When the Prussians had concentrated to meet Napoleon at Ligny they
had managed to collect, in time for the battle, three out of their four
army corps.
These three army corps were the First, the Second, and the Third,
and, as we have just seen, they were defeated.
But, as we have also seen, they were not thoroughly defeated. They
were not disorganised, still less were the bulk of them captured and
disarmed. Most important of all, they were free to retreat by any road
that did not bring them against their victorious enemy. In other words,
they were free to retreat to the north as well as to the east.
The full importance of this choice will, after the constant
reiteration of it in the preceding pages, be clear to the reader. A
retreat towards the east, and upon the line of communications which fed
the Prussian army, would have had these two effects: First, it would
have involved in the retirement that fresh Fourth Army Corps under
Bulow which had not yet come into action, and which numbered no less
than 32,000 men. For it lay to the east of the battlefield. In other
words, that army corps would have been wasted, and the whole of the
Prussian forces would have been forced out of the remainder of the
campaign. Secondly, it would have finally separated Blucher and his
Prussians from Wellington's command. The Duke, with his western half of
the allied forces, would have had to stand up alone to the mass of
Napoleon's army, which would, after the defeat of the Prussians at
Ligny, naturally turn to the task of defeating the English General.
Now the fact of capital importance upon which the reader must
concentrate if he is to grasp the issue of the campaign is the fact
that the French staff fell into an error as to the true direction of
the Prussian retreat.
Napoleon, Soult, and all the heads of the French army were convinced
that the Prussian retreat was being made by that eastern road.
As a fact, the Prussians, under the cover of darkness, had retired
not east but north.
The defeated army corps, the First, Second, and Third, did not fall
back upon the fresh and unused Fourth Corps; they left it unhampered to
march northward also; and all during the darkness the Prussian forces,
as a whole, were marching in roughly parallel columns upon Wavre and
its neighbourhood.
It was this escape to the north instead of the east that made it
possible for the Prussians to effect their junction with Wellington
upon the day of Waterloo; but it must not be imagined that this
supremely fortunate decision to abandon the field of their defeat at
Ligny in a northerly rather than an easterly direction was at first
deliberately conceived by the Prussians with the particular object of
effecting a junction with Wellington later on.
In the first place, the Prussians had no idea what line Wellington's
retreat would take. They knew that he was particularly anxious about
his communications with the sea, and quite as likely to move westward
as northward when Napoleon should come against him.
The full historical truth, accurately stated, cannot be put into the
formula, “The Prussians retreated northward in order to be able to join
Wellington two days later at Waterloo.” To state it so would be to read
history backwards, and to presuppose in the Prussian staff a knowledge
of the future. The true formula is rather as follows:—“The Prussians
retired northward, and not eastward, because the incompleteness of
their defeat permitted them to do so, and thus at once to avoid the
waste of their Fourth Army Corps and to gain positions where they would
be able, if necessity arose, to get news of what had happened to
Wellington.”
In other words, to retreat northwards, though the decision to do so
depended only upon considerations of the most general kind, was wise
strategy, and the opportunity for that piece of strategy was seized;
but the retreat northwards was not undertaken with the specific object
of at once rejoining Wellington.
It must further be pointed out that this retreat northwards, though
it abandoned the fixed line of communications leading through Namur and
Liège to Aix la Chapelle, would pick up in a very few miles another
line of communications through Louvain, Maestricht, and Cologne. The
Prussian commanders, in determining upon this northward march, were in
no way risking their supply nor hazarding the existence of their army
upon a great chance. They were taking advantage of one of two courses
left open to them, and that one the wiser of the two.
This retreat upon Wavre was conducted with a precision and an
endurance most remarkable when we consider the fact that it took place
just after a severe, though not a decisive, defeat.
Of the eighty odd thousand Prussians engaged at Ligny, probably
12,000 had fallen, killed or wounded. When the Prussian centre broke,
many units became totally disorganised; and, counting the prisoners and
runaways who failed to rejoin the colours, we must accept as certainly
not exaggerated the Prussian official report of a loss of 15,000.[13]
In spite, I say, of this severe defeat, the order of the retreat was
well maintained, and was rewarded by an exceptional rapidity.
