Waterloo Part 3

_This characteristic is the necessary uncertainty under which every commander lies as to the disposition, the number, the order, and the information of his opponents._

It is a _necessary_ characteristic in all warfare, because it is a prime duty in the conduct of war to conceal from your enemy your numbers, your dispositions, and the extent of your information. It is a duty which every commander will always fulfil to his best ability.

It is therefore a characteristic, be it noted, which no development of human science can conceivably destroy, for with every advance in our means of communicating information we advance also in our knowledge of the means whereby the new means of communication may be interrupted. An advantage over the enemy in the means one has of acquiring knowledge with regard to him must, of course, always be of supreme importance, and when those means are novel, one side or the other is often beforehand for some years with the new science of their use. When such is the case, science appears to uninstructed opinion to have changed this ancient and fixed characteristic which is in the very nature of war. But in fact there has been no such change. Under the most primitive conditions an advantage of this type was of supreme importance; under conditions the most scientific and refined it is an advantage that may still be neutralised if the enemy has learnt means of screening himself as excellent as our means of discovering him.

Even the aeroplane, whose development in the modern French service has so vastly changed the character of information, and therefore of war, can never eliminate the factor of which I speak. A service possessed of a great superiority in this new arm will, of course, be the master of its foe; but when the use of the new arm is spread and equalised among all European forces so that two opposing forces are equally matched even in this new discovery, then the old element of move and countermove, feint, secrecy, and calculated confusion of an adversary, will reappear.[6]

In general, then, to point out the ignorance and the misconceptions of one commander is no criticism of a campaign until we have appreciated the corresponding ignorance and misconceptions of the other. We have already seen Wellington taken almost wholly by surprise on the French advance; we shall see him, even when he appreciated its existence, imagining it to be directed princ.i.p.ally against himself. We shall similarly see Napoleon underestimating the Prussian force in front of him, and underestimating even that tardy information which had reached Wellington in time for him to send troops up the Brussels road, and to check the French advance along it. But we must judge either of the two great opponents not by a single picture of his own misconceptions alone, but by the combined picture of the misconceptions of both, and especially by a consideration of the way in which each retrieved or attempted to retrieve the results of those misconceptions when a true idea of the enemy's dispositions was conveyed to him.

Here, then, we have Napoleon on the morning of Friday the 16th of June prepared to deal with the Prussians. It is his right-hand body, under Grouchy, which is deputed to do this, while he sends up the left-hand body, under Ney, northwards to brush aside, or, at the worst, at least to hold off whatever of the Duke of Wellington's command may be found upon the Brussels road attempting to join the Prussians.

The general plan of what happened upon that decisive 16th is simple enough.

The left-hand body, under Ney, goes forward up the Brussels road, finds more resistance than it expected, but on the whole performs its task and prevents any effective help being given by the western half of the Allies--Wellington's half--to the eastern half--the Prussian half. But it only prevents that task with difficulty and at the expense of a tactical defeat. This action is called Quatre Bras.

Meanwhile, the right-hand body equally accomplishes the elements of its task, engages the head of the Prussian line and defeats it, with extreme difficulty, just before dark. This action is called Ligny.

But the minor business conducted by the left, under Ney, is only just successful, and successful only in the sense that it does, at vast expense, prevent a junction of Wellington with Blucher. The major business conducted on the right, by Napoleon himself, in support of Grouchy, is disappointing. The head of the Prussian line is not destroyed; the Prussian army, though beaten, is free to retreat in fair order, and almost in what direction it chooses.

The ultimate result is that Wellington and Blucher do manage to effect their junction on the day after the morrow of Ligny and Quatre Bras, and thus defeat Napoleon at Waterloo.

Now, why were both these operations, Quatre Bras and Ligny, incompletely successful? Partly because there was more resistance along the Brussels road than Napoleon had expected, and a far larger body of Prussians in front of him than he had expected either; _but much more because a whole French army corps, which, had it been in action, could have added a third to the force of either the right or the left wing, was out of action all day; and wandered aimlessly over the empty zone which separated Ney from Grouchy, Quatre Bras from Ligny, the left half of Napoleon's divided army from its right half_.

This it was which prevented what might have been possible--the thrusting back of Wellington along the Brussels road, and even perhaps the disorganisation of his forces. This it was which missed what was otherwise certainly possible--the total ruin of the Prussian army.

This army corps thus thrown away unused in hours of aimless marching and countermarching was the First Army Corps. Its commander was Erlon; and the enormous blunder or fatality which permitted Erlon and his 20,000 to be as useless upon the 16th of June as though they had been wiped out in some defeat is what makes of the 16th of June the decisive day of the campaign.

It was Erlon's failure to be present _either_ with Ney _or_ with Grouchy, either upon the left or upon the right, either at Quatre Bras or at Ligny, while each of those two actions were in doubt, which made it possible for Wellington's troops to stand undefeated in the west, for the Prussians to retire--not intact, but still an army--from the east, and for both to unite upon the day after the morrow, the Sunday, and destroy the French army at Waterloo.

