of Wednesday, June the 14th, all was ready for the
advance, which was ordered for the next morning.
It would but confuse the general reader to attempt to carry with him
through this short account the name and character of each commander,
but it is essential to remember one at least—the name of Erlon;
and he should also remember that the corps which Erlon commanded was
the First Corps; for, as we shall see, upon Erlon's wanderings
with this First Corps depended the unsatisfactory termination of Ligny,
and the subsequent intervention of the Prussians at Waterloo, which
decided that action.
It is also of little moment for the purpose of this to retain the
names of the places which were the headquarters of each of these corps
before the advance began. It is alone important to the reader that he
should have a clear picture of the order in which this advance took
place, for thus only will he understand both where it struck, and why,
with all its rapidity, it suffered from certain shocks or jerks.
Napoleon's advance was upon three parallel lines and in three main
bodies.
The left or westernmost consisted of the First and Second Corps
d'Armée; the centre, of the Imperial Guard, together with the Third and
Sixth Corps. The third or right consisted of the Fourth Corps alone,
with a division of cavalry. These three bodies, when the night of
Wednesday the 14th of June fell, lay, the first at Sorle and Leer; the
second at Beaumont, and upon the road that runs through it to
Charleroi; the third at Philippeville.
It is at this stage advisable to consider why Napoleon had chosen
the crossing of the Sambre at Charleroi and the sites immediately to
the north on the left bank of that river as the point where he would
strike at the long line of the Allies.
Many considerations converged to impose this line of advance upon
Napoleon. In the first place, it was his task to cut the line of the
Allies in two at the point where the extremity of one army, the
Prussian, touched upon the extremity of the other, that of the Duke of
Wellington. This point lay due north of the river-crossing he had
chosen.
Again, the main road to Brussels was barred by the fortress of Mons,
which, though not formidable, had been put in some sort of state of
defence.
Again, as a glance at the accompanying map will show, the Prussian
half of the allied line was drawn somewhat in front of the other half;
and if Napoleon were to attack the enemy in detail, he must strike at
the Prussians first. Finally, the line Maubeuge-Philippeville, upon
which he concentrated his front, was, upon the whole, the most central
position in the long line of his frontier troops, which stretched from
Metz to the neighbourhood of the Straits of Dover. Being the most
central point, not only with regard to these two extremities, but also
with regard to distant Paris, it was the point upon which his
concentration could most rapidly be effected.
[Illustration]
This, then, was the position upon the night of the 14th. The three
great bodies of French troops (much the largest of which was that in
the centre) to march at dawn, the light cavalry moving as early as half
past two, ahead of the centre, the whole body of which was to march on
Charleroi.
The left, that is the First and Second Corps, to cross the Sambre at
Thuin, the Abbaye d'Aulne, and Marchiennes. (There were bridges at all
three places.) The right or Fourth Corps was also to march on
Charleroi.[3]
Napoleon intended to be over the river with all his men by the
afternoon of the 15th, but, as we shall see, this “bunching” of fully
half the advance upon one crossing place caused, not a fatal, but a
prejudicial delay. Among other elements in this false calculation was
an apparent error on the part of Soult, who blundered in some way which
kept the Third Corps with the centre instead of relieving the pressure
by sending it over with the Fourth to cross, under the revised
instructions, by Châtelet.
[Illustration: Disposition of the Four Prussian Corps on June 15th,
1815.]
At dawn, then, the whole front of the French army was moving. It was
the dawn of Thursday the 15th of June. By sunset of Sunday all was to
be decided.
* * * * *
At this point it is essential to grasp the general scheme of the
operations which are about to follow.
Put in its simplest elements and graphically, the whole business
began in some such form as is presented in the accompanying sketch map.
[Illustration]
Napoleon's advancing army X Y Z, marching on Thursday, June 15th,
strikes at O (which is Charleroi), the centre of the hundred-mile-long
line of cantonments A B C——D E F, which form the two armies of the
Allies, twice as numerous as his own, but thus dispersed. Just behind
Charleroi (O) are a hamlet and a village, called respectively Quatre
Bras (Q) and Ligny (P).