The First Corps marched along the westerly route that lay directly
before them by Tilly and Mont St Guibert. They marched past Wavre
itself, and bivouacked about midday of Saturday the 17th, round about
the village of Bierges, on the other side of the river Dyle.
The Second Corps followed the First, and ended its march on the
southern side of Wavre, round about the village of St Anne.
The Third Corps did not complete the retreat until the end of
daylight upon the 17th, and then marched through Wavre, across the
river to the north, and bivouacked around La Bavette.
Finally, still later on the same evening, the Fourth Corps, that of
Bulow, which had come to Ligny too late for the action, marching by the
eastward lanes, through Sart and Corry, lay round Dion Le Mont.
By nightfall, therefore, on Saturday the 17th of June, we have the
mass of the Prussian army safe round Wavre, and duly disposed all round
that town in perfect order.
With the exception of a rearguard, which did not come up until the
morning of the Sunday, all had been safely withdrawn in the twenty-four
hours that followed the defeat at Ligny.
It may be asked why this great movement had been permitted to take
place without molestation from the victors.
[Illustration]
Napoleon would naturally, of course, after his defeat of the
Prussians, withdraw to the west the greater part of the forces he had
used against Blucher at Ligny and direct them towards the Brussels road
in order to use them next against Wellington. But Napoleon had left
behind him Grouchy in supreme command over a great body of troops, some
33,000 in all, whose business it was to follow up the Prussians, to
find out what road they had taken; at the least to watch their
movements, and at the best to cut off any isolated bodies or to give
battle to any disjointed parts which the retreat might have separated
from support. In general, Grouchy was to see to it that the Prussians
did not return.
In this task Grouchy failed. True, he was not given his final
instructions by the Emperor until nearly midday of the 17th, but a man
up to his work would have discovered the line of the Prussian retreat
and have hung on to it. Grouchy failed, partly because he was
insufficiently provided with cavalry, partly because he was a man
excellent only in a sudden tactical dilemma, incompetent in large
strategical problems, partly because he mistrusted his subordinates,
and they him; but most of all because of an original prepossession
(under which, it is but fair to him to add, all the French leaders lay)
that the Prussian retreat had taken the form of a flight towards Namur,
along the eastern line of communications, while, as a fact, it had
taken the form of a disciplined retreat upon Wavre and the north.
At ten o'clock in the evening of Saturday the 17th, twenty-four
hours after the battle of Ligny, and at the moment when the whole body
of the Prussian forces was already reunited in an orderly circle round
Wavre, Grouchy, twelve miles to the south of them, was beginning—but
only beginning—to discover the truth. He wrote at that hour to the
Emperor that “the Prussians had retired in several directions,” one
body towards Namur, another with Blucher the Commander-in-chief towards
Liège, and a third body apparently towards Wavre. He even added
that he was going to find out whether it might not be the larger of the
three bodies which had gone towards Wavre, and he appreciated that
whoever had gone towards Wavre intended keeping in touch with the rest
of the Allies under Wellington. But all that Grouchy did after writing
this letter proves how little he, as yet, really believed that any
great body of the enemy had marched on Wavre. He anxiously sent out,
not northward, but eastward and north-eastward, to feel for what he
believed to be the main body of the retreating foe.
During the night he did become finally convinced by the mass of
evidence brought in by his scouts that round Wavre was the whole
Prussian force, and the conclusion that he came to was singular! He
took it for granted that through Wavre the Prussians certainly intended
a full retreat on Brussels. He wrote at daybreak of the 18th of June
that he was about to pursue them.
That Blucher could dream of taking a short cut westward, thus
effecting an immediate junction with Wellington, never entered
Grouchy's head. He did not put his army in motion until after having
written this letter. He advanced his troops in a decent and leisurely
manner up the Wavre road through the mid hours of the day, and himself,
just before noon, wrote a dispatch to the Emperor; he wrote it from
Sart, a point ten miles south of Wavre. In that letter he announced
“his intention to be massed at Wavre that night,” and begging
for “orders as to how he should begin his attack of the next day.”
The next day! Monday!
Already, hours before—by midnight of Saturday—Blucher had sent his
message to Wellington assuring him that the Prussians would come to his
assistance upon Sunday, the morrow.