It is upon Erlon's blunder or misfortune that the whole issue turns, and upon the Friday, the 16th of June, in the empty fields between Quatre-Bras and Ligny, much more than upon the famous Sunday at Waterloo, that the fate of Napoleon's army was decided.

In order to make this clear, let us first follow what happened in the operations of Napoleon's right wing against the Prussians opposed to it,--operations which bear in history the name of "the Battle of Ligny."

LIGNY

"_If they fight here they will be d.a.m.nably mauled._"

(Wellington's words on seeing the defensive positions chosen by the Prussians at Ligny.)

Napoleon imagined that when he had crossed the Sambre with the bulk of his force, the suddenness of his attack (for, though r.e.t.a.r.ded as we have seen, and though leaving troops upon the wrong bank of the river, it was sudden) would find the Prussian forces in the original positions wherein he knew them to have lain before he marched. He did not think that they would yet have had the time, still less the intention, to concentrate. Those original positions the map upon p. 41 makes plain.

The 124,000 men and more, which lay under the supreme command of Blucher, had been spread before the attack began along the whole extended line from Liege to Charleroi, and had been disposed regularly from left to right in four corps d'armee.

The first of these had its headquarters in Charleroi itself, its furthest outpost was but five miles east of the town, its three brigades had Charleroi for their centre; its reserve cavalry was at Sombreffe, its reserve artillery at Gembloux. The Second Corps had its headquarters twenty miles away east, at Namur, and occupied posts in the country as far off as Hannut (thirty miles away from Charleroi).

The Third Corps had its headquarters at Ciney in the Ardennes, and was scattered in various posts throughout that forest, its furthest cantonment being no nearer than Dinant, which, by the only good road available, was nearer forty than thirty miles from Napoleon's point of attack.

Finally, the Fourth Corps was as far away as Liege (nearer fifty than forty miles by road from the last cantonment of the First Corps), and having its various units scattered round the neighbourhood of that town.

Napoleon, therefore, attacking Charleroi suddenly, imagined that he would have to deal only with the First Corps at Charleroi and its neighbourhood.

He did not think that the other three corps had information in time to enable them to come up westward towards the end of the line and meet him.

The outposts of the First Corps had, of course, fallen back before the advance of the Emperor's great army; the ma.s.s of that First Corps was, he knew, upon this morning of the 16th, some mile or two north and east of Fleurus, astraddle of the great road which leads from Charleroi to Gembloux. At the very most, and supposing this First Corps (which was of 33,000 men, under Ziethen) had received reinforcements from the nearest posts of the Second and the Third Corps, Napoleon did not think that he could have in front of him more than some 40,000 men at the most.

He was in error. It had been arranged among the Prussian leaders that resistance to Napoleon, when occasion might come for it, should be offered in the neighbourhood of the cross-roads where the route from Charleroi to Gembloux crosses that from Nivelles to Namur. In other words, they were prepared to stand and fight between Sombreffe and the village of Ligny.

The plan had been prepared long beforehand. The whole of the First Corps was in position with the morning, awaiting the Emperor's attack. The Second Corps had been in motion for hours, and was marching up during all that morning. So was the Third Corps behind it. Blucher himself had arrived upon the field of battle the day before (the 15th), and had written thence to his sovereign to say that he was fully prepared for action the next day.

Indeed, Blucher on the 15th confidently expected victory, and the end of the campaign then and there. He had a right to do so, for Napoleon's advance had been met by so rapid a concentration that, a little after noon on that Friday the 16th, and before the first shots were fired, well over 80,000 men were drawn up to receive the shock of Napoleon's right wing.

But that right wing all told, even when the belated French troops beyond the Sambre had finally crossed that river, and even when the Emperor had brought up the Guard and the reserve, numbered but 63,000. Supposing the French had been able to use every man, which they were not, they counted but seven to nine of their opponents. And the nine were upon the defensive; the seven had to undertake the task of an a.s.sault.

It was late in the day before battle was joined. Napoleon had reached Fleurus at about ten o'clock in the morning, but it was four hours more before he had brought all his troops across the river, and by the time he had done so two things had happened. First, the Duke of Wellington (who, as we shall see later, had come to Quatre Bras that morning, and had written to Blucher telling him of his arrival) rode off in person to the Prussian positions and discussed affairs near the windmill of Bussy with the Prussian Commander-in-chief. In this conversation, Wellington undoubtedly promised to effect, if he could, a junction with the Prussians in the course of the afternoon. Even without that aid Blucher felt fairly sure of victory; with it, he could be perfectly confident.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Prussian concentration before Ligny, showing the junction of the First, Second, and Third Corps on the morning of June 16th, and the inability of the Fourth Corps to come up in time.]