Napoleon succeeds in bringing the eastern or Prussian half of this
long line D E F to battle and defeating it at Ligny (P) upon the next
day, Friday, June 16th, before the western half, or Wellington's A B C,
can come up in aid; and on the same day a portion of his forces, X,
under his lieutenant, Marshal Ney, holds up that western half, just as
it is attempting to effect its junction with the eastern half at Quatre
Bras (Q), a few miles off from Ligny (P). The situation on the night of
Friday, June 16th, at the end of this second step, is that represented
in this second sketch map.
[Illustration]
Believing the Prussians (D E F) to be retreating from Ligny towards
their base eastward, and not northwards, Napoleon more or less neglects
them and concentrates his main body in order to follow up Wellington's
western half (A B C), and in the hope of defeating that in its
turn, as he has already defeated the eastern or Prussian half (D E F)
at Ligny (P). With this object Napoleon advances northward during all
the third day, Saturday, June 17th. Wellington (A B C) retreats north
before him during that same day, and then, on the morrow, the 18th,
Sunday, turns to give battle at Waterloo (W). Napoleon engages him with
fair chances of success, and the situation as the battle begins at
midday on the 18th is that sketched in this third map.
[Illustration]
But unexpectedly, and against what Napoleon had imagined possible,
the Prussians (D E F), when defeated at Ligny (P), did not retreat upon
their base, and have not so suffered from their defeat as to be
incapable of further action. They have marched northward parallel to
the retreat of Wellington; and while Napoleon (X Y Z) is at the hottest
of his struggle with Wellington (A B C) at Waterloo (W), this eastern
or Prussian half (D E F) comes down upon his flank at (R) in the middle
of the afternoon, and by the combined numbers and disposition of this
double attack Napoleon's army is crushed before darkness sets in.
[Illustration]
Such, in its briefest graphic elements, is the story of the four
days.
It will be observed from what we have said that the whole thing
turns upon the incompleteness of Napoleon's success at Ligny, and the
power of retreating northward left to the Prussians after that
defeat.
When we come to study the details of the story, we shall see that
this, the Prussian defeat at Ligny, was thus incomplete because one of
Napoleon's subordinates, Erlon, with the First French Army Corps,
received contradictory orders and did not come up as he should have
done to turn the battle of Ligny into a decisive victory for Napoleon.
A part of Napoleon's forces being thus neutralised and held useless
during the fight at Ligny, the Prussian army escaped, still formed as a
fighting force, and still capable of reappearing, as it did reappear,
at the critical moment, two days later, upon the field of Waterloo.
THE ADVANCE
The rapidity of Napoleon's stroke was marred at its very outset by
certain misfortunes as well as certain miscalculations. His left, which
was composed of the First and Second Corps d'Armée, did indeed reach
the river Sambre in the morning, and had carried the bridge of
Marchiennes by noon, but the First Corps, under Erlon, were not
across—that is, the whole left had not negotiated the river—until
nearly five o'clock in the afternoon.
Next, the general in command of the leading division of the
right-hand body—the Fourth Corps—gave the first example of that of
which the whole Napoleonic organisation was then in such terror, I mean
the mistrust in the fortunes of the Emperor, and the tendency to revert
to the old social conditions, which for a moment the Bourbons had
brought back, and which so soon they might bring back again—he
deserted. The order was thereupon given for the Fourth Corps or right
wing to cross at Châtelet, but it came late (as late as half-past three
in the afternoon), and did but cause delay. At this eastern end of
Napoleon's front the last men were not over the river until the next
day.
As to the centre (the main body of the army), its cavalry reached
Charleroi before ten o'clock in the morning, but an unfortunate and
exasperating accident befallen a messenger left the infantry
immediately behind without instructions. The cavalry were impotent to
force the bridge crossing the river Sambre, which runs through the
town, until the main body should appear, and it was not until past noon
that the main body began crossing the Sambre by the Charleroi bridge.
The Emperor had probably intended to fight immediately after having
crossed the river. Gosselies, to the north, was strongly held; and had
all his men been over the Sambre in the early afternoon as he had
intended, an action fought suddenly, by surprise as it were, against
the advance bodies of the First Prussian Corps, would have given the
first example of that destruction of the enemy in detail which Napoleon
intended. But the delays in the advance, rapid as it had been, now
forbade any such good fortune. The end of the daylight was spent in
pushing back the head of the First Prussian Corps (with a loss of
somewhat over 1000 men), and when night fell upon that Thursday
evening, the 15th of June, the French held Charleroi and all the
crossings of the Sambre, but were not yet in a position to attack in
force. Of the left, the First Corps were but just over the Sambre; on
the right, that is, of the Fourth Corps, some units were still upon the
other side of the river; while, of the centre, the whole of the
Sixth Corps, and a certain proportion of cavalry as well, had still to
cross!