Even as Grouchy was writing, the Prussian Corps were streaming
westward across country to appear upon Napoleon's flank four hours
later and decide the campaign.
Having written his letter, Grouchy sat down to lunch. As he sat
there at meat, far off, the first shots of the battle of Waterloo were
fired.
* * * * *
So far, we have followed the retreat of the Prussians northwards
from their defeat at Ligny. With the exception of the rearguard, they
were all disposed by the evening of Saturday the 17th in an orderly
fashion round the little town of Wavre. We have also followed the
methodical but tardy and ill-conceived pursuit in which Grouchy felt
out with his cavalry to discover the line of the Prussian retreat, and
continued to be in doubt of its nature at least until midnight, and
probably until even later than midnight, in that night between Saturday
the 17th, evening, and Sunday the 18th of June.
We have further seen that during the morning of Sunday the 18th of
June he was taking no dispositions for a rapid pursuit, but, being now
convinced that the Prussians merely intended a general retreat upon
Brussels, proposed to follow them in order to watch that retreat, and,
if possible, to shepherd them eastwards. He wrote, as we have just
said, to the Emperor in the course of that morning of the Sunday,
announcing that he meant to mass his troops at Wavre by nightfall, and
asking for orders for the next day.
What the Prussians were doing during that Sunday morning when
Grouchy was so quietly and soberly taking for granted that they could
not or would not rejoin Wellington, and was so quietly shielding his
own responsibility behind the Emperor's orders, we shall see when we
come to talk of the action itself—the battle of Waterloo.
Meanwhile we must return to the second half of the great strategic
move, and watch the retreat of the Duke of Wellington during that same
Saturday, and the stand which he made on the ridge called “the Mont St
Jean” by the nightfall of that day, in order to accept battle on the
Sunday morning.
An observer watching the whole business of that Saturday from some
height in the air above the valley of the Sambre, and looking
northwards, would have seen on the landscape below, to his right, the
Prussians streaming in great parallel columns upon Wavre from the
battlefield of Ligny. He would have seen, scattered upon the roads,
small groups of mounted men, here in touch with the last files of a
Prussian column, there lost and wandering forward into empty spaces
where no soldiers were. These were the cavalry scouts of Grouchy. South
of these, and far behind the Prussian rear, separated from them by a
gap of ten miles, a dense body of infantry, drawn up in heavy columns
of route, was the corps commanded by Grouchy.
What would such an observer have seen upon the landscape below and
before him to his left? He would have seen an interminable line of men
streaming northward also, all afternoon, up the Brussels road from
Quatre Bras; and behind them, treading upon their heels, another
column, miles in length, pressing the pursuit. The retreating column,
as it hurried off, he would see screened on its rear by a mass of
cavalry, that from time to time charged and checked the pursuers, and
sometimes put guns in line to hold them back. The pursuers, after each
such check, would still press on. The first, the thousands in retreat,
were Wellington's command retiring from Quatre Bras; the second, the
pursuers, were a body some 74,000 strong formed by the junction of Ney
and Napoleon, and pressing forward to bring Wellington to battle.
* * * * *
At Quatre Bras, Wellington had not been able, as he had hoped, to
join the Prussians and save them from defeat. The French, under Ney,
had held him up. He would even have suffered a reverse had Ney attacked
promptly and strongly earlier in the day of Friday the 16th, but Ney
had not acted promptly and strongly.
All day long reinforcements had come in one after the other, much
later than the Duke intended, but in a sufficient measure to meet the
tardy and too cautious development of Ney's attack. Finally, the real
peril under which the Duke lay (though he did not know it)—the
junction of Erlon and his forces with Ney—had not taken place until
darkness fell, and Erlon's 20,000 had been wasted in the futile fashion
which has been described and analysed.
The upshot, therefore, of the whole business at Quatre Bras was,
that during the night between Friday and Saturday the 16th and the 17th
the English and the French lay upon their positions, neither seriously
incommoding the other.
During that night further reinforcements reached Wellington where
his troops had bivouacked upon the positions they had held so well.