As matters turned out, Wellington found himself unable to effect his junction with Blucher. Ney, as we shall see later, found in front of him on the Brussels road much heavier opposition than he had imagined, but Wellington was also surprised to find to what strength the French force under Ney was at Quatre Bras. Wellington, as we shall see, held his own on that 16th of June, but was quite unable to come up in succour of Blucher when the expected victory of that general turned to a defeat.

The second thing that happened in those hours was Napoleon's discovery that the Prussian troops ma.s.sing to oppose him before Ligny were going to be much more than a single corps. It looked to him more like the whole Prussian army. It was, indeed, three-quarters of that army, for it consisted of the First, the Second, and the Third Corps. Only the Fourth, with its headquarters at distant Liege, had not been able to arrive in time. This Fourth Corps would also have been present, and would probably have turned the scale in favour of the Prussians, had the staff orders been sent out promptly and conveyed with sufficient rapidity. As it was, its most advanced units got no further west, during the course of the action, than about halfway between Liege and the battlefield.

Napoleon was enabled to discover with some ease the great numbers which had concentrated to oppose him from the fact that these numbers had concentrated upon a defective position. Wellington, the greatest defensive general of his time, at once discovered this weakness in Blucher's chosen battlefield, and was provoked by the discovery to the exclamation which stands at the head of this section. The rolling land occupied by the Prussian army lay exposed in a regular sweep downwards towards the heights upon which lay the French, and the Prussian army as it deployed came wholly under the view of its enemy. Nothing was hidden; and a further effect was that, as Napoleon himself remarked, all the artillery work of the French side went home. If a round missed the foremost positions of the Prussian army, it would necessarily fall within the ranks behind them.

This discovery, that there lay before him not one corps but a whole army, seemed to Napoleon, upon one condition, an advantage. The new development would, upon that one condition, give him, if his troops were of the quality he estimated them to be, a complete victory over the united Prussian force, and might well terminate the campaign on that afternoon and in that place. That one condition was the possibility of getting Ney upon the left, or some part at least of Ney's force, to leave the task of holding off Wellington, to come down upon the flank of the Prussians from the north and west, to envelop them, and thus, in company with the troops of Napoleon himself, to destroy the three Prussian Army Corps altogether.

Had that condition been fulfilled, the campaign would indeed have come to an end decisively in Napoleon's favour, and, as he put it in a famous phrase, "not a gun" of the army opposing him "should escape."

Unfortunately for the Emperor, that one condition was not fulfilled. The 63,000 Frenchmen of the right wing, under Napoleon, did indeed defeat and drive off the 80,000 men opposed to them. But that opposing army was not destroyed; it was not contained; it remained organised for further fighting, and it survived to decide Waterloo.

In order to appreciate Napoleon's idea and how it might have succeeded, let the reader consider the dispositions of the battle of Ligny.

The battlefield named in history after the village of Ligny consists of a number of communes, of which that village is the central one. The Prussian army held the villages marked on the map by the names of Tongrinelle and Tongrinne, to the east of Ligny; it held Brye, St Amand, and Wagnelee to the east. It held also the heights behind upon the great road leading from Nivelles to Namur. When Napoleon had at last got his latest troops over from beyond the Sambre on to the field of battle, which was not until just on two o'clock in the afternoon, the plan he formed was to hold the Prussian left and centre by a vigorous attack, that is, to pin the Prussians down to Tongrinne, Tongrinelle, and Ligny, while, on the other front, the east and south front of the Prussians, another vigorous attack should be driving them back out of Wagnelee and St Amand.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The plan can be further elucidated by considering the elements of the battle as they are sketched in the map over leaf. Napoleon's troops at C C C were to hold the Prussian left at H, to attack the Prussian right at D, with the Guard at E left in reserve for the final effort.

By thus holding the Prussians at H and pushing them in at D, he would here begin to pen them back, and it needed but the arrival on the field of a fresh French force attacking the Prussians along A B to destroy the force so contained and hemmed in. For that fresh force Napoleon depended upon new and changed instructions which he despatched to Ney when he saw the size of the Prussian force before him. During Napoleon's main attack, some portion of Ney's force, and if possible the whole of it, should appear unexpectedly from the north and west, marching down across the fields between Wagnelee and the Nivelles-Namur road, and coming on the north of the enemy at A B, so as to attack him not only in the flank but in the rear. He would then be unable to retreat in the direction of _Wavre_ (W)--a broken remnant might escape towards Namur (N). But it was more likely that the whole force would be held and destroyed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Elements of Ligny.]

Supposing that Napoleon's 63,000 showed themselves capable of holding, let alone partially driving in, the 80,000 in front of them, the sudden and unexpected appearance of a new force in the height of the action, adding another twenty or thirty thousand to the French troops already engaged, coming upon the flank and spreading to the rear of the Prussian host, would inevitably have destroyed that host, and, to repeat Napoleon's famous exclamation, "not a gun would have escaped."

The reader may ask: "If this plan of victory be so obvious, why did Napoleon send Ney off with a separate left wing of forty to fifty thousand men towards Quatre Bras?"