Napoleon had failed to bring the enemy to action; that enemy had
fallen back upon Fleurus, pretty nearly intact.[4] All the real work
had evidently to be put off, not only until the morrow, but until a
fairly late hour upon the morrow, for it would take some time to get
all the French forces on to the Belgian side of the river.
When this should have been accomplished, however, the task of the
next day, the Friday, was clear.
It was Napoleon's business to fall upon whatever Prussian force
might be concentrated before him and upon his right and to destroy it,
meanwhile holding back, by a force sent up the Brussels road to Quatre
Bras, any attempt Wellington and his western army might make to join
the Prussians and save them.
That night the Duke of Wellington's army lay in its cantonments
without concentration and without alarm, guessing nothing. The head of
Wellington's First Corps, the young Prince of Orange, who commanded the
Netherlanders, had left his headquarters to go and dine with the Duke
in Brussels.
Wellington, we may believe if we choose (the point is by no means
certain), knew as early as three o'clock in the afternoon that the
French had moved. It may have been as late as five, it may even have
been six. But whatever the hour in which he received his information,
it is quite certain that he had no conception of the gravity of the
moment. As late as ten o'clock at night the Duke issued certain
after-orders. He had previously given general orders (which presupposed
no immediate attack), commanding movements which would in the long-run
have produced a concentration, but though these orders were ordered to
be executed “with as little delay as possible,” there was no hint of
immediate duty required, nor do the posts indicated betray in any way
the urgent need there was to push men south and east at the top of
their speed, and relieve the Prussians from the shock they were to
receive on the morrow.
These general orders given—orders that betray no grasp of the
nearness of the issue—Wellington went off to the Duchess of Richmond's
ball in what the impartial historian cannot doubt to be ignorance of
the great stroke which Napoleon had so nearly brought off upon that
very day, and would certainly attempt to bring off upon the next.
In the midst of the ball, or rather during the supper, definite news
came in that the French army had crossed the river Sambre, and had even
pushed its cavalry as far up the Brussels road as Quatre Bras.
The Duke does not seem to have appreciated even then what that
should mean in the way of danger to the Prussians, and indeed of the
breaking of the whole line. He left the dance at about two in the
morning and went to bed.
He was not long left in repose. In the bright morning sunlight, four
hours afterwards, he was roused by a visitor from the frontier, and we
have it upon his evidence that the Duke at last understood what was
before him, and said that the concentration of his forces must be at
Quatre Bras.
In other words, Wellington knew or appreciated extremely tardily on
that Friday morning about six that the blow was about to fall
upon his Prussian allies to the south and east, and that it was the
business of his army upon the west to come up rapidly in succour.
As will be seen in a moment, he failed; but it would be a very
puerile judgment of this great man and superb defensive General to
belittle his place in the history of war upon the basis of even such
errors as these.
True, the error and the delay were prodigious and, in a fashion,
comic; and had Napoleon delivered upon the Thursday afternoon,
as he had intended, an attack which should have defeated the Prussians
before him, Wellington's error and delay would have paid a very heavy
price.
As it was, Napoleon's own delay in crossing the Sambre made
Wellington's mistake and tardiness bear no disastrous fruit. The Duke
failed to succour the Prussians. His troops, scattered all over Western
Belgium, did not come up in time to prevent the defeat of his allies at
Ligny. But he held his own at Quatre Bras; and in the final battle,
forty-eight hours later, the genius with which he handled his raw
troops upon the ridge of Mont St Jean wiped out and negatived all his
strategical misconceptions of the previous days.
From this confusion, this partial delay and error upon Napoleon's
part, this ignorance upon Wellington's of what was toward, both of
which marked Thursday the 15th, we must turn to a detailed description
of that morrow, Friday the 16th, which, though it is less remembered in
history than the crowning day of Waterloo, was, in every military
sense, the decisive day of the campaign.
We shall see that it was Napoleon's failure upon that Friday
completely to defeat, or rather to destroy, the Prussian force at
Ligny—a failure largely due to Wellington's neighbouring resistance at
Quatre Bras—which determined the Emperor's final defeat upon the
Sunday at Waterloo.