Lord Uxbridge, in command of the British cavalry, and Ompteda's brigade
both came up with the morning, as did also Clinton's division and
Colville's division, and so did the reserve artillery.
In spite of all these reinforcements, in spite even of the great
mass of horse which Uxbridge had brought up, and of the new guns,
Wellington's position upon that morning of Saturday the 17th of June
was, though he did not yet know it, very perilous.
He still believed that the Prussians were holding on to Ligny, and
that they had kept their positions during the night, which night he had
himself spent at Genappe, to the rear of the battlefield of Quatre
Bras.[14]
When Wellington awoke on the morning of Saturday in Genappe, there
were rumours in the place that the Prussians had been defeated the day
before at Ligny. The Duke went at once to Quatre Bras; sent Colonel
Gordon off eastward with a detachment of the Tenth Hussars to find out
what had happened, and that officer, finding the road from Ligny in the
hands of the French, had the sense to scout up northwards, came upon
the tail of the Prussian retreat, and returned to Wellington at Quatre
Bras by half-past seven with the whole story: the Prussians had indeed
been beaten; they were in full retreat; but a chance of retreat had
lain open towards the north, and that was the road they had taken.
Wellington knew, therefore, before eight o'clock on that Saturday
morning, that his whole left or eastern flank was exposed, and it was
common-sense to expect that Napoleon, with the main body of the French,
having defeated the Prussians at Ligny, would now march against
himself, come up upon that exposed flank (while Ney held the front),
and so outnumber the Anglo-Dutch under the Duke's command. At the worst
that command would be destroyed; at the best it could only hope, if it
gave time for Napoleon to come up, to have to retreat westward, and to
lose touch, for good, with the Prussians.
In such a plight it was Wellington's business to retreat towards the
north, so as to remain in touch with his Prussian allies, while yet
that line of retreat was open to him, and before Napoleon should have
forced a battle.
[Illustration: Sketch showing the situation in which Wellington was
at Quatre Bras on the morning of the 17th.]
The Duke was in no hurry to undertake this movement, for as yet
there was no sign of Napoleon's arrival. The men breakfasted, and it
was not until ten o'clock that the retreat began. He sent word back up
the road to stop the reinforcements that were still upon their way to
join him at Quatre Bras, and to turn them round again up the Brussels
road, the way they had come, until they should reach the ridge of the
Mont St Jean, just in front of the village of Waterloo, where he had
determined to stand. This done, he made his dispositions for
retirement, and a little after ten o'clock the retreat upon Waterloo
began. His English infantry led the retreat, the Netherland troops
following, then the Brunswickers, and the last files of that whole
great body of men were marching up the Brussels road northward before
noon. Meanwhile, Lord Uxbridge, with his very considerable force of
cavalry and the guns necessary to support it, deployed to cover the
retreat, and watched the enemy.
That enemy was motionless. Ney did not propose to attack until
Napoleon should come up. Napoleon and his troops, arriving from the
battlefield of Ligny, were not visible until within the neighbourhood
of two o'clock. As he came near the Emperor was perceived, his
memorable form distinguished in the midst of a small escorting body,
urging the march; and the English guns, during one of those rare
moments in which war discovers something of drama, fired upon the man
who was the incarnation of all that furious generation of arms. In a
military study, this moment, valuable to civilian history, may be
neglected.
The flood of French troops arriving made it hard for Uxbridge, in
spite of his very numerous cavalry and supporting guns, to cover
Wellington's retreat.
The task was, however, not only successfully but nobly accomplished.
Just as the French came up the sky had darkened and a furious storm had
broken from the north-west upon the opposing forces. It was in the
midst of a rain so violent that friend could be hardly distinguished
from foe at thirty yards distance that the pursuit began, and to the
noise of limbers galloped furiously to avoid capture, and of all those
squadrons pursuing and pursued, was joined an incessant thunder.
Things are accomplished in war which do not fit into the framework
of its largest stories, and tend, therefore, to be lost. Overshadowed
by the great story of Waterloo, the work which Lord Uxbridge and his
Horse did on that afternoon of Saturday the 17th of June is too often
forgotten.
The ability and the energy displayed were equal.
The first deployment to meet the French advance, the watching of the
retirement of Wellington's main body, the continual appreciation of
ground during a rapid and dangerous movement and in the worst of
weather, the choice of occasional artillery positions—all these showed
mastery, and secured the complete order of Wellington's retreat.[15]
The pursuit was checked at its most important point (where the
French had to cross the river Dyle at Genappe) by a rapid deployment of
the cavalry upon the slope beyond the stream, a rapid unlimbering of
the batteries in retreat, and a double charge, first of the Seventh
Hussars, next of the First Life Guards.
These charges were successful, they checked the French, and during
the remainder of the afternoon the pursuit to the north of the Dyle
slackened off until, before darkness, it ceased altogether.
Indeed, there was by that time no further use in it. The mass of
Wellington's army had reached, and had deployed upon, that ridge of the
Mont St Jean where he intended to turn and give battle. They were in a
position to receive any immediate attack, and the purposes of mere
pursuit were at an end.
Facing that ridge of the Mont St Jean, where, at the end of the
afternoon and through the evening, Wellington's troops were already
taking up their positions, was another ridge, best remembered by the
name of a farm upon its crest, the “Belle Alliance.” This ridge formed
the natural halting-place of the pursuers. From the height above
Genappe to the ridge of the Belle Alliance was but 5000 yards; and if a
further reason be quoted for the cessation of the pursuit and the
ranging into battle array of either force, the weather will provide
that reason.
The soil of all these fields is of a peculiar black and consistent
sort, almost impassable after a drenching rain. The great paved high
road which traverses it was occupied and encumbered by the wheeled
vehicles and by the artillery. A rapid advance of infantry bodies
thrown out to the right and left of the road, and so securing speed by
parallel advance, was made impossible by mud, and the line grew longer
and longer down the main road, forbidding rapid movement. From mud,
that “fifth element in war” (as Napoleon himself called it),
Wellington's troops—the mass of them at least—had been fairly free.
They had reached their positions before the downpour. Only the cavalry
of the rearguard and its batteries had felt the full force of the
storm. Dry straw of the tall standing crops had been cut on the ridge
of the Mont St Jean, and the men of Wellington's command bivouacked as
well as might be under such weather.
With the French it was otherwise. Their belated units kept
straggling in until long after nightfall. The army was drawn up only at
great expense of time and floundering effort, mainly in the dark,
drenched, sodden with mud, along the ridge of the Belle Alliance. It
was with difficulty that the wood of the bivouac fires could be got to
burn at all. They were perpetually going out; and all that darkness was
passed in a misery which the private soldier must silently expect as
part of his trade, and which is relieved only by those vague corporate
intuitions of a common peril, and perhaps a common glory, which, down
below all the physical business, form the soul of an army.
Napoleon, when he had inspected all this and assured himself that
Wellington was standing ranged upon the opposite ridge, returned to
sleep an hour or two at the farm called Le Caillou, a mile behind the
line of bivouacs. Wellington took up his quarters in the village of
Waterloo, about a mile and a half behind the bivouacs of his troops
upon the Mont St Jean.
In such a disposition the two commanders and their forces waited for
the day.
* * * * *
There must, lastly, be considered, before the description of action
is entered on, the nature of the field upon which it was about to be
contested. That field had been studied by Wellington the year before.
He, incomparably the greatest tactical defensive commander of his time,
and one of the greatest of all time, had chosen it for its capacities
of defence. They were formidable. Relying upon them, and confident of
the Prussians coming to his aid when the battle was joined, he rightly
counted upon success.
* * * * *
Let us begin by noting that of no battle is it more important to
seize the exact nature of the terrain, that is, of the ground over
which it was fought, than of Waterloo.
To the eye the structure of the battlefield is simple, consisting
essentially of two slight and rounded ridges, separated by a very
shallow undulation of land.
But this general formation is complicated by certain features which
can only be grasped with the aid of contours, and these contours,
again, are not very easy to follow at first sight for those who have
not seen the battlefield.
In the map which forms the frontispiece of this volume, and to which
I will beg the reader to turn, I have indicated the undulations of land
in pale green lines underlying the other features of the battle, which
are in black, red, and blue. The contours are drawn at five metres
(that is 16 feet 4 inches) distance; no contours are given below that
of 100 metres above the sea. The valley floors below that level are
shaded. Up to the 120-metre line the contours are indicated by
continuous lines of increasing thickness. Above the 120-metre line they
are indicated by faint dotted or dashed lines. I hope in this manner,
though the task is a difficult one, to give a general impression of the
field.
The whole field, both slight ridges and the intervening depression,
lies upon a large swell of land many square miles in extent, while it
slopes away gradually to the east on one side and the west on the
other. The highest and hardly distinguishable knolls of it stand about
450 feet above the sea. The site of the battle lies actually on the
highest part, the water-parting; and the floors of the valleys, down
which the streams run to the east and to the west, are from 150 to 200
feet lower than this confused lift of land between. To one, however,
standing upon any part of the battlefield, this feature of height is
not very apparent. True, one sees lower levels falling away left and
right, and the view seems oddly wide, but the eye gathers the
impression of little more than a rolling plain. This is because, in
comparison with the scale of the landscape as a whole, the elevations
and depressions are slight.
Upon this rolling mass of high land there stand out, as I have said,
those two slight ridges, and these ridges lie, roughly speaking, east
and west—perpendicular to the great Brussels road, which cuts them
from south to north. It was upon this great Brussels road that both
Wellington and Napoleon took up, at distances less than a mile apart,
their respective centres of position for the struggle. Though this line
of the road did not precisely bisect the two lines of the opposing
armies, the point where it crossed each line marked the tactical centre
of that line: both Wellington and Napoleon remained in person upon that
road.
Now it must not be imagined that the shallow depression between the
ridges stretches of even depth between the two positions taken up by
Wellington and Napoleon, with the road cutting its middle; on the
contrary, it is bridged, a little to the west of the road, by a
“saddle,” a belt of fields very nearly flat, and very nearly as high as
each ridge. The eastern half of the depression therefore rises
continually, and gets shallower and shallower as it approaches the road
from east westward, and the road only cuts off the last dip of it.
Then, just west of the road there is the saddle; and as you proceed
still further westward along the line midway between the French and
English positions you find a second shallow valley falling away. This
second valley does not precisely continue the direction of the first,
but turns rather more to the north. In the first slight decline of this
second valley, and a few hundred yards west of the road, lies the
country-house called Hougomont, and just behind it lay the western end
of Wellington's line. The whole position, therefore, if it were cut out
as a model in section from a block of wood, might appear as does the
accompanying plan.
[Illustration]
In such a model the northern ridge P—Q some two miles in length is
that held by Wellington. The southern one M—N is that held by
Napoleon. Napoleon commanded from the point A, Wellington from the
point B, and the dark band running from one to the other represents the
great Brussels High Road. The subsidiary ridge O—O is that on which
Napoleon, as we shall see, planted his great battery preparatory to the
assault. The enclosure H is Hougomont, the enclosure S is La Haye
Sainte.
Of the two ridges, that held by Napoleon needs less careful study
for the comprehension of the battle than that held by Wellington.
The latter is known as the Ridge of the Mont St Jean, from a farm
lying a little below its highest point and a little behind its central
axis. This ridge Wellington had carefully studied the year before, and
that great master of defence had noted and admired the excellence of
its defensive character. Not only does the land rise towards the ridge
through the whole length of the couple of miles his troops occupied,
not only is it almost free of “dead"[16] ground, but there lie before
it two walled enclosures, the small one of La Haye Sainte, the large
one of Hougomont, which, properly prepared and loopholed as they were,
were equivalent to a couple of forts standing out to break the attack.
There is, again, behind the whole line of the ridge, lower ground upon
which the Duke could and did conceal troops, and along which he could
and did move them safely during the course of the action.
Anyone acquainted with Wellington's various actions and their
terrains will recognise a common quality in them: they were all chosen
by an eye unequalled for seizing, even in where an immediate decision
was necessary, all the capabilities of a defensive position. That taken
up on the 18th of June 1815, in the Duke's last battle, had been
chosen, not under the exigencies of immediate combat, but with full
leisure and after a complete study. It is little wonder, then, that it
is the best example of all. Of all the defensive positions which the
genius of Wellington has made famous in Europe, none excels that of
Waterloo.